Novelist and former White House staffer Jay Beck stopped by the Rome Noon Optimist Club on Monday to talk about his latest book, “Third Party,” which is partially based on his own experiences as a political consultant.
Originally from Albany, Beck was childhood friends with former President Jimmy Carter’s White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan. Although he worked in advertising in Albany for a while, he eventually left Georgia for Washington D.C. to work under Carter as a White House staffer.
While working in the White House, he mainly focused on deregulating businesses.
“Back then, business lobbyists would build in rules and regulations into the system to protect their business at the expense of others. So you really didn’t have a lot of business going on in some areas,” Beck said.
Some of those business areas that Beck targeted included telecommunications, energy (such as oil and gas) and transportation.
Eventually, Beck became a political consultant for a media firm in New York City.
“We made campaign ads and helped managed campaigns,” he said. “I worked both domestically in the Southeast and internationally.”
Beck would later take these experiences and write historical and political fiction. However, instead of making them autobiographical, he put a fictional character in his place.
“With my novels, I like to challenge the assumptions of the reader instead of confirming their beliefs,” he said.
His novels “Panama’s Rust Lock” and “Casting Stones” are based on his experience as a consultant during Panama’s 1984 presidential election and Greece’s 1985 election. The latter ended up winning the Georgia Independent Author of the Year award for best historical novel in 2019.
His latest book is based on his role as a political consultant for the 1992 Ross Perot presidential campaign, which Beck described as “the most successful third party presidential campaign.”
Perot was a billionaire with very little political experience who announced he was running during an interview with television talk show host Larry King.
“At that time, you had millions of people who were tired of government and wanted a change. And you can still see that today,” Beck said. “It really showed the potential for a third political party.”
You can read more about Beck and his political thriller novels by visiting Jay-Beck.net.
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