Messina, Zeleny to analyze 2012 campaign at April 5 Hoagland Lecture

            The main architect of the president's re-election and a political heavyweight reporter will team to deliver a free lecture April 5 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

            Jim Messina, the mastermind behind President Obama's historic re-election, and Jeff Zeleny, a UNL alumnus and senior political correspondent for ABC News, will provide a retrospective on the 2012 presidential election and participate in a question-and-answer session to be moderated by former UNL political science professor Carroll McKibben. The lecture is part of the Peter J. Hoagland Integrity in Public Service Lecture Series.

            The 4:30 p.m. lecture will be in the Nebraska Union Auditorium, 14th and R streets. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public, but seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

            Prior to serving as Obama's re-election campaign manager, Messina was deputy chief of staff to the president from 2009 to 2011, where he was integral to the passage of the landmark health care and economic stimulus bills. He previously was director of personnel for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition and national chief of staff for Obama for America.

            Messina has also has been chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). He has overseen and consulted on political campaigns across the country, from Alaska to New York. He is a graduate of the University of Montana and attended high school in Boise, Idaho.

            Zeleny covers Congress and national politics for ABC News, which he joined earlier this month after working as the national political correspondent for the New York Times. He was the newspaper's lead writer for the 2012 campaign, his fourth presidential race. He also covered Congress and the White House for the newspaper.

            He came to the Times from the Chicago Tribune, where he covered national politics and chronicled Obama's rise to national prominence. He began his career covering politics for the Des Moines Register.

            Zeleny graduated in 1996 from UNL, where he studied journalism and political science. A native of Exeter, he has lived in Washington for 12 years. 

            The Hoagland lecture series honors former Nebraska state senator and three-term Congressman Peter Hoagland, who died in 2007 at 65.

            While in the state legislature, Hoagland was known for his work on legislation supporting environmental causes and was a champion of education and preserving the quality of Nebraska's groundwater supply. Hoagland also served as chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, working to toughen drunken driving laws.

            During his time in Congress, Hoagland was appointed to the Ways and Means Committee, working on tax reform and health care reform, and he lent his support to the assault weapon ban and the Brady Law.

Throughout his political career, he was known for his bipartisan approach and established a distinguished record on environmental issues.

            Hoagland's friend and former chief of staff, Jim Crounse, also a UNL alumnus, created the lecture series in 2008 with a gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation. The goal of the series is to inspire young people to dedicate themselves to public service. Hoagland cared deeply about public service and giving the next generation opportunities to participate in public service and to see the good that can come of it.

            This is the fifth presentation in the series. Past speakers at UNL have included David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama; and NASA Astronaut Mark Kelly, who is the husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Writer: Deann Gayman, University Communications, 402-472-8320