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GLOBAL NATION BUILDING 

Introduction

Once you’ve decided to run for office (be it a local office or a national one), you may start to think a ton of time and effort goes into staffing and running your campaign—and you’d be correct! Over the last 20 years, political campaigns have professionalized and created roles that have become careers in their own right to support the ever-growing grassroots campaigns and activism across the country. This chapter will cover how to start a political campaign team from the ground up. From this guide, you’ll learn about political campaign organizational structures, the different types of political campaign jobs, and political campaign staff salaries. You’ll also learn how to manage your team and the hiring processes.

These roles describe the responsibilities in a campaign. For many campaigns, especially smaller, down ballot campaigns, one person may hold many of these roles. In addition, many of these roles may be
volunteers instead of paid employees. Regardless, once a role is assigned, the responsibility lies with that person.

CAMPAIGN MANAGER

The campaign manager oversees all aspects of the campaign including day-to-day operations, the hiring and management of staff, the coordination and implementation of the fundraising operations and ongoing coordination with the candidate. They are also responsible for creating and managing the campaign budget. Campaign managers must have excellent organizational skills, be level-headed, have good interpersonal skills and not be afraid of raising money.

Finding and hiring a campaign manager will typically be one of your earliest (but may or may not be your first hire) and most important campaign decisions. So what does a political campaign manager do?

Your campaign manager will have many responsibilities, including managing the rest of your staff, making strategic decisions, working with consultants, overseeing day-to-day operations and the campaign budget, and most importantly, keeping you organized. In smaller races, campaign managers can fill the gaps for other departments, such as fundraising, communications, and field.

Finding the right person may take a few interviews, and that’s okay. It’s vitally important to balance how your personalities mix with their ability to oversee the campaign as a whole. You especially want to avoid the two most common mistakes made by candidates. The first is hiring someone you could get a beer (or seltzer) with, only to realize they can’t handle the strategic and day-to-day operations. The second is hiring someone with fantastic managerial and political skills, only to later discover that the two of you can’t stand to be in the same room. Both mistakes lead to disaster.

Campaign managers are a smart hire for nearly all races where your fundraising target is more than $100,000.

CAMPAIGN TREASURER

The campaign treasurer oversees the financial and accounting aspects of the campaign. They monitor all
contributions, maintain financial records and are responsible for compliance with the relevant election board. On smaller campaigns treasurers may have the responsibility to approve expenditures and assist in the preparation and monitoring of the budget. Campaign treasurers are often the only other individual, apart from the candidate, whose name is filed with an election authority, and must have significant experience in accounting or finance.

COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR/PRESS SECRETARY

The communications director is in charge of all of the campaign’s interactions with the media. They build relationships with the press, communicate with the media as the key spokesperson, set up interviews and identify media opportunities for the campaign. They may help write and develop campaign literature, draft speeches for the candidate and create copy for the campaign web site. The communications director should have prior experience and contacts with the media, be a good writer and communicator, and be a pro-active thinker and strategist.

FIELD DIRECTOR/VOTER CONTACT

The field director is in charge of making sure the campaign gets its message out through direct voter contact. Their main responsibility is to develop a comprehensive plan that includes door knocking and phoning in order to ID voters and persuade them about the candidate. They may also coordinate voter registration efforts. Finally they coordinate the GOTV effort if there is no staff person specifically responsible for GOTV. The field director needs to be highly organized, energetic, capable of motivating and managing staff and volunteers and able to manage large quantities of data. As with most things, the number of field staff will depend on the size of the campaign.

FINANCE DIRECTOR/FUNDRAISER

The finance director is responsible for raising the money that will allow the campaign to accomplish its goals. The finance director works closely with the candidate, campaign manager and a finance committee to meet the financial goals of the campaign. They are in charge of keeping the candidate on track with fundraising, preparing for and staffing call time, and overseeing all fundraising events. A good fundraiser must be highly organized, outgoing and willing to push the candidate and campaign toward meeting their fundraising goals.

LEGAL ADVISOR

It is important to have access to a legal advisor who is versed in all aspects of election law and campaign finance.

OFFICE MANAGER

The Office manager is responsible for maintaining the campaign headquarters and coordinating the administrative aspects of the campaign. They may need to manage staff, infrastructure, supplies, and a administrative aspects of the campaign. They may need to manage staff, infrastructure, supplies, and a myriad of other details. This person needs to have a good over-view of the entire campaign and the ability to solve problems as they arise.

POLITICAL DIRECTOR/CONSTITUENCY ORGANIZER

The political director works with specific constituency groups to organize their involvement with the campaign, for example – labor, seniors, educators, veterans, communities of color, new Americans, environmentalists, and college students, etc. They help develop a voter contact plan in coordination with the field director for particular communities by building relationships with the existing organizations that represent these communities. This person should have experience working with diverse constituencies,commitment to expanding the base and good communication skills.

SCHEDULER

The scheduler is responsible to accepting and acting on all invitations, seeking out potential events and putting together the candidate’s schedule. The scheduler makes sure that the candidate is briefed about each of the events and is given proper directions, contact information, and collects briefing information from the other team members on each event. The scheduler also ensures that candidate call-time and voter contact time remains the top priority. The scheduler needs to be assertive, meticulous with details, pleasant on the phone and able to say “no” when necessary.

TECHNOLOGY MANAGER

This information technology manager coordinates and manages all aspects of the campaign with regard to technology – web site, database, computer infrastructure, etc. The IT manager’s responsibilities might range from maintaining the web site to developing the database to providing a computer network for the staff. This person needs to have a broad knowledge of technology, computers and software and be able to work in a rapid-paced environment. In larger campaigns the web site and data responsibilities would likely be split.

VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR

The volunteer coordinator works closely with the Field Director to identify, recruit and manage volunteers to help with various campaign activities. They help coordinate the work the volunteers, utilize their skills and talents well and provide motivation. The job requires strong interpersonal skills, patience, persistence, enthusiasm, good communication skills and the ability to work with all kinds of people.