With the elections ending on the second, a delightful show involving the comedian Daniel Tosh on the fourth, and several papers rushing up upon me, I have returned to the blog that I started some time back.  To whom it may concern, the absence was not in vain, and, in truth, I should have kept efforts to update while working on a campaign for the last seven  months, but due to agreements, contracts, and the peering eye of the opposition I chose not to.

That’s right, I worked a campaign.

Not one of those “I volunteered, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and went to rallies” volunteering, no.  Paid work as an assistant policy director and a very, very brief stint as the assistant campaign manager.  There are several things I have learned my first dance in the arena, and I would love to share them here with those who happen to stop by:

1) If you’re going to get paid, get paid a livable wage.  The amount I ended up getting paid wouldn’t cover the bills, gas, food, and miscellaneous expenses.  If I didn’t have the Montgomery G.I. Bill on the side, I would have collapsed under the weight of credit card debt long ago.  Even with the G.I. Bill, I’m looking up at broke, but it was a job.

2) Long hours are part of the job.  From morning policy meetings, to a daily schedule ten hours deep in events, and a closing brief at the end of the day plus any research or writing you may need to do afterwords, it is a long running job.  Many nights I was up until two to three am working on policy papers, researching topics that would be of interest and digging up news bits and facts that would be used to pepper speeches and give the candidate an air of being on top of things.  The candidate also requested a ‘intelligence brief’ similar to what the President of the United States gets every morning, so I scavenged through the news sites and major government agencies looking for tidbits.  I composed an e-mail that went out to the body of the campaign, and let them know what I thought would be the most pressing things in the minds of the voters for that day.  To be honest, this was the best part of the job for me.  I’m an information junkie, so asking me to research and formulate responses and policy positions based on the ever shifting sands of the political world was a challenge I met with a certain level of joy.

3) Know your candidate.  The short version of how I got into the position I did is that the candidate I ended up working for was not the guy I started out supporting.  I hopped on board because my first candidate was supporting the newcomer and my work with him had impressed him enough to invite me to join the new campaign.  A lot of people put faith in the candidate and after six months of campaigning the results were disastrous.  There were positions that the candidate held that I did not agree with him on but could live with (the whole ‘each has their own opinion and no one is going to agree 100% of the time).  What I could not tolerate was that a large amount of what was being given to the candidate by the policy director, campaign manager, and myself was tossed aside with every speech.  Time and time again we heard fluff and inspiration when the constituents were asking for facts and answers as to how the candidate was going to address the issue, how we as Republicans were going to solve the current ills of society, and drive the economy to recovery.  We had mulled this over for days, put up what we believed was a convincing and through plan to our candidate, and even if it was wrong, at least it was something.  At least it was an idea.  The candidate never, not once, mentioned it in his speeches.  Instead it was more fluff and empty ‘inspiration’.  After talking to a few people who had known him in another district I found out he was an empty shirt who exited their congressional contest well in advance.  His track record was littered with faux pas and failures.  I was working with damaged goods, and those are salvageable if the candidate is willing to listen.

I have more to say about the ups and downs, but it gets personal, and I do not want that out in the air.  The campaign failed not because of the effort, but because the candidate refused to see the writing on the wall.  Some final actions by the last of the campaign directors effectively ostracized the political party whose banner we were running under by implying that the lack of financial support equated to racism from a state, if not national, political organization.  I tendered my resignation shortly thereafter.  I would not work for an organization that was going to play that at the end.  I had not worked for months to try to build a legitimate campaign, to create an engine for intelligent and informed dialogue on topics rather than scary commercials, and then to watch it go down in flames because the end was in sight, they knew they had lost and the candidate and campaign manager chose to try to throw someone else under the bus for their failures rather than man up and take the required beating that comes from a poorly run campaign.  I was not privy to the decision-making processes in the last month.  My association with one of the prior campaign managers put a black mark on me and while they still asked for information and assistance, I had been locked away from conversations for fear that I would leak them back to her or the republican party.  That was an honest fear of theirs.  That the party they were running under would get wind of what they were doing or saying.

It was not a good campaign.  It was not a healthy time for me, but it was a learning experience.  I’ve made connections, and now experienced the electorial process from both ends of the spectrum, as observer to direct participant in the campaign system.  I am now working with elements of the Republican party and look forward to expanding my level of knowledge, and taking another shot at working for a candidate in a congressional race.  I know there were somethings I did wrong, and I will man up to those, but after all the mess I am still here and looking forward to the new cycle of elections to come.  This time, I might even write about it.

J.P.