His first campaign experience was in the 1974 federal election, working in Ottawa West for Lloyd Francis, the Liberal candidate and past MP who won re-election that year.
In the 1993 campaign, he worked very closely with party chairman and later campaign chairman Cliff Fryers, with key early MPs such as Diane Ablonczy, Deb Grey, Chuck Strahl, Monte Solberg, Jay Hill, Elwin Hermanson and with key party executives such as Gordon Shaw, Neil Weir, Virgil Anderson and Glenn McMurray.
Despite early differences in approach with key players such as Tom Flanagan (who left the party headquarters staff) and Stephen Harper (who left Parliament in early 1997), by the 1997 campaign the core campaign team had expanded to include veteran MP John Reynolds, pollster Andre Turcotte, advertising executive Bryan Thomas, Jim Armour, Phil von Finckenstein, Kory Teneycke, Stephen Greene, Darrel Reid, Morten Paulsen, Lisa Samson, Ian Todd, Ellen Todd, Paul Wilson, Nathalie Stirling, Nancy Brancombe, and a number of other young staff and candidates who continued on to become key players in subsequent campaigns and in the future Conservative government.
Between the 1993 and 1997 campaigns, Anderson acted as a Reform ambassador to provincial governments and to the business community, working to thaw historically-chilly relations with the new party.
Other key Reformers who were involved in that campaign included Cliff Fryers, Deb Grey, John Reynolds, Jason Kenney, Nancy Branscombe and Ken Kalopsis.
Key Conservatives included Peter White, Tony Clement, Tom Long, Thompson MacDonald, Rod Love, Michael Fortier, Don Morgan, Bob Dechert, John Capobianco and Sandra Buckler.
Professionally, Anderson served as an executive with Hill & Knowlton and predecessor companies from 1980 to 1995, in Ottawa and Toronto, Canada; London, England; and Washington, DC.