Since One Vote Matters is about the business of politics, it is important to incorporate the perspectives of the people who are actually out there working in the field. That’s why I am doing a series of short email interviews with staffers from the major presidential campaigns. Their job is to represent their employers, so we can expect partisan responses to my questions, but that isn’t a bad thing (not even for a non-partisan blog). Their answers will provide insight into how the professionals think and represent the interests of their candidates.
So without further ado, my first interview is with …read more

One thing to remember about good campaign staffers: they can absolutely turn on a dime. They can respond to fundraising needs or current events with an almost unbelievable response time. Take, for instance, yesterday’s announcement of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. This morning, political news is full of reports of candidates’ responses. John McCain made comments after a speech yesterday that he had the credentials to deal with such a foreign policy crisis. One of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisors pointed to past efforts by Obama to move Pakistan to center stage in U.S. foreign policy.
This …read more

A political campaign staff is an amazingly huge hierarchy, with large parts of the system replicated in state after state. These are people in charge of spending huge amounts of a campaign’s funds, but they’re practically invisible.
I’m always amazed to hear, though, how little money many campaign staffers make. For a lot of political campaigns, only the campaign manager will be paid. That’s not necessarily true in a big presidential race, like we’re currently looking at, but a scene from the television show, “West Wing,” certainly comes to mind. During a flashback to the presidential race, the communications director, Toby, …read more