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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Feltus, William J., author. | Goldstein, Kenneth M., author. | Dallek, Matthew, author.
Title: Inside campaigns : elections through the eyes of political professionals / William J. Feltus, George Washington University, Kenneth M. Goldstein, University of San Francisco, Matthew Dallek, George Washington University.
Description: Second Edition. | Washington, DC : CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., [2019] | Previous edition: 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006752 | ISBN 9781544316741 (Paperback : acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Campaign managementUnited States.
Classification: LCC JK2281 .F45 2019 | DDC 324.70973dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006752
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
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Preface
The campaign just becomes a bunch of questions you have to answer.
And once youve answered the questions, you have to follow through on that answer.
ROBBY MOOK, CAMPAIGN MANAGER, HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT, 2016
Even though we have experienced an election in 2016 where the rules supposedly did not apply, anyone who hopes to pursue a career in politicsor just be a good citizenshould be familiar with some basics about the electorate and the mechanics of election campaigns. Although energy, hard work, creativity, and political instinct cannot be taught, there are specific skills that are crucial in modern campaigns. This book will teach you how to understand the fundamental factors that drive elections in America and to learn some of the skills employed by political professionals.
The goal of this book is to go beyond the spin and hyperbole of many election commentators about a particular contest. The goal is to help you understand how voters decide and how strategists persuade and to give you some of the technical skills to get an interesting job with a campaign. The book combines the insights of campaign professionals with insight from the study of previous campaigns and scholarly research. It combines theory, practice, and exploration, taking the insights of political scientists and political practitioners and rolling them into one.
This book seeks to reveal what really happens inside American political campaigns and to unpeel some myths. During each election season, the contemporary political media tends to hype the latest new campaign technologies and tactics as revolutionary game changers and election winners. In fact, they rarely are. Layered on top of this is the near-single-minded focus among scholars and journalists on presidential elections, a focus that tends to obscure the realities of nonpresidential election contests and the effects that campaigns can have on election results.
To gain a broader understanding of American campaigns, we interviewed more than 140 campaign managers and political professionals using a combination of in-depth conversations and structured questionnaires. Using insights from our research and our own experiences covering, studying, and doing campaigns, this book takes the reader on a tour of modern election campaigns as seen through the eyes of the women and men who run them. A Textbook on Managing Campaigns, by the Managers Themselves is how the New York Times headlined a 2014 article about our research and writing. This book shows when, how, and why campaigns matter, using the experiences and the words of campaign managers themselves to shed new light on why this distinctly American political process, warts and all, is still the best demonstration of democracy in action.
The second edition of Inside Campaigns appears on the heels of a 2016 election in which campaign managers loomed large. Rarely has the media paid such rapt attention to campaign managers as it paid to Donald Trumps as he cycled through multiple managers, each of them high-profile and scandal-plagued, and multiple organizational setups.
