Political Campaign Management TipsRun for office or become a campaign manager

You folks who have been involved in politics for a while can probably skip this post,  but I thought it might be helpful for people who are new to politics to understand the difference between a campaign manager and a campaign consultant.  Since these roles don’t come with regular job descriptions, they can vary depending on the specific professionals you are dealing with and the local area where you are running.  However, generally speaking, a campaign consultant will deal with overall strategy, planning and designing campaign advertising.  The consultant will give you a slice of his time, but he will be working with multiple candidates and ballot issues and will not be focused solely on your campaign.

A campaign manager, on the other hand, will usually spend time on-site with your campaign and will direct the day to day decision making process of the campaign.  He will be involved in making sure the campaign strategy is implemented, that volunteers complete their assignments and that the candidate’s time is carefully spent.

The campaign consultant is often the only paid position on a lot of campaigns.  Experienced volunteers who know the area  can do a very good job of running a campaign with some professional guidance.  However,  you don’t necessarily need to hire a consultant for a local campaign.  They are expensive and it won’t do much good to have a great strategy and terrific advertising designs if you aren’t able to raise the funds to pay to implement the campaign plan the consultant puts together. Also, better known consulting firms will only be interested in races that will have significant spending.  If you are running a small city council race, a local campaign manager who either has some campaign advertising savvy or can work with someone who does  may be a more realistic choice.

I’ll have more information on decisions about hiring staff and making realistic budgets in later posts.

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