The once-obscure Detroit film production company that powered New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning election win in 2018 is preparing to play a similar role in a Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign.
As Sanders lays the groundwork for another run, Politico is reporting that Means of Production, a Detroit-based duo of filmmakers, may play a “major role” in the expected 2020 campaign of the Vermont senator.
An online ad produced for Ocasio-Cortez by the two filmmakers, Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes, went viral due to its documentary-style narrative and became one of the most popular videos of 2018 on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The 2-minute spot, which eventually attracted nearly 5 million views, was widely credited for the win by 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez, as the first-time candidate from Brooklyn scored the biggest upset of the year in the nation’s 2018 primary elections.
Burton and Hayes
After the New York primary in June, Burton and Hayes rocketed from obscurity to stardom in the political world along with the congresswoman, who has received by far the most media attention among the new class of freshmen members in Congress. Burton and Hayes quickly received numerous offers last summer from congressional and gubernatorial candidates to produce campaign commercials for the 2018 general election.
The duo was hired by Ocasio-Cortez during the infancy of Means of Production because they offered an ideological connection, a like-minded approach to politics that gave the left-wing candidate a production team who served as true believers in her cause.
Both are members of the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, devoted leftist activists who quit their PR/communications jobs in the corporate world to form their fledgling, two-person company. Ocasio-Cortez was a Bernie Sanders campaign activist in the senator’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats, the PAC that recruited Ocasio-Cortez, said of Burton and Hayes: “They’ve proven that they’re on the cutting-edge of popularizing progressive populist and democratic socialist politics in America.”
Burton told Politico that they would like to create “big, beautiful ads” and “drumbeat content” for Sanders in 2020.
“We have certainly been talking with his team,” she said. If Sanders runs, “He’s the only candidate we would work for.”
