Campaigns & Elections' Politics - February 2008 - (Page 41) Don’t Jump! Trust Us, There Is Life After a Losing Campaign. By Theodora A. Blanchfield ou poured blood, sweat and tears into working on a presidential campaign. But then the primaries came around, and your candidate got steamrolled. Your career is over. Your life is over. Hold on. Not so fast, there. There’s still the general election, and that’s where you can rekindle your career. Strategists on both sides of the aisle agree that campaign staffers’ best hope of staying in the game is joining the team of their party’s nominee. That’s right, go play for the guys you just tried to beat. “It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you lost a battle, not the entire war,” says Democratic consultant Craig Varoga. “There’s plenty of opportunity to continue to work on the general with enhanced skills.” “Unless you were the press guy who was out there every day hammering your opponent publicly, you should be able to join the general election team,” says Bill Pascoe, a Republican strategist. He says that the first thing the nominee’s campaign does is choose the general election team. “You’ve been in direct contact and opposition with the losing team the entire campaign,” Pascoe says. “You can’t help but learn through the process who on the other campaign staff is any good.” Courtney O’Donnell is among those who ended up working for a rival campaign, and she barely had to try. No stranger to losing campaigns, O’Donnell spent 2002 on two failed races: Janet Reno’s bid in the Democratic primary for Florida governor and Bob Clement’s run for Fred Thompson’s Senate seat in Tennessee. In 2003, Howard Dean hired her as assistant to the campaign manager. She ultimately became Dean’s deputy communications director. After Dean withdrew on Feb. 18, 2004, O’Donnell ended up working for the Democratic National Committee and, ultimately, on the Kerry-Edwards ticket as Elizabeth Edwards’ deputy communications director. “I definitely believed when the Dean campaign ended that I wouldn’t work for another campaign,” O’Donnell says. “But when the time came, I wanted to see the race through to the end.” At the end of the day, she says, politics is a small world. Everyone knows each other, and if you produce a good product, it’s going to be recognized. “I found it easier than I thought it would be. There’s a true need to unite for the end of the finish line.” So how do you present yourself as a winner coming from a losing team? Here are some tips from campaign veterans. Y Tip No. 1: Give Your Loser All You’ve Got Republican consultant Pascoe and Democratic consultant Varoga probably don’t agree on too much. But both say that the most important thing is to demonstrate professionalism.
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.