Name Eric Sapp | Role Political Consultant | |
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The State of Progressive Faith Outreach
Eric Sapp is an American political consultant based in Washington, D.C., who also serves as executive director of the non-profit, American Values Network. Much of his career and adult life have been spent focused on the area of faith and politics.
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Early life
Eric Sapp was born in Durham, North Carolina and grew up in south Florida. A three-sport athlete in high school, he was named Dade County Scholar-Athlete of the year.
Education
He attended Davidson College where he made football most valuable player (MVP) his senior year, served as President of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and was a Resident Advisor.
He received a Master of Divinity and a Master of Public Policy from Duke University. While at Duke he was an area coordinator, overseeing a staff of Residential Advisors in Duke’s freshmen dorms. Sapp served as a youth pastor and spent several summers in graduate school working for the Under Secretary of Special Ops and Low Intensity Conflict (SOLIC) at The Pentagon.
Professional life
After graduate school, he worked for the late Senator Edward Kennedy as a legislative aid on the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He served as floor staffer during the 2003 Medicare prescription drug debate. Sapp then spent several years working for Representative David Price on homeland security appropriations, budget, tax, and faith and politics.
Sapp was a senior partner at Common Good Strategies (CGS), a firm that managed the faith outreach and messaging for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, US Senators Bob Casey, Jr., Sherrod Brown, Governors Ted Strickland, Jennifer Granholm, and Kathleen Sebelius, Representative Heath Shuler, and the Michigan, Kansas, and Oregon state Democratic Parties. He was named one of the top 30 American Mavericks for change by Details Magazine in 2007. The book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap describes Sapp as an evangelical Democrat.
Sapp is a founding partner of the Eleison Group, a political consulting firm that works with Democrats and the progressive faith community on outreach and communication to faith, veteran, and values voters. His firm played a key role in the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2008 as a lead strategic consultant on the House “Red to Blue” program. Sapp is a regular speaker on faith and politics on television and radio shows, providing the Democratic perspective on Pat Robertson’s election night coverage. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post.
He is also the executive director of the American Values Network, a faith and values based non-profit that has won numerous accolades for its work with faith, veteran, and independent voters on climate, national security, and economic justice issues.
Along with his partner at Eleison, Burns Strider, Eric founded the mobile gaming app company, Christian Family Games with their first app quickly rising to become the top downloaded Christian game on the Apple iTunes Store in early 2013.
Personal life
Sapp is married to Julie Sapp who live with their son, Beckett in northern Virginia.
He has over five years of parish experience as a youth pastor and director of Christian education. He serves on the Board of a ministry on the Texas/Mexican border where he has been leading mission trips since 2001. Sapp is an award-winning woodworker, having won “Best in Show” at the Carolina Carving Competition with work featured in Woodcarving Illustrated.