Political campaign staff

Political campaign staff are the group of people who formulate and implement the strategy of a political campaign. Campaign staffs are generally composed both of unpaid volunteers and paid employees of either the campaign itself or a related political party. The staff may include political consultants who provide advice and assistance to a campaign.

Structure of a campaign

Campaigns are generally run by a campaign manager who coordinates the campaign and assures that efforts are being focused effectively. 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.

In some campaigns, an executive chairman of the campaign committee will be appointed. The responsibility of an executive chairman will vary widely by campaign, usually an executive chairman is a consultant on internal matters such as campaign staff appointments and major internal policy.

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.

Departments and their respective purposes

Operations department

Chief Operating Officer or Operations Director
Human Resources
IT & Cybersecurity
Financial Operations
Field Operations

Larger statewide and national campaigns will have operations departments, which is responsible for the internal functions that power a campaign as an organization. While structure varies, the operations department will generally take on human resources and people operations responsibilities, including running payroll; IT and cybersecurity operations, which secure the campaign's electronic systems and ensure their availability for use; financial operations which will track the budget against actual spending and raising; and field operations, which handles the logistics of a larger field program. On some campaigns, including smaller campaigns, these functions are sometimes outsourced to outside vendors to keep overhead low.

Field department

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.

On the statewide level, field departments are generally organized by geography with an overall statewide field director who oversees the efforts of several regional field directors who in turn manage several local offices.

State Chairperson
State Finance Chairperson
Congressional District Chairperson
County Chairperson
State Director
State Deputy Director for Volunteer Operations (Grassroots)
County Coordinator
Precinct Captain
Coalitions Coordinator
State Deputy Director for Administration
Scheduling and Advance Coordinator
State Policy Director
Legislative Advisor
State Communications Director

Other field workers below this level include:

Volunteer Coordinator: tasked full-time with recruiting, retaining, and scheduling volunteers advertising, promotional items. Often these staffers work closely with the IT department.

Political department

Activists, Grassroots, and Volunteers
Outreach
Education

Researching and developing a set of policies requires a large team to research and write each plank. Researchers also provide information to the campaign on issues and the backgrounds of candidates (including the candidate they work for) in order to be aware of skeletons in the various candidates' closets. The latter practice is known as opposition research. On smaller campaigns this is often folded into the communications department.

Fundraising (Finance) department

The finance department coordinates the campaign's fundraising operation and ensures that the campaign always has the money it needs to operate effectively.