For example, it may be easier to secure a more prominent position with a candidate other than the frontrunner. Go where there is a candidate for whom you are passionate, and where there are opportunities that interest you.
An exception to this rule is that some campaigns can turn incredibly nasty, and the winning campaign might not consider hiring anyone from a campaign that cast aspersions on their candidate.
There are usually too many moving parts for success or failure to be attributed to one particular individual. As long as you have acquitted yourself well and commanded the respect of your supervisors and colleagues, there is little to no stigma attached to working for a losing candidate. In terms of your future job search, the experience is much more important than the result. If you mention that you are an attorney when you first present yourself to a campaign, it might be assumed that you want to do legal or policy work.
There is certainly some legal work that will take advantage of your training on most campaigns. However, keep in mind that most campaigns, especially during primary elections, do have attorneys on staff who take on the various legal issues that might arise.
Policy jobs are often among the most sought after in a campaign. It is important to note that most attorneys do not necessarily do legal or policy work on campaigns. They work in virtually every capacity, including those that do not require legal skills.
Lawyers have been fundraisers, political desk representatives, speechwriters, constituent liaisons, schedulers, advance team leaders, field organizers or field managers, volunteer coordinators, technology managers, spokespersons, communications consultants, media buyers, convention organizers, event planners, and even campaign managers.
Detailed descriptions of various campaign functions are available at the end of this guide. Many of the same skills that contribute to good lawyering—like the ability to work under pressure, synthesize information, and give attention to detail, to name just a few—are invaluable on the campaign trail, and many lawyers are sufficiently versatile that they are able to pick up wholly unfamiliar skills in the fast-paced campaign environment. Keep in mind that there are also frequent opportunities to try out different kinds of jobs across campaigns—you are by no means locked into whichever role you may start with.
Remember also that having a law degree or being a law student does not make you more qualified to work on a campaign than someone who has no legal experience. Employers value campaign experience. Even when the work involved is quintessentially lawyering, lawyering in the campaign context is more prized than fancy lawyering in another arena. If you do not have any campaign experience, show up and be willing to work hard at whatever is required.
Although some campaign jobs are posted on online job boards, networking will always be a crucial way to obtain a job in the political field. More so than most jobs, a spot on a campaign is rarely secured through the cover letter and interview process alone.
Instead, someone you know will get in touch with someone they know to get the ball rolling. If you do not know anyone currently working on a particular campaign, reach out to campaign alums; many campaign workers are repeat players, and if a friend has worked on a campaign before, chances are good that he or she may know someone now working on the campaign that has caught your interest. Use your college or law school alumni connections.
Identify alumni working on campaigns or otherwise affiliated with partisan work i. Also, student groups often have an inside track on the campaigns. Contact the presidents of the law school GOP or Dems, or the American Constitution Society or Federalist Society; they should be able to help you or put you in touch with someone who can.
If they do not have any contacts, they could refer you to undergraduate partisan groups. If you do not have a particular connection, you might simply show up at a campaign office or event, introduce yourself, and ask how you can help. If you can volunteer for a period of time, or are willing to travel, you may be put to work after just one visit to the campaign office with resume in hand.
Watch social media, read the newspaper, and be on the lookout for ways to get involved with a campaign of interest to you. Senior campaign staff will look to the people who are already involved with the campaign to take on positions of greater responsibility.
If you can volunteer, put in the hours that the staff are putting in; they will respect your commitment and be more likely to consider you as one of their own.
Keep your head down and get your work done. Being good at what you do is one of the best ways to get noticed. The second-best solution requires a bit of moxie and a bit of homework: look at regulatory disclosure records the Federal Election Commission [FEC] for federal races, and equivalent state bodies for state races to find out if a partner at a law firm with which you are affiliated was a major donor to a past campaign in the same party.
Occasionally, major donors may know of available routes to campaign work even if they have not themselves worked full-time on a campaign. That depends on what you want to do. If you do not have an inside connection, you are not going to be the campaign manager of a presidential campaign, or even a highly-placed deputy. But if you do not mind a position that is considered less glamorous in the campaign world, a high-profile campaign is not out of reach, especially if you start early.
Communications and policy work tend to be the most highly sought after, and therefore the first to go to people with inside connections. Other functions—especially field positions such as organizers, which are often more commonly available—may be more open to those without such a connection. Even in presidential campaigns, many people start as volunteers in the primary season.
It is not always easy to figure out where to send a campaign application. First, of course, check the campaign website for job postings, and follow application instructions for any that interest you. If there are no such postings, then on a smaller campaign, you might send your application directly to the candidate, or to the campaign manager.
On a larger campaign, you may be able to determine the functional or geographic head of the department you want to work for from press reports or from the campaign website. There may be a central volunteer coordinator tasked with placing campaign volunteers. If you cannot determine the appropriate addresses from public sources, simply send your materials to someone whom you know to be affiliated with the campaign, and ask that they forward your materials to the appropriate individual.
If you are submitting your application cold, you should prepare a resume, emphasizing any political or campaign experience, and a succinct cover letter. In your cover letter, you should state as clearly as possible what you would like to do on the campaign and how flexible you are willing to be. Keep in mind, as mentioned above, that there are not many policy or communications jobs on a campaign, especially for someone with no close connections.
The most numerous and available jobs are often in the field—field organizers or field managers—so including a willingness to do this could help. Often, campaign personnel are too overburdened to give much thought to placing new hires or volunteers, and may sit on an application simply because they do not have time to think of an appropriate placement.
To the extent that your cover letter can save them the mental effort, it will be processed more quickly. Do not get so busy boasting about experience and qualifications in your cover letter that you fail to explicitly mention the candidate and your support of them. Along the same lines, demonstrating your own competence will often speak louder than a resume. If you want to do a particular type of work that requires written output briefing papers, policy papers, talking points, speechwriting , include an example of what you would produce for the campaign: not a generic writing sample, but something tailored for your position in your chosen campaign.
The bigger the campaign, the more useful this approach will be. If you are living in Minneapolis and want to work on the gubernatorial race or any other state or local race , writing out a stump speech is not going to be as effective as going down to a campaign office and introducing yourself.
However, if you are from Cedar Rapids and write up a precinct-by-precinct field plan backed with data for a presidential front-runner, they just may get back to you. Especially if you have had similar campaign experience before, you may be hired for a particular spot at a particular salary.
If not, you may be expected to work as a volunteer first, especially if the campaign is just getting its fundraising operation started. Most paid positions are paid weekly, and except for experienced and high-profile senior operatives, the compensation will be fairly meager. Depending on the structure of the campaign and your particular role, you may also be hired as an independent consultant, without medical insurance or other benefits.
Few people take entry-level campaign positions for the immediate monetary rewards. Most realize that working for free will provide them with connections that will pay off later in their career, especially if they have political aspirations or aspirations in political law.
Some campaigns provide different forms of support for their volunteers, which can cut down your living costs. You may not have to pay rent if you can arrange campaign housing with supporters. Additionally, depending on your role, you might have access to a campaign vehicle. And certain jobs, such as advance work, will cover traveling expenses.
There are many ways to get involved with a campaign without giving up your day job or taking a leave from school. Make sure you check on your legal limitations or ethical obligations before signing up for a campaign.
Kennedy over the sallow Richard Nixon , television appearances have played an integral role in the campaign. Contemporary presidential candidates often undergo lengthy training before ever appearing on television. Preceding the primary elections, Republicans held no fewer than 28 nationally televised debates. Political candidates and organizations spend billions of dollars on television ads -- by some accounts, as much as 75 percent of a campaign's budget goes directly towards the production and airing of television advertisements.
Now in the 21st century, presidential candidates rely on the Internet -- with official websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts to provide constant access to the voting public and to increase candidates' reach beyond television.
Although the system of the presidential election has remained a constant in American society, the methods of campaigning have drastically changed since Jefferson's days. After generations of political pamphlets, newspaper smears, and catchy slogans "I Like Ike!
The election contest between incumbent John Quincy Adams and challenger Andrew Jackson highlights an election precedent. While Jackson did not campaign, he was the first candidate to run his own campaign by communicating directly with local Democratic committees across the country and he readily won his rematch with Adams.
Such vitriolic and personal attacks can be found in many later presidential campaigns. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of , which permitted voters in each territory to decide whether to allow slavery as they became states, led to violence in Kansas and more polarization around the issue throughout the nation. With the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court soon after his inauguration holding that Congress could not deny slave owners their property in any U.
Thomas Nast. Victoria Woodhull. The American suffrage movement was a big tent in the 19th century and included many colorful characters. His financial backing enabled them to become the first female stockbrokers in with an office near the New York Stock Exchange, where they attracted many female clients. Their success emboldened them to start a newspaper. Although these were radical ideas for the time, they were tame compared with the articles inside the newspaper endorsing free love freedom to marry or divorce or live without marriage , suffrage, sex education, and equality for women.
By Woodhull was announcing her interest in running for the presidency. But this is an epoch of sudden changes and startling surprises. What may appear absurd today will assume a serious aspect to-morrow.
Woodhull offers herself in apparent good faith as a candidate, and perhaps has a remote impression, or rather hope, that she may be elected but it seems she is rather in advance of her time. In she became the first American woman to run for the White House as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party which was allied with suffragist groups. Opposing her were Republican President Ulysses S. Most of her campaigning was in New York, and there is no record of how many votes she received.
Nonetheless, she had set an important precedent. In the territory of Wyoming gave women the right to vote. In , the same year Woodhull ran, suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York, for trying to vote in the presidential election.
A dozen years later voters in eight states created ballots to vote for Belva Lockwood. Belva A. Lockwood was a teacher and school principal before she became a lawyer. Overcoming many barriers before gaining admission to a law school and to legal practice strengthened her resolve to improve the legal and social status of women. Due to her efforts Congress passed a law in allowing female attorneys to practice in the federal court system.
Lockwood then became the first woman to be admitted to the U. Supreme Court bar, and in the first woman to argue before the court. In she agreed to be the candidate for President of the National Equal Rights Party and massed over 4, votes; she would run again in Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. Presidential candidates. Election overview Battleground states Presidential debates Candidates on the issues.
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