Drake Burke

Hi, I'm Drake Burke (they/them/theirs).

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I'm a campaign strategist and educator based in Minnesota. I design what a campaign runs on — its message, its strategy, and the weekly rhythm that turns both into work real people can actually do. And I build it the way I learned to build classrooms: with access, dignity, and honesty as operating rules, not decoration.

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The work

Right now I'm the lead strategist for an underdog campaign in the 2026 Minnesota DFL gubernatorial primary. She is a first-time candidate challenging a sitting U.S. senator, on the ballot this August.

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Where my approach comes from

I came to campaign work from classrooms . I have been teaching across multiple Minnesota districts and internationally in China . My work also is informed by years of navigating the systems that are supposed to support poor, disabled, neurodivergent, and queer people, and that too often hand them the coordinating work instead. Many people are forced to become their own case managers, advocates, translators, and safety planners just to access basic support.

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What looks like individual struggle is often a design problem. A student "falling behind" amid housing instability, healthcare delays, and family stress. A family running coordination between agencies that don't share language, timelines, or responsibility. A voter who can't tell what a public servant actually controls — because nobody ever taught them, and plenty of politicians prefer it that way.

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Politics either repeats that design failure or repairs it. I work on campaigns that repair it: plain language instead of jargon, anger aimed up at concentrated power instead of sideways at neighbors, promises priced honestly, and operations that treat the people doing the work ( staff, volunteers, voters ) as whole human beings with real capacity limits.

 

What I do

• Message. One campaign, said clearly, everywhere — plain language that respects voters, adapted for every audience without ever becoming a different campaign in a different room.

• Strategy. Plans grounded in real election data and honest assumptions — strategy that tells the campaign the truth and holds up under pressure.

• Operations. Weekly rhythms, clear ownership, and short human check-ins, so a small team stays coordinated without living in meetings — with consent and access built into the workflow, not the values statement.

• Education and training. Education policy analysis — including public scholarship on Minnesota's READ Act and how reforms collide with actual classroom conditions — plus accessible curriculum design and community education, including collaborative writing programs with disabled writers through work connected to Cow Tipping Press.

 

How I work

Translation is the core skill: between policy and lived experience, institutions and communities, research and practice — and between conviction and plain language a skeptical voter can actually hear. Same campaign, every room.

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Access is operations, not an afterthought. Materials in plain language. Consent before anyone's story is used. Events, forms, and workflows designed for actual bodies, minds, and schedules. A team rhythm that invites "this week is too full" — because movements lose more to silent burnout than to rebalanced plans.

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Work with me

Campaigns, advocacy organizations, unions, schools, and civic groups: I'm available for strategy, message, training, curriculum design, policy analysis, and writing. Selected work samples are available on request — some campaign materials stay internal until after the primary.

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Access note: anything on this site is available in plain language, large print, or another format — just ask.

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