#3- The Perks of a Professional Staff

There are bonuses to the staff equation besides having a full fledged pedigreed team of number crunchers. You get two things-- some continuity between campaigns, and you get some respect. I'll use the Lt. Gov race as an example for both points. The Franks campaign just hired a professional operative, AJ Carrillo, to run its operation. Best move they could have made. In 2006, Carrillo was slaying a giant Republican incumbent in the CA-11 and replacing him with a guy who's an alternative energy consultant and, by all reports, a stupefying boring math geek. A.J. has relationships. He has relationships with his former boss, and his former boss's donors. Want to get an immediate net roots bump? Let Carrillo call Rep. McNurty and send out an email to his supporter list. West Coast money flowing to Jamie Franks from Mooreville, MS? Absolutely.

And consider the actual story posted on Magnolia Report. It was glowing. They said that Franks had hired a big shot campaign manager who was fresh from slaying popular incumbent republicans in a conservative district. That plays well in the press, in the political circles, and in the donor circles. The last thing MR printed about Franks was "the fact that he raised less than 30k in the previous year indicates that there's not much enthusiasm for his campaign." That's a big difference. It's not the kind of difference you can expect when your campaign manager's previous job title is "office manager."