Campaign Manager

Keith Rosendahl is the past campaign manager for Henry Cuellar for re-election as Congressmen for the 28th Congressional District in Texas. We asked Keith some questions about how COVID-19 has changed the way campaigns run, especially in the lead up to the 2020 election.

A campaign manager contract is a important a step to write and sign before you start. Whether you are a candidate who decided to run for office and you quickly found out that you couldn’t do it alone or you are a campaign staffer hired to work on a campaign and you want to make sure you know your compensation, having a campaign manager contract or other agreements is critical. As the days get longer and the campaign picks up, it’s easy to forget to formalize the campaign manager and campaign staff roles. Make sure you have a campaign manager contract or campaign staff letter of agreement. Whether you are a staffer for a candidate, a treasurer, or you fill another role, you want to make sure you put it in writing.

Running for political office is a daunting task that can be exceedingly taxing without a campaign manager at the helm to help run the show. For first-time candidates in particular, getting a viable campaign off the ground is more than a full-time job. Fundraising call time alone is all-consuming, taking up to three to six hours per day of your time five days a week. With so many moving parts to a campaign, there’s no harm (but rather, lots of value) in investing in a campaign manager. A full-time manager is worth the expense.

Campaign management done right means everyone wins. When I first started to work in politics and was a campaign staffer, running campaigns, I learned how important managing up was. 

Whether you're running for city council or congress, hiring a skilled political campaign manager is an essential part of your electoral success. From brainstorming campaign strategies and managing budgets to prepping a candidate for public appearances, the political campaign manager is the backbone of every campaign.

When you first file your candidacy for office, in many jurisdictions your paperwork will ask you to declare a campaign chairperson. You expected that you’d need to hire a campaign manager at some point, but why do you need a campaign chair? Anyway, you think, I’m sure Cousin Larry could do it.

Below, you’ll find a complete list of campaign job descriptions that you might find in a race of moderate size.

Is Graduate School of Political Management worth it? In a word: Maybe. It depends on what your goals are, like just about everything else in life. There are ever increasing opportunities to get master’s degrees in non-traditional ways and, depending on what you want to do with this degree, it may make sense to devote the time and resources to school.