Silicon Valley CEO Donnie Fowler. | AP Photo/Eric Risberg DNC taps Silicon Valley CEO to head Clinton 'Get Out the Vote' operation

PALO ALTO — The man charged with delivering voters to the polls for Hillary Clinton on November 8 says that Republican candidate Donald Trump, while brandishing his business acumen on the campaign trail, has a critical disadvantage in the race to the White House: his utter lack of a sales team.

"Donald Trump has a superb marketing department," says Donnie Fowler, the Silicon Valley CEO and seasoned Democratic political operative tapped by the Democratic National Committee this week to a linchpin post directing Clinton's "Get Out the Vote" Team. "But Donald Trump has no sales team, nobody to go to the voter and make the sale. And Hillary has a very deep and sophisticated sales team."


"Without the sales team, you can't bring home the voters," says Fowler, who has worked in 17 different states for nine different Democratic presidential candidates over two decades. "All things being equal, Donald Trump's lack of infrastructure, lack of field staff, lack of offices and and lack of sophisticated data analytics will cost him the election."

Fowler allows that this week's first televised debate, widely viewed as a win for Clinton, served as "a sigh of relief and a newfound sense of hope" for many Democrats deeply concerned about national polls showing a tightening race.

That said, “One never feels confident, nor should one ever feel confident in a presidential election,’’ he said. “Ask John Kerry in 2004. Ask Mitt Romney in 2012.”

Fowler's appointment could also help bolster Democratic confidence. The founder and CEO of Dogpatch Strategies, a tech-focused Silicon Valley venture, and an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, he has a long resume in the Democratic trenches. Fowler has worked presidential campaigns for Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Wes Clark, Dick Gephardt and Jesse Jackson. On the tech side, as a presidential appointee at the Federal Communications Commission, he handled a range of cable television, broadband Internet and satellite issues.

But he's especially seasoned in the mechanics of getting voters to the polls, particularly in battleground states. The DNC, in announcing his appointment, noted that in 2000, Fowler was national field and delegates director for Gore, and "has a perfect 3-0 record leading battleground states, including as 2004 Michigan state director for John Kerry and as 2008 Indiana senior adviser for Barack Obama."

Fowler acknowledges he did not originally intend to jump back into politics this year, but his longtime friend Donna Brazile, now serving as the interim DNC director, convinced him that "this election is different."

The mission for Clinton's campaign now, he said, is "about energizing your core voters to go out and vote. There are fewer and fewer who are truly undecided."

And he's feeling optimistic now about Clinton's chances. "Today, I would rather be Hillary, the bleeding has stopped, and in a base election, that helps her. In the battleground states that are truly tied, she still has an advantage today... So if you're doing a 100-dash to the election, she's 10 yards ahead."