New FM3 Partners: Rick Sklarz and Miranda Everitt!

Rick, who is based in our Los Angeles office, has helped to elect Democrats across the country. Most recently, he was a lead researcher for the Senate Majority PAC’s 2024 independent expenditure campaign on behalf of Tammy Baldwin, and was a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) National Battleground Polling team. He has also served as a pollster to the campaigns of U.S. Senator Patty Murray (WA), former U.S. Senator Doug Jones (AL) and worked with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), EMILY’s List, and other Democratic-party affiliated organizations. Rick’s has also worked with campaigns to help elect Governors, members of Congress, state legislators, mayors and other local officials.

Rick also provides research for state and local ballot campaigns across the country. This includes working organizations to protect voting rights, prevent gerrymandering, Indian gaming rights, legalize adult use cannabis, and to raise billions of dollars for school construction and to improve classroom education, transportation and infrastructure investments, public safety services, healthcare, and natural resource conservation. He also frequently works with private sector companies, nonprofits and trade associations in a variety of industries, including utilities, professional sports, film and entertainment, land-use/development firms, healthcare, logistics and transportation.

Rick holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Southern California and graduated from Colgate University. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, is always looking for a good tennis game, would one day like to complete a Saturday New York Times crossword, and having been born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut knows the best pizza in the world is on Wooster Street.

Miranda, based in Portland, frequently works on housing and homelessness policy, climate change, electoral and criminal legal system reform, and conservation at FM3. She has led scores of projects to better understand voter attitudes in a variety of communities across the country, with particular interest in the unique opportunities and challenges of life in small towns and rural areas from Alaska and Hawai`i to the Pacific Coast to the intermountain West. She believes that no town is too small to make good use of opinion research and strategy to support their basic services, libraries, recreation centers and schools.

Miranda has been part of the research team working on nearly a dozen Oregon statewide ballot measures since 2016. She also works frequently with Oregon Metro on climate, parks, housing, planning, and transportation issues and measures. Her research also contributed to the passage of historic electoral and government structure reforms in Portland like ranked choice voting and multimember, geographic council districts – as well as studying their implementation in 2024 and beyond.

She has also worked with campaigns to help elect Governors, members of Congress, state legislators, mayors and other local officials in states across the West. In 2024, this included work for Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, and Reps. Suzan DelBene (WA-1) and Rick Larsen (WA-2).

Before joining the team at FM3 in 2015, Miranda worked in policy research and communications – after stints as a copy editor, waitress, video store clerk, and at a motorcycle dealership. She grew up in northwest Ohio and proudly attended public schools from pre-K to the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Miranda is an avid backpacker, a Portland NET, a Movie Madness member, and volunteer with Trailkeepers of Oregon. She lives in Southeast Portland with her spouse and two cats, Neon and Snake.