Scott Jennings (born October 26, 1977) is an American writer and conservative commentator. He is an on-air contributor for CNN, and writes for CNN.com, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times.
Jennings is a native of Dawson Springs, Kentucky and graduated from high school there in 1996. He was a Coca-Cola National Scholar and featured in their Foundation's magazine in 2006. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville in 2000 where he was a McConnell Scholar. While a student at the University of Louisville, Jennings was a news anchor and reporter for WHAS Radio. While at WHAS, Jennings won an award from the Associated Press for a series on the plight of the homeless living in downtown Louisville.
President Bush appointed Jennings to the position of special assistant to the president and deputy director of political affairs in February 2006. Jennings had previously served as executive director of the Bush-Cheney campaign in New Mexico in 2004, and as a staff member of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Kentucky in 2000.
Jennings is a founding partner of RunSwitch Public Relations, Kentucky's largest public relations and public affairs firm since 2013. He has been writing a regular column for the Louisville Courier-Journal since 2013, and was signed as an on-air contributor by CNN in 2017. He is routinely cited as an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in news publications, and was part of McConnell's campaigns for the U.S. Senate in 2002, 2008, and 2014. He joined the Los Angeles Times as a columnist in 2019.
Jennings is on the speaking circuit, briefing groups on the political landscape and taking part in panel discussions. He was a Resident Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics in 2018, and became an Adjunct Lecturer in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2019. He is also heard frequently on NPR's Morning Edition as a conservative political analyst.
Personal
Jennings is married to Autumn Stiff Jennings, of Whitesville, Kentucky. They have four children and live in Prospect, Kentucky.
Career
Jennings served as political director for President Bush's 2000 Kentucky campaign, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in his 2002 re-election campaign, Gov. Ernie Fletcher in his 2003 campaign, and managed President Bush's campaign in New Mexico in 2004, before joining the White House. New Mexico was one of only two states to flip from blue to red in between 2000 and 2004; the other was Iowa. He served as associate director in the Office of Political Affairs at the White House before being named special assistant to the president in October 2005.
After leaving the White House, Scott Jennings became Director of Strategic Development and Senior Strategist for Peritus Public Relations in Louisville, KY, before co-founding RunSwitch PR in Louisville in 2012. Jennings is frequently quoted by media outlets as a political analyst. During the 2016 presidential election, he appeared frequently on the Fox News Channel and other outlets as a commentator discussing polling and the political news of the day.
In 2017, Jennings joined CNN as an on-air contributor. He has made hundreds of appearances on the network on AC360 with Anderson Cooper, The Lead with Jake Tapper, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon and other programs.
In 2022, Jennings launched the podcast "Flyover Country with Scott Jennings," which features commentary on local, state, and national political issues as well as interviews with Sen. Mitch McConnell, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, commentator Erick Erickson and others.
Bush 2004 Campaign in New Mexico
After losing New Mexico to Al Gore in 2000 by just 366 votes, President Bush's reelection campaign dispatched Jennings to manage its operations there. Jennings arrived in early 2004 to find a divided state Republican Party. Shortly after his arrival, the state party chairman, State Senator Ramsay Gorham, resigned both her chairmanship and legislative seat and moved out of the state. Jennings and Republican Party counterpart Jay McCleskey set about repairing the damaged party, recruiting 15,000 volunteers to execute a grassroots strategy that relied heavily on peer-to-peer, coalition-based activity. The Democratic establishment spent millions of dollars in the state through the Kerry for President Campaign, the state Democratic Party, and through a host of third-party organizations such as American Coming Together and Moveon.org. Bush won the New Mexico election by 5,988 votes, making it one of the closest states in the nation. Along with only Iowa, New Mexico flipped from Democrat to Republican between 2000 and 2004.