Creative Campaigning: Pacs and the Presidential Selection Process by Anthony Corrado

Author:Anthony Corrado [Corrado, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American Government, National, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780813314501
Google: 9TGHAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 4984373
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1992-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Developing a Campaign Organization

A PAC may not overtly build a campaign organization or hire personnel with an express guarantee that they will also be employed by the PAC sponsor's future campaign committee without jeopardizing its sponsor's legal status as a noncandidate. But it may engage in activities that effectively accomplish these ends. A PAC may hire political operatives and consultants to help it plan and conduct its operations. It may also form state subsidiaries or steering committees and recruit volunteers to assist its staff in implementing committee programs. When an aspirant registers his or her formal campaign committee, these individuals can be shifted from the PAC's payroll to the campaign's payroll or be asked to assist the campaign in some voluntary capacity. A PAC is thus used to recruit and employ a shadow campaign staff while remaining legally unaffiliated with its sponsor's campaign committee.

Bush's Fund for America's Future (FAF) represents the best example of how a PAC is used to establish the foundation of a campaign organization. From the outset, this committee's structure closely resembled the organizational schema of a presidential campaign in its initial phase. By May of 1986, the committee had a nationwide staff of approximately fifty persons and an average monthly payroll of about $60,000.2 Half of the staff worked in the committee's Washington office, including the committee's chairman, Lee Atwater, who served as the deputy campaign manager of the 1984 Reagan-Bush Committee; its executive director, William Maxwell, a former executive director of the Republican National Committee; and its political director, Helen Cameron, who ran voter registration efforts for the 1984 Reagan-Bush campaign. The fund also hired a staff of three researchers and a number of consultants, including Fred Bush, a specialist in major donor fundraising; Odell, Roper and Associates, a well-known direct mail firm; Craig Shirley, a consultant who works with youth and conservative groups; Roy Hale, an accounting specialist; and Jan Baran, a federal election law expert who formerly served as executive assistant to the chair of the Federal Election Commission.3

FAFs political operation was coordinated by four Washington-based regional political directors, each of whom was responsible for one of four geographic areas (the South, the Southwest and grain-belt states, the West, and the Northeast and Midwest),4 These individuals worked with staff members hired by the committee to work in specific states and with volunteers recruited by the PAC to help carry out its activities in states and localities. In particular, FAF established political operations in states that would hold crucial delegate selection contests in the 1988 election. In Michigan, where the 1986 precinct delegate elections were considered to be the first major political contest of the 1988 Republican nomination campaign, the committee hired a staff of fourteen and recruited a large corps of volunteers.5 FAF also hired full-time staff in Iowa and New Hampshire.6 These individuals, in addition to helping build the party, laid the groundwork for Bush's campaign organizations in these states.

One of the tasks FAF assigned to its political staff was the formation of state steering committees.

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