Sarah Flowers is a campaign winning Democratic media and general consultant known for her ability to craft messages and strategies that reach and persuade conflicted and difficult-to-motivate voters. The power of her narrative approach is evident in wins on marriage equality, abortion ballot measures, and dozens of candidate races.
Sarah wrote and produced one of the best-testing Presidential independent expenditure ads of the 2024 election cycle. The ad, “Who Do You Trust,” brought together years of research by the Winning Jobs Narrative Project and reproductive freedom groups to out-perform hundreds of other tested ads.
Since founding 76 Words in 2011, and for a decade prior to that, Sarah’s top passion has been electing women to public office. Among dozens of candidate wins are the red-to-blue Congressional win of Florida’s first Latina Democrat, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in South Florida; electing Texas’ first two Latina Congresswomen, Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia; electing Georgia Congresswoman Nikema Williams; helping make Tishaura Jones St. Louis’ first Black woman Mayor; and Vi Lyles Charlotte’s first Black woman mayor.
Her hard-won red state experience shows in 76 Words’ ballot initiative wins including – winning the freedom to marry for all, raising the minimum wage, allowing death with dignity, criminal justice reform and expanding voting rights. Sarah is also an expert at protecting and expanding abortion access via the ballot. For her work as the general and media consultant to the campaign that defeated an anti-abortion measure in Mississippi, the American Association of Political Consultants named her the year’s Most Valuable Player.
She has co-led Planned Parenthood national Presidential independent expenditures and led major campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All (the former NARAL) and reproductive justice groups. Helping people tell their personal stories for social good is Sarah’s passion.
An accomplished director, her television and digital ads, as well as two documentaries have earned a long list of awards and showings.
A native of Oklahoma Sarah got her start helping elect Brad Carson in 2000’s only red-to-blue flip, which made Congressman Carson the first Cherokee elected to Congress.
A second-generation Mexican-American Sarah resides in Washington DC with her internet-popular dog, Maybe. She is a member of the LGBT community.
Matt Erickson is one of 76 Words’ founding partners, and has served as the firm’s strategic and creative director on some of its biggest campaigns.
He was one of the key strategists on the firm’s dual victories on marriage equality and voter ID in Minnesota in 2012, and was the paid media lead on the successful campaign to restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in Florida in 2018. He’s helped win ballot measures on issues from payday lending in Colorado to expanding voting rights in Michigan.
He has been integrally involved in Planned Parenthood’s political work for more than twenty years, helping direct their Presidential independent expenditures from 2000 (which was the year’s largest) to 2012 (which was the year’s most successful). He also helped direct NARAL Pro-Choice America’s 2020 independent expenditure campaign that went undefeated and was integral to Democrats taking the U.S. Senate that year. He helped design and run The Nature Conservancy’s ballot initiative training that has empowered more than a hundred land conservation activists to go win ballot campaigns in their local communities.
He has additionally won candidate and independent expenditure campaigns across the country, including flipping the Minnesota House twice to a DFL majority and retaining that DFL majority four times. For that most recent majority hold, 2022, he produced more than three dozen ads outlining the threat Republican candidates posed to reproductive freedom in Minnesota.
His ads for groups from the League of Conservation Voters, to United States Senate Jon Tester, to Minnesota’s marriage equality ballot initiative, have earned “Pollie” awards from the Association of Political Consultants.