10 Questions about Campaign Managers*

10 Questions about Campaign Managers*
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com – Thursday, March 22, 2012

On The Issue of Etch the Sketch: About 12 years ago, I recall talk show hosts Medved and Hewitt promoting Schwarzenegger over Mclintock. They were deadly wrong. Likewise is their promotion of Romney vs. Santorium: If Santorium spent 1/2 of Romney’s campaign money, Santorium would lead.

1.)We handle CEO-worthy budgets … In 2000; President George W. Bush broke records raising $100 million before the primaries. But that is a drop in the bucket compared with the hefty 1.8 billion spent between the Republicans and Democrats in preparation for the 2008 presidential election – not to mention the $1 billion – plus the former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner predicts will go into Presidents Obama reelection campaign alone…

2.)…but we never took Accounting 101: Few campaign managers have a business background, yet some admit that, given their dual CEO-COO roles, they could use a crash course in accounting at the very least: … Well-known pundit James Carville, for one, worked as a litigator, high school teacher and military service member before running President Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign. “It’s a street-smart business,” says Schmidt, McCain’s aide.

3.)The Do Not Call Registry can’t touch us: The nonpartisan Pew Research Center reports that 47 percent of registered voters received automated call about the 2008 presidential campaign, and a whopping 69 percent received them during the 2010 midterms. Coming from most business, this kind of harassment is against the law – but the law doesn’t apply to candidates..

4.)We’d rather not discuss our past: Unlike candidates, campaign managers are expected to stay out of the spotlight. But as a candidate gets closer to being elected, senior staffers may find it increasingly difficult (and difficult) to keep to the shadows… And Dick Morris, the strategist on Pres. Clinton’s 1996 campaign resigned when tabloid reports of infidelity with a prostitute …

5.)We did well in the polls? We made the polls. Roughly 10 percent of a campaign’s budget goes to research , which, includes public polling and digging up dirt on the competitor…

6.)We like winning… cash bonus: Of course, many managers talk about wanting their candidate to win for the sake of the public good, … but the prize for winning can be a additional one or two month’s salary (salaries can run $2,000 to $15,000 a month, or around $100,00- a year)

7.)The money you send doesn’t reach us: … In the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign doled out nearly $46 million, or 6 percent of its total spending to those groups, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics…

8.)Barely a month after Jon Huntsman formally began his bid for the Republican presidential nomination for instance, his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, resigned and several months later endorsed team Mitt Romney (she decided he would “be best at running against Barack.”)

9.)This job is a stepping-stone – to stardom”: Bob Beckel, co-host of the Five on Fox News, who ran Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign in 1984, says he doesn’t know of anyone getting out of politics who isn’t hoping to get into TV …

10.)The win-at-all-costs mentality of campaigns can wreak havoc with ethics…

George H. Kubeck, *Smart Money, 20th Anniversary Issue, “10 Things Campaign Managers Won’t Tell You”