Dan Schnur

Biography

Dan Schnur is a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications and the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies. He has been teaching courses in politics, communications, and leadership since 1996 and has also taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. He is the director for the "California Influencers" project, a statewide program in which 60 of the state's foremost experts in politics, policy and government discuss the 2018 campaign. He is the founder of the USC/LA Times statewide political poll. Previously, Schnur worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns as one of California's leading political strategists and served as the national director of communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of US Senator John McCain and was the chief media spokesman for California Governor Pete Wilson. In 2010, Schnur was appointed chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), where he implemented groundbreaking campaign finance disclosure requirements. He also was a founder and cochairman of the Voices of Reform project, the bi-partisan statewide effort whose work laid the foundation for California's landmark redistricting reform. After completing his FPPC term, Schnur registered as a No-Party Preference voter and launched Fixing California, an organization dedicated to campaign finance and political reform. In 2014, he ran for statewide office as a non-partisan candidate for California Secretary of State.

Schnur has been an advisor to multiple foundations, trusts, think tanks, and a variety of K-12 education and college and workforce preparedness efforts. His commentaries have appeared in several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. In addition, he has been an analyst and political commentator for CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and National Public Radio. He is a graduate of the American University in Washington, DC.