A look back: 25 years of Campaigns & Elections.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- When Stanley Foster Reed launched Campaigns & Elections in 1980, he wanted his new magazine to accomplish several things: to document trends in the political business; to inspire civic mindedness in candidates; and to cover the campaign industry as it evolved into a profession.

Twenty-five years and thousands of articles later, it's safe to say he accomplished those goals. Many strategies employed by political consultants now are actually updates and amplifications on tactics that C & E has documented over the years.

Reed, now 88, was an entrepreneur who ventured into publishing, military research and financial consulting. Born in New Jersey and raised in Hartsdale, N.Y., he came to Washington in the early 1940s and started a research company that worked with the Navy. He and some of the scientists at his firm got several patents for their work on language labs.

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In 1964, Reed launched his first magazine, Mergers & Acquisitions; in 1976, he began a second one, Directors & Boards, to cover the emerging trends in the business world. The two were profitable enough to help him pay for a third magazine, Campaigns & Elections. Four years later, he began Export Today. All are still around, owned by different companies.

C & E layout initially resembled an academic journal as much as a popular publication. Topics on the pages of the nonpartisan quarterly ran the gamut, from the growing use of new, portable computers (now called laptops) in campaigns to the dangers of assuming that voters belonged to particular blocs.

Brad Bannon, founder of the Democratic consulting firm Bannon Communications Research in Washington, D.C., wrote "The Decline of Bloc Voting in American Politics" in the Fall 1981 issue of C & E. The author expolored whether candidates should rely on party affiliation to attract votes of traditionally defined interest groups. (It was his first story, based on an idea given to him by his boss Michael Barone.)

Before the 1980 election cycle, political voting blocs had been fairly predictable. Democrats planning for Election Day turnout, for instance, could turn to union members and white Protestants in the South. Republicans would rely upon white Protestants in the North, a traditional anchor of the GOP coalition.

That predictability had broken down by the early 1980s, making campaign strategy far more complicated. Due to shifting coalitions, particularly those of blue collar workers and union members who backed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980, political professionals had to be much more calculating in their planning.

And they still do. Many voting blocs are now up for grabs from both parties, be it Catholics, once a generally Democratic voting stronghold, or the increasingly influential Hispanic community.

Another article by Bannon, in 1983, looked at the influence of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. During the 1980 election cycle, NCPAC used a coordinated, hard-hitting direct mail program to help defeat four Democratic senators it targeted: George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, Birch Bayh of Indiana and John Culver of Iowa. These were independent expenditure campaigns, aimed to circumvent the new contribution limits established by the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act.

The PAC's tactics greatly assisted the Republicans win control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years. However, they didn't work two years later; NCPAC targeted six prominent liberal senators and lost each race.

Though NCPAC's electoral success was fleeting, its legacy was not. Independent groups would gain clout in the following years, culminating in 2004 with the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, the high-profile group that questioned U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry's military heroics in Vietnam.

"NCPAC was the father and grandfather of all these 527 groups," Bannon said. "It really was an indication of things to come."

Declining voter turnout was a trend Reed personally wanted to cover in C & E. That had become a major concern for him, along with political scientists, he recalled in an interview this fall at his home in Annapolis, Md.

"Those numbers were discouraging. Fewer and fewer voters were turning out each year," he said. "I thought this was very bad for our country."

In addition, political machines were still dominant in many big cities, meaning public policy decisions were being made on the basis of gratuities, handshakes under the table, and a system generally lacking in merit and competency.

"The civil service was being prostituted," he said. "I thought we could get better people involved if they knew how to enter politics."

To further that end, Reed started C & E's seminars, which brought in top political consultants to talk about their areas of expertise. The seminars continue to this today. Reed sold C & E in 1985. He kept a hand in the business, however, by writing books on the things his publications had covered, such as "The Toxic Executive: A Step-by-Step Guide for Turning Your Boss (or Yourself) from Noxious to Nurturing" and "The M & A Deskbook." On the magazine's 25th anniversary, his contributions to providing non-partisan, balanced and useful information about the political industry is worth celebrating.