Background and career
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster. His work has included developing talking points and other messaging for Republican causes, assistance with messaging for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, and public relations support for The Israel Project. He is a former climate denier and has advocated use of vocabulary crafted to produce a desired effect, including use of the term death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming. Luntz has frequently contributed to Fox News and CBS News (and since 2021 on CNN) as a commentator and analyst, as well as running focus groups during and after presidential debates on Fox News and CBS News. Luntz describes his specialty as "testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate." He is also an author of business books dealing with communication strategies and public opinion.
Luntz was born and grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Phyllys (née Kelmenson) and Lester Luntz, who together wrote the first American forensic dentistry textbook. His family is Jewish. He graduated from Hall High School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science from the University of Pennsylvania. Funded by the Thouron Award, Luntz received a doctorate in politics from Trinity College, Oxford where he was a contemporary of future British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Luntz's doctoral thesis formed the basis for his first book, Candidates, Consultants, and Campaigns: The Style and Substance of American Electioneering. published in 1988.
Luntz has appeared as a consultant or panel member on a number of television news shows, including The Colbert Report, Capital Gang, Good Morning America, Hannity, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Meet the Press, PBS NewsHour, Nightline, The O'Reilly Factor, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Today Show. He has written op-eds for publications such as The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. In addition to his work in the United States, Luntz also provides analysis for British news programmes such as Newsnight. He was an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1989 until 1996 and also taught at George Washington University and Harvard University as well as New York University Abu Dhabi campus for January terms.
Luntz has experienced multiple strokes, which he has openly discussed in several interviews. The first occurred on January 10, 2020, followed by a second on April 17, 2023. He has stated that he believes that stress over not speaking out more forcefully against President Donald Trump played a role in the life-threatening health events he experienced.
Luntz frequently tests word and phrase choices using focus groups and interviews. His stated purpose in this is the goal of causing audiences to react based on emotion: "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. ... If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak." In an article in The New Yorker, Luntz said:The way my words are created is by taking the words of others.... I've moderated an average of a hundred plus focus groups a year over five years... I show them language that I've created. Then I leave a line for them to create language for me. In a 2007 interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Luntz argued that the term "Orwellian" could be considered in a positive sense, saying that if one reads George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language, "To be 'Orwellian' is to speak with absolute clarity, to be succinct, to explain what the event is, to talk about what triggers something happening… and to do so without any pejorative whatsoever." Luntz suggested that Orwell would not have approved of many of the uses of the term, given that his essay derides the use of cliché and dying metaphors. Luntz's description of his job revolves around exploiting the emotional content of language. "It's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. ... my job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. ... We know that words and emotion together are the most powerful force known to mankind." Additionally in his 2007 interview on Fresh Air, Luntz discussed his use of the term "energy exploration" to refer to oil drilling. His research on the matter involved showing people a picture of current oil drilling and asking if in the picture it "looks like exploration or drilling." He said that 90 percent of the people he spoke to said it looked like exploring. "Therefore I'd argue that it is a more appropriate way to communicate." He went on to say, "if the public says after looking at the pictures, that doesn't look like my definition of drilling—it looks like my definition of exploring—then don't you think we should be calling it what people see it to be, rather than adding a political aspect to it all?" Terry Gross responded, "Should we be calling it what it actually is, as opposed to what somebody thinks it might be? The difference between exploration and actually getting out the oil—they're two different things, aren't they?"
James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60 Plus Association, described Luntz's role as being that of pollster and popularizer of the phrase "death tax."Martin gained an important ally in GOP pollster Frank Luntz, whose polling revealed that 'death tax' sparked voter resentment in a way that 'inheritance tax' and 'estate tax' couldn't match. After all, who wouldn't be opposed to a 'tax on death'? Luntz shared his findings with Republicans and included the phrase in the GOP's Contract with America. Luntz went so far as to recommend in a memo to GOP lawmakers that they stage press conferences 'at your local mortuary' to dramatize the issue. 'I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents,' he wrote. 'Death is something the American people understand.' Apparently, he's right. Spurred by Luntz, Republicans have employed the term 'death tax' so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon. Nonpartisan venues like newspapers and magazines have begun to use it in a neutral context—a coup for abolitionists like Martin. In a confidential memo to the Republican party, Luntz is credited with advising the Bush administration that the phrase "global warming" should be abandoned in favour of "climate change", which he called a "less frightening" phrase than the former.
