Campaign Manager

A CAMPAIGN MANAGER organizes modern electoral campaigns. The campaign manager is the individual who assumes the range of tasks and responsibilities that include running day-to-day operations, raising funds, developing strategy, and coordinating the efforts of campaign staff and volunteers. In smaller, more local campaigns, the campaign manager is usually responsible for overseeing all of these aspects of the campaign. In larger, more national campaigns, the campaign manager is usually responsible for communicating the overall goals of the campaign and organizing the performance of senior staff, advisors, and consultants who are themselves charged with overseeing other aspects of the campaign.

The campaign manager remains a trusted advisor and confidant who can craft the image of a candidate.

The role of campaign manager has grown and changed with time. In the early republic, before the formation of political parties, campaigning was perceived by some founders to be a socially undignified and politically partisan means by which to seek office. Such perception did not, however, prevent them from deploying surrogates and operatives who could more overtly advance policy interests and solicit votes.

The earliest and most notable example is that of John Beckley, who was the first clerk of the House of Representatives, and later appointed the first Librarian of Congress. Beckley managed a number of endeavors on behalf of his trusted friend, Thomas Jefferson. The range of these efforts, which included anything from publishing anti-Federalist and pro-Jefferson literature, to collecting gossip about Jefferson's rivals, purposely benefited Jefferson's political interests and his presidential campaigns in 1796 and 1800.

Similar practices continued in campaigns into the late 1800s. But with the last decade of the 19th century came the advent of the modern political campaign and the modern concept and qualities of the campaign manager. When Grover Cleveland was nominated as the Democratic Party candidate for president in 1892, his campaign managers sought to emphasize their candidate's celebrity, and to give voters the impression that Cleveland was called upon by the electorate, not the party elite. So, in a departure from the tradition of an exclusive notification ceremony in the nominee's home, Cleveland's campaign managers organized a public notification ceremony at Madison Square Garden in New York. While such tactical support from campaign managers aided in Cleveland's election to the presidency, it was not until the 1896 presidential campaign that the modern form of campaign manager became more concrete.

Mark Hanna, a businessman and personal friend of Republican candidate William McKinley, left his business interests to act as McKinley's national campaign manager. In that role, he developed a successful strategy that, while unconventional at the time, persists to the present day.

Hanna's strategy included at least three prominent features: creating formal relationships between political party and corporate contributors, installing the president as party leader, and organizing an elaborate campaign staff. This strategy relied on devoting the bulk of campaign resources to the publication and distribution of campaign materials that could deliver McKinley's message to as much of the population as possible. Hanna also advised McKinley to receive and address crowds of people on the front porch of the McKinley home in Canton, Ohio. By communicating more closely with the electorate, the candidate and his platform could become more identifiable and the candidate could generate networks of popular support.

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