Political campaign staff

Political campaign staff are the people who formulate and implement the strategy needed to win an election. Many people have made careers out of working full-time for campaigns and groups that support them, but in other campaigns much of the staff might be unpaid volunteers. These differ from political consultants who do not work for the campaign full-time but still provide assistance in the form of advice and creative expertise.

This article provides a generic description of a campaign's staff and organization. Different campaigns have different structures.

Campaigns are usually overseen by a campaign manager. The campaign manager coordinates the campaign making sure that the rest of the staff and the campaign's consultants are focused effectively on winning the election. In small local campaigns, the campaign manager will often be the only paid staff member and will be responsible for every aspect of the campaign that is not covered by the candidate or volunteers. In larger campaigns, such as a United States presidential campaign, hundreds of staff members will cover the required tasks. While campaign managers are often the lead strategists in local campaigns, in the United States larger campaigns hire consultants to serve as strategists and the campaign manager focuses mostly on coordinating the campaign staff. Campaign managers will often have deputies who oversee various aspects of the campaign at a closer level.

Directly below the campaign manager on the organization chart is the deputy campaign manager and directly below them are department directors who coordinate specific aspects of the campaign. These staff members often have deputies as well.

Below the department level, campaigns vary widely in their structure. On larger campaigns, there will be various coordinators for certain functions within each department. For example, within the fundraising department, there might be a staff member who focuses only on direct mail fundraising.

The foundation of the campaign structure are the interns and volunteers. Their tasks can include addressing envelopes, entering data into databases, and canvassing voters on behalf of the campaign.

The field department focuses on the "on-the-ground" organizing that is required in order to personally contact voters through canvassing, phone calls, and building local events. Voter contact helps construct and clean the campaign's voter file in order to help better target voter persuasion and identify which voters a campaign most wants to bring out on election day. Field is generally also tasked with running local "storefront" campaign offices as well as organizing phone banks and staging locations for canvasses and other campaign events.

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