Reared in a politically active lower-middle-class home, Strother graduated in 1958 from Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur, renamed in 2002 as Memorial High School. Strother won a track scholarship to Northwestern State University, then Northwestern State College, in Natchitoches, Louisiana. After two years, the administration asked him to leave NSC because of his political activities. He transferred to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There he became the advertising director and then the editor of The Daily Reveille student newspaper. While in Baton Rouge to complete his Master of Arts degree in journalism, Strother was a night reporter and photographer for the Associated Press. His 1965 thesis at LSU correctly predicted that in the future the outcome of political campaigns would depend more on media coverage and advertising than on traditional political organization.[2]
In 1984 and 1988, he supervised the media campaign for Gary Hart's presidential bids, but Hart was eliminated by Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. Strother then worked on the Super Tuesday states in 1988 for Al Gore, who ran well only in parts of the American South.[2]
A new national award named "The Strother" in his honor was instituted in his honor during 2002 at the University of Akron where he was named an honorary fellow. The designation recognizes political professionals with an "exemplary record of achievement" in the field itself as well as promoting their expertise in higher education.[2] Northwestern State University awarded him a Doctorate of Humane Letters. An exhibit depicting his life was installed in the Hall of Notable People at the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur, Texas.
In 1991, Strother penned a novel, Cottonwood, the story of a dishonest political consultant.[3] His 2005 autobiography is entitled Falling Up, How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting.[4]
Strother was married to the former Sandy Peck, also a native of Port Arthur. They had two children who live in the Washington, D.C. area, Dane Strother and Kristan S. Trugman. The Strothers resided in Bozeman and had a home on the Big Hole River near the unincorporated community of Wise River in Beaverhead County near Dillon, Montana.[2] Strother died from cancer in Billings on October 1, 2022, at the age of 81.[5]