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If Donald Trump hadn’t come along and completely up-ended politics, Mack Feldman’s career trajectory might be on a different arc. He was part of Jeb Bush’s policy team during the 2016 election cycle, which saw the former Florida governor’s campaign (and many others) get completely derailed by the Trump phenomenon.
Feldman, the son of Feldman Equities LLC chairman and CEO Larry Feldman, was willing to do whatever it took to help the Bush team win. He says he went from reading reports to the candidate himself to knocking on doors and making cold calls for a month in Iowa.
“I developed a voter persuasion guide for Iowa that was adopted statewide by the campaign —basically a cheat sheet that we passed out to all the phone bankers throughout the state. I like to think that it helped, but granted, we got only 2.8% of the vote, so not sure I’ll broadcast that,” he says with a laugh.
The political world’s loss is Tampa Bay’s gain: Feldman has become a key player in the development of Riverwalk Place, the $350 million Feldman Equities mixed-use condo tower project that will be the tallest building on the Gulf Coast. (In a bit of comeuppance, Riverwalk Place is slated to rise on the site of a failed Trump Tower project.)
Feldman says working for the family business was never part of his game plan. “I was a little skeptical when my dad and I first started talking about it,” he admits. “But I can’t say how happy I am that I took the job. I spend more time with my father now than I ever have before … I really didn’t know him until I had this chance to work with him on a day-to-day basis.”
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