Target Point

Alexander P. Gage 

Alex Gage is the CEO and Founder of TargetPoint Consulting based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Alex began his career at Market Opinion Research in the political division during the 1976 campaign for President Gerald R. Ford. He was a senior vice president of MOR's political group when he left the firm in 1989 to launch Market Strategies Inc.   Over the years MSI grew to specialize in many types of research including Consumer Products, Electoral Politics, Energy, Financial Services, Health Care, Information Technology and Telecommunications, Lottery and Gaming, Pharmaceutical and Public Policy. By 2003, the company had grown from 6 original partners to a team of over 170 senior consultants and researchers and over 400 staff making it the 19th largest research company in the U.S. with annual revenues of $40 million.

In 2003, Alex co-founded TargetPoint Consulting, a full service research firm which created what is now known as MicroTargeting.  TargetPoint counted the Republican National Committee as it’s largest client in both 2004 and 2006 and is credited by many for the sophisticated voter targeting which helped lead President Bush’s 2004 campaign to victory.  Today, TargetPoint is the pre-eminent provider of MicroTargeting as well as polling, focus groups and other types of research for political and corporate clients.

Since 1976, Alex has participated in nearly every Republican Presidential campaign, along with over 40 U.S. Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns, in addition to a wide-ranging portfolio of corporate work.  In the 2008 cycle, Alex played the role of Senior Strategist on the Romney for President Campaign.  He also headed up Midnight Ride Media, the paid media component of the campaign.

Alex graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in political science and attended graduate school at Wayne State University.   He has two children and divides his time between Alexandria, Virginia and West Windsor, Vermont.

Michael Meyers  

Michael Meyers is Partner and President of Target Point Consulting. Over the past several years, Michael has worked to provide MicroTargeting and direct voter contact consulting to the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign and the Republican National Committee. His other clients have included the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Governor’s Association, Senator’s Richard Burr and John Thune, Governors Perdue, Schwarzenegger and Lingle and key congressional races across the country. Michael also worked with a number of corporate clients including Wal-Mart, Pfizer, SBC, DTE Energy and Magnolia Pictures / 2929 Entertainment.

Michael was the executive director of the Michigan Republican Party during the 2002 election cycle. During that time he helped to lead the party in gaining two Republican congressional seats, while Democrats lost three seats. Republicans also maintained a majority in the State Senate, increased their majority in the State House, retained the Secretary of State’s office and preserved a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. For the first time in forty years Michigan voters also elected a Republican Attorney General.

Prior to his work at the Michigan Republican Party, Michael worked as the director of former Michigan Lieutenant Governor Dick Posthumus’s political action committee. He also served in the Michigan Legislature in a number of roles including chief of staff to the Chairman of Technology and Energy Committee and as finance director of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. Michael’s work on Presidential campaigns began in 1996 as a field representative for the Dole-Kemp campaign.
Michael graduated from James Madison College at Michigan State University with a Bachelors Degree in International Relations in 1995. In 2003, just after joining TargetPoint Consulting, he was named one of the Rising Stars in Politics by Campaigns and Elections magazine. He currently resides with his wife Angela in Alexandria, Virginia.

Brent Seaborn

Brent Seaborn is a Founding Partner of TargetPoint Consulting.  Most recently, he served as Giuliani’s Strategy Director on his 2008 presidential campaign.  In that role he designed and managed voter research projects, voter targeting, and direct contact programs.   Seaborn assembled the media team and oversaw radio and television advertising.  Brent was a key member of the senior staff and worked closely with Mayor Giuliani, Mike DuHaime and senior campaign advisors on message and strategy. 

Prior to joining TargetPoint Consulting, Seaborn worked for five years as a project manager with Market Strategies, Inc., one of the country’s premier market research firms.  In that role he managed quantitative and qualitative research projects and provided strategic analysis for political and public policy clients at the local, state, and national level.  Seaborn also worked to research and develop direct contact targeting models using statistical data mining techniques.  The result of this work is MicroTargeting. 

Seaborn worked in 2004 with the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign.  In that role he advised the campaign on its direct contact efforts and provided the campaign’s MicroTargeting.  He also worked on MicroTargeting and direct contact efforts for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator John Thune, and several key Texas congressional races.  These MicroTargeting projects provided the framework and targeting for mail, phone and volunteer contact programs in those campaigns.

In 2002, Seaborn worked in Texas as the 72 Hour Task Force Director and advised the effort’s statewide get-out-the-vote mail and phone campaigns.  His work helped lead to the victory of Senator John Cornyn and Governor Rick Perry, as well as Republican control of both state houses for the first time since Civil War Reconstruction.

Seaborn earned his Bachelors Degree in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.  He earned his Masters Degree in political management at The George Washington University with an emphasis in Political Research and completed his thesis on the measured impact of cognition and affect on the perception of campaign advertising.  He, his wife, Shahla, and their two children live in Moorpark, California.

Alex Lundry  

Currently Vice President and Director of Research at TargetPoint, Alex Lundry has done MicroTargeting projects across a variety of local, state and national candidates and campaigns.  His work at TPC has included innovations in public advocacy modeling, the development of an influential identification algorithm and the adaptation of retail customer service metrics to political campaigns. Alex is also an early-adopter of web-based survey research and has developed new benchmarks, survey instruments, and research designs that leverage the advantages of data collection over the Internet.  In 2009, Campaigns & Elections' Politics Magazine named him a Rising Star in Politics.

Prior to TargetPoint, Alex was a Senior Manager at the Luntz Research Companies.  At LRC he worked intimately with Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz, serving as the lead on several high-profile political messaging projects, including a one hundred plus page document outlining the language of the 2005 legislative agenda and communications briefings for various members of Congress.  His work there also extended into the corporate world, heading up market and messaging research projects for Newscorp , Anheuser-Busch and the SBC-AT&T merger. 

A New Jersey native, Alex earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Swarthmore College, and a Masters of Public Policy at Georgetown University.  Prior to his political life, he taught high school social studies in suburban Philadelphia.  He currently lives in Washington DC with his wife Julia, two children and their bearded collie, Danger! Dog.

Alicia W. Davis Downs  

Alicia Downs is a veteran political operative who has developed strategy, built and managed political operations and designed and implemented grassroots and direct voter contact programs on behalf of national legislative initiatives and for candidates at all levels, across the country.  Downs was recently named one of the top ten politicos to watch by Politico.

Downs most recently managed the $60 million 2008 national voter contact effort for the Republican Party including persuasion, absentee, early vote and get out the vote.

Earlier in the cycle, Downs served as a senior member of Governor Mitt Romney’s 2008 Presidential campaign strategic planning team, where she managed voter targeting, contact and outreach efforts.

Prior to joining TargetPoint Consulting in 2007, Downs served as a Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, where she designed and implemented the grassroots and voter contact programs across the Mid-Atlantic.

Downs returned to the Republican National Committee in 2005 from the United States Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, where she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for External Affairs and Communications.

Leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Downs served as the Republican National Committee’s Director for the Presidential Coordinated Fund, managing the presidential direct contact persuasion and GOTV efforts. 

Prior to her return to Washington for the 2004 fall campaign, Downs worked in Manhattan as the Republican National Convention’s Director for External Relations where she designed and managed more than 20 national programs for the delegate and caucus and political and public liaison divisions of the convention.

From 2001 to 2003, Downs served as Associate Political Director in the White House Office of Political Affairs under Ken Mehlman.  Before moving to Washington, Davis worked in multiple target states for the Bush/Cheney 2000 presidential campaign and in Massachusetts for Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci’s official offices and campaigns.

Downs is a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Hamilton College with a dual concentration in Spanish and Government.  She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, Jonathan, and their two golden retrievers, Harvey and Warren.

Trevor McGaughey  

Trevor McGaughey is a Project Manager at TargetPoint Consulting.  Most recently he worked as a Strategy Analyst at the Romney for President Campaign.  At the Romney Campaign, he worked with the campaign’s polling and message testing.  In Fall 2006, Trevor interned at the White House in the Office of Strategic Initiatives. 

Originally from Pennsylvania, Trevor graduated from Clarion University in 2007 with a dual major in History and Political Science.  He currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.