Mandy Grunwald (born c. 1958)[1] is an American professional political consultant and media advisor for the Democratic Party.
She is the daughter of the late Henry Grunwald, former editor-in-chief of Time magazine and the sister of the author Lisa Grunwald. She grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard.[1] She attended the Nightingale-Bamford School in New York,[1] and then graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University.[2]
Upon graduation she worked at the Sawyer-Miller Group in New York.[1] Gaining prominence through her work on the successful 1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaign, in which she was director of advertising,[2] made television appearances defending Bill Clinton,[1] and helped produce The Man From Hope, the biographical film that was the centerpiece of the 1992 Democratic National Convention.[3] The Washington Post subsequently identified her as one of the key members of "Hillaryland", Hillary Rodham Clinton's closest advisors beginning with her First Lady days.[4] Grunwald's position as a White House advisor faded after 1995, when she and others were supplanted by Dick Morris.[1]
Mandy Grunwald subsequently became president of Grunwald Communications in Washington, D.C.[2] She served as media consultant for three successful Senate campaigns for Daniel Patrick Moynihan[2] (presumably 1982, 1988, and 1994) as well as for the Ruth Messinger's losing effort in the 1997 New York City mayoral election.[2] In 1999 she served as a broker across the frosty relations between the retiring Moynihan and Hillary Clinton, who would successfully gain his seat in the 2000 New York senatorial election.[1][5] In 2004 she worked for the senatorial campaign of Ken Salazar in Colorado and gubernatorial effort of John Lynch in New Hampshire, both of whom won.[6] She then worked for Gifford Miller's poorly-finishing Democratic primary campaign in New York City's 2005 mayoral race.[6]
She was the head of campaign media relations for the 2008 Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign.[3]
In 1997 Grunwald married journalist and future Plame affair figure Matthew Cooper.[2] They separated in late 2007.[7] They have a son, born in 1999.[1]
She is believed to have been the inspiration for the character "Daisy Green" in the roman à clef of the 1992 presidential campaign, Primary Colors, published by "Anonymous" in 1996.[8] Moreover, before Joe Klein was revealed to be the creator, Mandy Grunwald and her novelist sister Lisa Grunwald were among the authorial suspects.[8] In the 1998 film Primary Colors, the character based on her was portrayed by Maura Tierney.