By Stuart Stevens
Until November 5th, political campaigns will dominate our national conversation. It is an extended version of March Madness with a far larger fan base. The ups and downs of the Trump vs. Harris race will be analyzed constantly and be the subject of hours of discussion with friends, relatives and work colleagues.
But the reality is that campaigns remain a largely unknown process to the general public. It’s not like sports, in which so many grow up playing different games and there is a vast media industry dedicated to telling the inside story of what really happens inside locker rooms. Campaigns are a strange subculture, alien to most.
I’ve worked in five presidential campaigns and scores of races for the US Senate and governors. I thought it might be helpful if I spent a little time shedding some light on how campaigns, particularly presidential campaigns, are organized and function.
It’s worth noting from the start that no two campaigns are exactly the same. An underfunded start-up campaign of a challenger will be considerably different than an incumbent with vast resources. In 2024, we have a former president running against a sitting Vice President whose campaign was created to re-elect a president. A look at the Harris campaign, a fully formed, highly functioning campaign, is instructive.
“Campaign manager” is the most known title in the campaign world. In the Biden campaign, that is Julie Chávez Rodríguez. She’s the granddaughter of the legendary head of the Farm Workers Union, Cesar Chavez, and her choice is indicative of the importance the Harris (Biden) campaign places on the power of local organizing. As of this writing (August 12), they have 1,500 staffers and 265 campaign offices. This kind of on-the-ground operation is what enables the campaign to put together the huge crowds that have been driving Donald Trump even crazier than usual.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, who served in that role for the 2020 Biden campaign, drives the campaign's strategy. Two of the top Democratic operatives, David Plouffe, who ran Obama’s 2008 campaign, and Stephanie Cutter, a veteran of many Democratic presidential campaigns, are working with O’Malley Dillon.
Under these leaders, the campaign has different divisions that deal with the daily execution of the operation. They include:
Advance Staff
This is a classic campaign training ground, the equivalent of starting in the mail room. Richard Nixon and former California governor and Senator, Pete Wilson, came out of advance work. It falls to this team to handle all logistics of the candidate’s travel. That can vary from massive rallies to the unannounced “drop-byes” that campaigns use in an effort to highlight the candidate as a “regular person.” Anytime you see Vice President Harris stopping by a coffee shop or diner, advance staff will have scouted and prepped the location; it’s a great deal of effort to make a moment seem natural and effortless.
Advance staff in presidential campaigns work closely with the Secret Service. It’s a complicated, inevitably difficult relationship. The Secret Service has one job – protect the candidate – and the campaign has another – win the election. An added layer is coordinating with local law enforcement. They provide motorcycle escorts, crowd control, and additional specialty protective services, like snipers and K-9 bomb detection. All of these behind-the-scenes tensions exploded into public view following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, PA.
Press Operation
One or two people invariably emerge as the most-seen face of a campaign. For Biden and now Harris, Quinten Fulks has done an outstanding job under difficult conditions. But beyond those public faces, there is a separate press operation that focuses on local media in key battleground states. It’s their job to know the key local players in the media – a shrinking number – and develop good relationships. Usually this is largely based on the campaign’s openness to sharing not released information with a specific reporter, handing them a scoop. A lot is written about the negative consequences of “access journalism,” the dance played by campaigns and the press to help shape the coverage of a candidate but is the dominating truth of how campaigns work.
State Political Staff
Each battleground state will have a state director overseeing the operation of the local offices, staffers, and volunteers. These are campaigns within a campaign, and there invariably is fierce competition within the campaign of which state can run the most impressive local campaigns.
Coalition Outreach
Campaigns are ultimately about addition, not subtracting, and this need is well served by organizing groups of voters who share common attributes. That could be racial – Black Women for Harris is a rare example of a very public coalition – or ethnic – Ukrainian Americans for Harris – or physical – Disabled Voters for Harris – or shared educational background – Historically Black College Voters for Harris or religious – Evangelicals for Harris. It’s a long and deep list of sub-groups organized to make each voter feel valued and heard.
Finance Team
This is the heartbeat of any campaign. It is a subculture with its own state directors, coalition outreach and press operation. If this doesn’t work, the campaign doesn’t work.
Advertising
Presidential campaigns typically have teams of media creators chosen for their specialties IE, testimonials, attack ads (in the business, we prefer to call these “contrast” ads,” thematic table setting ads, or regional focus. This budget will consume over half of the total dollars spent by the campaign.
Social Media
An ever-increasing public face of the campaign. It can make or break a candidacy. John Fetterman’s Senate campaign is an example of brilliant social media execution that is generally credited with his victory. This will include separate teams that focus on different platforms: a Twitter group, TikTok, and Facebook.
GOTV (Get Out The Vote) Operation
Inside the campaign, there is a division dedicated to tracking the voter contacts in each critical state. They will be working against modeling that predicts the number of votes needed to win a state. When early voting begins, they will track the votes cast and keep a running tally of the votes still needed to win. This will be a changing number based on the total turnout in a given state. There are many stories of campaigns that “hit their numbers” but still lose. That means the goal set by the campaign proved to underestimate the turnout. Like polling, all GOTV vote goals are based on predictions modeled on past elections.
When an event like the overturn of Roe v. Wade occurs, it creates havoc with past models, one of the reasons so much polling has proven to be unreliable. Independent voters, unaffiliated with any party, are the most volatile and least predictable and their numbers are increasing in each election.
Speech Writing
Campaigns are ultimately arguments, and arguments are about words. A team of speechwriters works out of campaign headquarters, and speechwriters travel with each Harris and Walz. The campaign operation crafts the big, thematic speeches, and the traveling writers help use language to address a location or a breaking news story that the candidate needs to address.
Polling
The campaign has two polling operations: internal and external. The external is a group of polling firms with different regional expertise. Their data goes into the centralized polling internal to the campaign. They conduct daily tracking of key states with a focus on the key demographics seen as essential to meeting vote goals for each state. While the national numbers are interesting, the campaign will use publicly available information rather than expend resources on a number far less important than the state-by-state results.
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Presidential campaigns are billion-dollar start-ups that are open for business for only a short time. They are built with the knowledge that the endeavor will go out of business after the election. There is zero margin of error between success and failure. In most businesses, if you acquire 49.9% market share vs. 50.1%, it’s of little importance. In a campaign, it is everything.
When you begin to grasp the complexity and difficulty of building and executing a presidential campaign, it makes the achievement of the Harris campaign all the more impressive. They have had three of the best weeks of any campaign in modern history. It’s not easy.
