Ballabon began his career in government in the 1990s as legislative counsel to Senator
John C. Danforth, and
Republican counsel to the
United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.He was responsible for a number of initiatives, including the creation of the Troops to Teachers program. As a government relations and communications consultant and political adviser, Ballabon has run his own companies, Ballabon Group, B2 Strategic, and Short Cove Advisors, and has been the New York affiliate of Washington, D. C.'s,
The Livingston Group. His clients have included media, energy, biotech,
intellectual property, health care and defense companies, real-estate developers, law firms, private investment funds, non-profits, and political candidates and campaigns. As a media executive, he served as senior vice president of communications for
CBS Corporation, overseeing public relations and communications for
CBS News, and as head of government relations and public policy for
Primedia and
Court TV.
CBS At CBS, he originated the rebranding of the network's
CBS Reports television documentary brand into a new coordinated cross-platform brand. Its 2009 debut of the CBS Reports concept,
CBS Reports: Children of the Recession, won the
Columbia School of Journalism's Alfred DuPont Award. Ballabon was CBS News' spokesman during high-profile litigation, including the Dan Rather v CBS Corp. "
Memogate" litigation and the alleged attempted blackmail of
Late Night host
David Letterman by a CBS News producer. He helped launch shows, including CBS News' new morning show, and integrate CBS News' online "new media" reporting and presence with traditional CBS News television and radio. On the death of
Walter Cronkite, Ballabon oversaw CBS' dissemination of all media about Cronkite worldwide and media, publicity, and event coordination of Cronkite's funeral and CBS's
Lincoln Center tribute to Cronkite.
Primedia Ballabon led public policy on a range of issues for Primedia, including online properties, over 300 magazine titles, and 18 satellite television networks. Ballabon managed policy for these companies and titles including
About.com,
IntelliChoice,
Channel One News,
Films for the Humanities and Sciences,
Films Media Group,
Workplace Learning,
Homeland One,
Law Enforcement Television Network,
Fire and Emergency Training Network, as well as magazine companies and titles, including
Weekly Reader,
Tiger Beat,
Seventeen,
Modern Bride,
New York,
Soap Opera Digest,
Guns & Ammo,
Shotgun News,
Automobile,
Motor Trend,
Hot Rod,
Lowrider,
Bike,
Powerboat & Motoryacht,
Skateboarder, and
Snowboarder.
Primedia's
Channel One News, an advertising-supported in-school news show, had become a political target. Among the issues he oversaw were federal and state campaigns, challenges to advertising content in schools, privacy and data collection, postal rates, state taxes and numerous other issues.
Court TV Ballabon was at
Court TV in the 1990s, an era of extremely high-profile trials, including the
Menéndez brothers and
O. J. Simpson murder trials. While at Court TV, Ballabon was responsible for getting camera access for the media to televise a number of high-profile trials. He negotiated a federal rule permitting the closed-circuit televising of the
Timothy McVeigh ("Oklahoma City Bomber") murder trial to survivors of the crime and to victims' families. He also was executive producer of Court TV's weekly block of programming for legal professionals.
Politics Ballabon was heavily involved with the election campaigns of
George W. Bush and with the Bush administration. He has been involved as well in a number of House and Senate election campaigns, including
John Ashcroft,
Sam Brownback,
Rick Santorum, and
Bob Turner, and was a surrogate for the
Mitt Romney campaign. As a fund-raiser for the 2004 Bush campaign, he co-chaired a dinner that reportedly "raked in $4 million". Ballabon was a prominent supporter of
Donald Trump's candidacy. He led the 2016 initiative to change the
Republican Party's platform language on Israel and worked closely with the
Trump campaign on its
Israel policy. Since the election, Ballabon has been a member of the Donald J Trump For President Advisory Board and appeared on media as a Trump surrogate. Ballabon has been in leadership of media industry groups, including Magazine Publishers of America,
Cable Television Public Affairs Association, the
New York Bar Association Media Committee, and the
American Media Institute. He has been affiliated with several conservative policy organizations and think-tanks, including the
Federalist Society, the London Center for Public Policy Research, and the American Conservative Union Foundation. He was on the board of the
Ronald Reagan Legacy Foundation. Ballabon founded the
Coordinating Council on Jerusalem. He is a member of the
American Center for Law and Justice, and is active in Jewish communal and political affairs. He is credited as the creator of the term
Jexodus, which he describes as "the new non-partisan war against political & media anti-Semitism." In March 2019 he received both praise and criticism for referring to Congresswoman Ilhan
Omar as "filth" when asked about statements by Omar that were widely as anti-Semitic. In April 2019, reacting to continuing antisemitic remarks by Omar he argued that, because of her prominent position in government, she was “more dangerous than
David Duke and
Louis Farrakhan combined.” ==Impact on culture==