Campaign 101: Convention Bound
how campaigns change after the primaries
2008-03-03
By Eric Easter

Another installment of our occasional series on the hidden inner workings of presidential campaigns.

No matter how the votes are tallied in Texas and Ohio, and after the DNC figures out what happens with the voters in Florida and Michigan, either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton – or both – will be heading to Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of all of the respective campaigns’ current staffers.
This transitional time between primary season and convention marks the first of several fairly dramatic shifts in organization for the camps who have stuck it out this far, and especially for the eventual victor. There are several reasons why.

The first and most obvious reason is that the skills needed for campaign mode are a very different and distinct set of skills from those needed to run a tight and organized convention. That will be a particular issue if there is no clear nominee by the time of the convention.

No matter how energetic and smart the new entrants to politics in either campaign, conventions are when the old timers will step in and take over. Everybody has to start somewhere, but a convention is not the time for neophytes.

Truth be told, a convention is a lawyer and negotiator’s game. Pay no attention to the stupid hats and funny signs you see on TV, that’s only for show. The real horse trading will be going on in hotel rooms around the city where a tight team of senior level representatives will be hashing out trades, concessions and deals on everything from policy changes to convention rules to which surrogates get a private plane in the general election. That requires nuance, experience and a serious Rolodex.

Aside from the basic issue of skill, there is a fundamental issue of space and workload.  If you’re not a delegate, press liaison, speechwriter, party planner or a limo driver, there’s just not much to do at a convention as a staffer.

At the national offices, there are changes going on as well.

This is the time when chairpersons and organizers from states where the candidate won get rewarded with broader responsibilities and jobs on the national and regional level, easing out those who are in the positions now. Similarly, state-based staff in places where a candidate lost are being replaced at this moment, often with hand-picked former staffers of primary opponents.

Transition time is payback time as well. The most common favor promised to major endorsers and supporters during the primary is the right to place a fair-haired nephew or underling in the staff of the general campaign. That changes the whole dynamic of a campaign because it works to consolidate the power base of longtime loyalists and divides campaigns into two different and battling groups - people who have the trust and ear of the candidate and those who are only around for the beer and the glory (or the pizza and Dunkin Donuts in Clinton’s case).

Beyond people, expect to hear some changes in policy and tone from the presumptive nominee, certainly from the final winner. Former opponents such as John Edwards and Bill Richardson are working behind the scenes to use whatever leverage they have left (don’t wait too long, John) to influence the language about poverty, foreign policy and other pet projects.

For the people working in the campaigns it’s all a shock to the system and it happens at rapid fire speed. But the end result by September will be a general election campaign that no longer has the movement-style passion that fed the primaries and transforms into a tighter, more focused election corporation that is all about business.  At least that’s what the Democrats hope.

Eric Easter is chief of digital strategy for Johnson Publishing. He writes about politics, culture and technology for Ebonyjet.com.