He was a senior in Georgetown when he volunteered to work for McGovern. He traveled with the press corps, which included Hunter S. Thompson.

After the election, Mr. White continued with McGovern on Capitol Hill, where he was the youngest Senate press secretary. However, it was not long before he opened his own office, Joe Slade White Communications, at the age of 23.

“No one has told me how crazy it really is to leave a secure job in the US Senate,” he wrote in a biographical note. “I was too young to know it. I just went out and did it. Starved for a few years. “

Mr White said his inspiration was the legendary political consultant Tony Schwartz, who created the famous Daisy TV commercial for President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Paying homage to Schwartz in 2000 when Schwartz was inducted into the Political Consultants Hall of Fame, Mr. White said:

“I will never forget the words he said to me when I was a young man that opened up my future: ‘Now Joe, I’m going to teach you a whole new way of thinking.’ This new way of thinking, of course, was the Responsive Chord – the communications theory that I still use today. “

Working first from Washington, DC and then New York, Mr. White helped elect Michigan’s first female governor and the first women to win offices throughout the state of Massachusetts, Missouri and Pennsylvania. Her work for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was cited as one of the nation’s best campaigns by the Washington Post.