FM3 Research Partner and President Dave Metz has provided opinion research and strategic guidance to hundreds of non-profit organizations, government agencies, businesses, and political campaigns in all 50 states since joining the firm in 1998. In the 2022 election cycle, Dave’s research helped elect four Democratic members of Congress, a dozen state legislators, and the Mayor of San Jose, and pass statewide ballot measures to promote gun responsibility in Oregon, ban flavored tobacco sales in California, secure billions in land and water conservation funding in New York and Rhode Island, and legalize the therapeutic use of psychedelics in Colorado.
Dave has specialized in providing research to win some of the nation’s most expensive and contentious ballot measure campaigns. His research has guided the passage of most state and local ballot measures reforming drug policy over the past decade, including ten state marijuana legalization measures, as well as measures to decriminalize drug possession and authorize therapeutic use of psilocybin in Oregon. Dave’s research has supported the largest land and water conservation measures in national history, including six statewide bond measures providing nearly $20 billion to protect land and water in California, as well as major statewide measures in Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Alabama, Rhode Island, and Oregon. Dave worked with public health coalitions to establish precedent-setting soda taxes in Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco – overcoming tens of millions in industry opposition spending in the process.
Dave’s other successful work on ballot measure campaigns has included tobacco prevention (California, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona), health care funding (California and Arizona), reproductive rights (Oregon and Colorado), clean energy (California and Washington), early childhood education (California, Texas and Arizona), arts funding (Oregon and Minnesota), stem cell research (California and Missouri), transportation funding (California, Arizona and Washington), and political reform (California, Alaska, Nevada and Illinois).
With a focus on conservation, clean energy, and climate change, Dave has provided research on key message and policy issues to numerous environmental organizations, among them The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the National Audubon Society. He has conducted research and developed messaging recommendations to guide the environmental community in addressing challenging issues like wildfire, natural climate solutions, and “regulatory takings.”
Dave received his Bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University and his Master’s in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley. His writing on politics has appeared in Campaigns & Elections magazine, and in Classifying by Race, an edited volume on the role of race in American politics. He lives in Berkeley with his wife and two children, and as a Wisconsin native spends much of his free time cheering on the NFL franchise that he co-owns with 537,000 close friends.