Photograph by Andrew Doench
David Pepper is a civics junkie who grew up believing Cincinnati was the greatest place on Earth. His father was a top Procter & Gamble executive, his mother a philanthropist and advocate for women’s rights whose family in this region goes back multiple generations. He served on Cincinnati City Council and the Hamilton County Commission, almost became Cincinnati mayor, ran for statewide office, and led the Ohio Democratic Party for six years.
He then dropped out of the world of elections and political campaigns to become a novelist … who sets his fictional characters in dramatic stories about elections and political campaigns.
At age 54, Pepper has a bigger megaphone than ever to share his passions, which range from the corrosive effects of gerrymandering and the importance of focusing on elections at the state level to his love of Cincinnati’s long-suffering sports teams. His Substack, Pepperspectives, draws robust traffic, and he’s now a frequent guest on MSNBC, CNN, and various podcasts and YouTube channels to discuss the rising tide of anti-democracy fever in the U.S.
Much of the credit for his career pivot derives from his first novel, The People’s House, a political thriller published in 2016 that seemed to predict Russia’s interference in that year’s actual U.S. presidential election. Lively and illuminating about the weaknesses of our political system, the story centers on a veteran Ohio newspaper reporter who uncovers a scandal involving voting machines with ties not only to the highest levels of U.S. politics but also to a Russian oligarch who uses nefarious tactics to ensure his energy company gains a lucrative foothold in this country.
The novel’s deft political insights—not to mention prescient elements concerning the state of journalism, the #MeToo movement, and the impact of dark money—came as no surprise to those who knew Pepper as a professional politician. His keen insights into human behavior and the ways in which power and money can sway people in the wrong direction, however, have opened him to a much wider audience over the past decade.
Pepper’s other novels include The Wingman (2018), The Voter File (2020), A Simple Choice (2022), The Fifth Vote (2023), and 2025 (2024). Former President Bill Clinton is a fan of what he calls Pepper’s “clever” fictional forays, and The Wall Street Journal describes him as “one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene.”
He’s also published two nonfiction books: Laboratories of Autocracy (2021), a sobering look at how the U.S. is sliding toward autocracy based on recent political trends in Ohio, and Saving Democracy (2023), a user manual to inform everyday Americans about what they can do to fight back against those attacking democratic ideals.
That’s eight books in less than 10 years, all but two published through Pepper’s own St. Helena Press imprint and distributed through Gatekeeper Press, which specializes in print-on-demand books. The output doesn’t include the daily Pepperspectives entries, which feature his thoughts on the news of the day, personal tidbits and remembrances, embedded clips of his various interview appearances across the media landscape, and even his modest but expressive efforts as a painter.
Through it all, Pepper has continued to live in the Cincinnati area and raise his family here. “I commuted to Columbus every day during my time leading the state party, while also driving to every corner of the state,” he says. “And I think not being up in Columbus was healthy because it helped me stay separate from the terrible statehouse culture and kept me grounded in my hometown.”
Photograph courtesy David Pepper
David Pepper is the second of the four children of John Pepper, former Procter & Gamble CEO, and the late Francie Pepper. He graduated from Cincinnati Country Day School before earning a B.A. in history and international relations from Yale University, where he was also a writer and managing editor on the school newspaper.
Pepper’s transition from official party politics to influential author and go-to commentator makes sense given his on-the-ground insights into recent erosions in U.S. democracy, as well as his embrace of “good government” ideals. His speaking voice is even-tempered, only occasionally rising to make a point but rarely betraying his simmering anger at a political and social situation he believes is growing more toxic by the day. His conversational style is succinct, yet he’s passionate about unleashing an obvious command of facts and history.
“Writing The People’s House was literally just this frustrated effort to think, Hey, if I wrote a novel dramatizing how much gerrymandering creates a problem for our country, maybe that will get the word out,” says Pepper. “That was literally why I did it. I’d never written fiction before. In hindsight, that’s the worst idea for a novel of all time. Who’s going to read a novel about gerrymandering?”
As it turns out, more people than he imagined. But first came the rejections. “I got tons of rejection letters from agents,” he says. “One agent told me, ‘You’re just not good at this, so you should basically stop.’ That was a college classmate of mine who I thought maybe would give me an extra look.”
Pepper had a bit of journalism experience but no training in how to create fully realized characters for an effective piece of fiction writing. It took him a few years of working on The People’s House off and on between day jobs and family commitments—he has two sons, 11-year-old Jack and 8-year-old Charlie, with his wife of 12 years, Alana—before settling on the final results.
“I was trying to capture what I like to read, which is quick,” he says. “Don’t waste the reader’s time. Details are great, but don’t lard it up with so many that you slow down the story. My biggest weakness early on was I’d put in too much detail about politics because I knew that world.”
Early critiques focused on Pepper’s lack of character development for the protagonist, reporter Jack Sharpe, as well as the supporting cast. “Someone told me, ‘David, people will read through any plot if they are compelled by a character. If they don’t like the character, the plot isn’t going to keep them in the book,’ ” he says. “I just hadn’t done that part well and hadn’t really mastered dialogue. The irony is the same lesson applies in politics as in writing—if the candidate is compelling, people get excited.”
Pepper was a compelling candidate himself for a while in this area, until he wasn’t. He was elected to Cincinnati City Council from 2001 to 2005, then served a term as Hamilton County Commissioner from 2007 to 2010. He lost to Mark Mallory in the 2005 race for Cincinnati mayor and had failed statewide runs for auditor in 2010 and attorney general in 2014. He served as chair of the Ohio Democratic Party from 2015 to 2021.
Photograph by Andrew Doench
Before those public-facing years, Pepper spent three years in the mid-1990s traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia. He was working at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., before he decided to go back to Yale to get his law degree. His experience on the other side of the world couldn’t help but inform his portrait of the Russian oligarch in The People’s House, which he based on none other than current Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pepper, then in his early 20s, interacted with Putin face to face on multiple occasions.
“I had numerous meetings with him because he was the guy I was working with on a commission of Western leaders, businesses, and others to try and reform St. Petersburg,” says Pepper. “Putin was Vice Mayor of St. Petersburg at one point and was assigned to sort of oversee my project or be the interface, so some of that lead Russian character is based on him because he was pretty memorable.”
Pepper has become deft at incorporating real-life characters, first-hand experiences, and “ripped from the headlines” political issues into his novels, in a way that almost straddles the line between fiction and nonfiction. “I kind of walk through all sorts of real issues I’ve learned about in politics,” he says. “One reason I think people like my books is because the characters and scenes feel realistic. Of course, after the [2016 U.S. presidential] election and the Russia scandal blew up for real, all of a sudden my book got a large following because people were like, Oh my God, how did you know that the Russians would get involved?”
John Pepper says his son was a voracious reader as a kid and was a “proficient” nonfiction writer at an early age. But he was surprised that David also had a gift for writing fiction.
“I was enormously impressed by the quality of what he achieved in terms of dynamic narrative and character development,” says John. “And I was impressed by how he drew upon his experience from different parts of the world, including Russia, to inform his stories. His political work on gerrymandering and other issues formed a backbone for some of his books, of course. The success went beyond even what I might’ve anticipated, and his capacity to develop it quickly was and remains remarkable.”
Other family members might have taken a little longer to come around. “My brothers aren’t that into politics,” says David. “But they read my novels because I’m their brother. When they finished reading The People’s House, they were like, ‘God, that gerrymandering sounds terrible.’ And I thought, Oh, mission accomplished.”
Photograph courtesy David Pepper
Former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley has known Pepper for more than a quarter century. As ambitious locals with similar backgrounds—both are products of esteemed private high schools and Ivy League law schools—it was inevitable that they’d cross paths.
They first got to know each other while working at a local law firm in the summer of 1998. Pepper volunteered on Cranley’s unsuccessful 2000 campaign to unseat Steve Chabot in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District. They then overlapped on Cincinnati City Council from 2001 to 2005.
Cranley credits the pair’s early and enduring commitments to their hometown to a common source—their families. “David certainly had extremely prominent parents who had done a lot for Cincinnati, both in the business world and the nonprofit world,” says Cranley. “I think he figured he had a lot of blessings in life and that he should share those blessings for the good of public service, which I believe he did.”
As moderate Democrats, the two recognize how the political climate has changed over the last 25 years. “Back before 9/11, there was a sense that the two parties were not that far apart and kind of worked together for the greater good,” says Cranley. “Over time, we’ve witnessed political polarization, which led David to be a little bit sharper in his partisanship than when he started. But all in all he’s still fighting for the same beliefs in democracy and social justice and trying to make the world a better place.”
Cranley isn’t surprised Pepper has been a keen commentor on current politics through his nonfiction books and Pepperspectives, but he didn’t expect him to craft a political thriller that would garner kudos nationally. “It was smart, obviously from someone who had a really good understanding of the life of a politician and the life of reporters,” Cranley says of The People’s House. “I knew him as a politician and a friend. I didn’t know him as a writer. I didn’t expect that I would be interested in his fiction writing, but I thought it was a page-turner. It was great.”
Pepper agrees that things have changed since he and Cranley first started working together on city council. “I ran as a Democrat, but I hadn’t been involved in any partisan things,” he says. “My identity was nonpartisan in my own mind. If you look at my first couple of elections, I actually did very well because I won tons of Republican votes. I would knock on doors all over. I could talk to anybody. My initial start in politics was not at all driven by some partisan quest for anything. It was, This is public service, and I want to help a community I’m proud of and have been bragging about my whole life.”
The rightward lurch of the Republican Party, especially in Ohio, forced a response. As a trained lawyer and someone with a firm sense of history, Pepper couldn’t help but act given what’s happened in his home state over the last 15 years. “When I see the rules of democracy being violated with voter suppression or with gerrymandering,” he says, “there’s some part of me deep inside that’s offended by open rule-breaking.”
Ohio was once a swing state known for accurately predicting presidential elections, a state that earned the phrase, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.” According to Pepper, the state is now known for something else.
“Ohio is now a bellwether for how democracy can crumble in the world of extreme gerrymandering,” Pepper says. “That’s essentially what Laboratories of Autocracy is saying: Hey, everyone, this is what happens in this state when it essentially loses its democracy and its rule of law. In many ways, we’re still the bellwether, just in the worst possible way. I sound and talk differently from when I started because, as I’ve gone through it, I’ve actually seen first-hand how broken the political system is.”
Lisa Senecal is a writer and social justice advocate who co-hosts the Lincoln Square podcast and media website. She first became aware of Pepper’s work through Laboratories of Autocracy, which has become a revered political text in certain circles. Adding him as a regular guest on the podcast was a no-brainer.
“Laboratories of Autocracy just put a spotlight on how states, and certainly Ohio was one at the forefront, were testing political maneuverings from gerrymandering to state Supreme Court elections to see what worked and what didn’t work in terms of corrupting the system and creating one-party-controlled state government,” says Senecal. “David has been beating on that drum for years now. He should get a huge amount of credit for keeping citizens and the media focused on what’s happening on the state level.”
Somehow Pepper’s optimism about the future never seems to waver despite the various outrages. “That is one of the many reasons I love talking to David,” says Senecal. “He somehow has this internal reset. I assume part of that comes from his mother’s activism. She was fighting battles that were definitely long-term issues and didn’t have any quick fixes. He has a special ability to help people who are reading his work or listening to his interviews reset with a positive outlook and feel like they have agency and power to be able to make change for the better.”
Senecal cites Pepper’s no-frills communication skills as key when it comes to explaining political matters. “He has a unique way of talking about really complicated issues that’s very digestible without ever sounding like he’s talking down to anyone,” she says. “The respect he has for citizens always comes through, especially when he’s using his whiteboards to break down complex problems into manageable pieces that make sense.”
Pepper’s whiteboard skills recall the late Tim Russert’s iconic usage during the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which the then-moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press wrote what would be key to the outcome: “Florida! Florida! Florida!” In fact, there’s a Russert-like approach to Pepper’s political commentary and prose style—an unpretentious, plain-spoken sensibility no doubt influenced by his Midwestern upbringing and civic-minded family.
Pepper’s enthusiasm for explaining the mundane aspects of our political system can’t help but pervade the content he creates as a writer and a commentator. Which brings us to the fateful question Pepper asked himself after 20 years in organized politics: Do I go back to being a lawyer full-time or do I go in wholeheartedly as a writer?
The leap to writing has paid off. “I had no idea what would happen,” he says. “I just started writing again. I was inspired by the moment to write Laboratories of Autocracy. My range of activity now is so much bigger than it was when I was chair of the Democratic Party or a candidate. I have a much bigger footprint. I’m far more independent. I feel liberated to say more than I could when I was chair of a political party or a candidate for office.”
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