Lake Travis Republican Club March 2024 Meeting

March’s speaker is Matt Mackowiak an Austin and Washington, DC-based political and communications consultant and President of Potomac Strategy Group (PSG), LLC, which provides political consulting to conservative campaigns and media relations and crisis communications assistance to companies, groups and individuals. He has served in senior roles for two U.S. Senators and a Governor, in the Bush administration, and in winning campaigns, and has developed a deep network of media and political relationships nationwide.

Matt’s consultancy, PSG, which he founded in 2009, provides corporate communications services, including public affairs, media relations, writing, opposition research, digital strategy and other services and has been actively working in the energy, health care, transportation, and tech sectors, among others.

In 2020, Matt and a local Democrat named Cleo Petricek launched Save Austin Now, a nonpartisan organization with a mission of improving standard of living for all residents. In May 2021, Save Austin Now passed reinstatement of the homeless camping ban 58%-42%, over the objection of nine of ten Austin Council Members and the Mayor. Additionally, they successfully passed bipartisan legislation to ban unregulated camping statewide and punish cities that defund their police. Save Austin Now is the largest grassroots organization in the city, with more 63,000 email address, more than 7,000 donors, and more than 1,000 volunteers.

In addition to offering counsel to individuals and corporations, Matt appears regularly on MSNBC, Fox News, Sky News, BBC News and CBC-TV, and provides political analysis three times a week for KTBC Fox 7 in Austin. He is a regular columnist for The Washington Times, Townhall and The Washington Examiner, and his columns are nationally syndicated. He is a judge for professional awards through the AAPC Pollies and the Goldies, given to top performing campaign operatives and vendors annually.

Matt is currently serving as Chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, where he manages three staff and an annual budget of over $350,000. He is a Director of the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies at Austin Community College.

A native of Austin, Matt graduated with a B.S. in Political Communications from the University of Texas in 2003. In 2012, Matt started a bipartisan political blog for Texas politics, MustReadTexas.com, which aggregates the top news and opinion from across the state and delivers a daily email newsletter to more than 18,000 subscribers.