The more manageable size of an Assembly District makes the local contact programs a good manager can set up more important in the total scheme of things than they often are in the larger State Senate or Congressional Districts. In a primary Assembly race, with even fewer voters, these programs double in importance.

Most Assembly races have a consultant and a manager. Sometimes the manager is the driver of the two entities, but much more often in California the consultants are the drivers. This is an exception to the national rule. This may be one of the reasons that "campaign managers" in California tend to be younger and less experienced than those I meet from other states. In short, if your career has a glass ceiling because a consulting firm is going to call all the shots, you do the job for a few years until you can either join a consulting firm or get a job in the legislature or 3rd house.

On the GOP side this glass ceiling has led to a new crop of inexperienced "yes men" every year who know their future is based more on their relationship with the consultant than in their performance in the field. While this may not be a big deal in primaries, there are only a handful of ‘ballknocker’ managers you can send into a tight target race where the GOP is in the minority and who can run the programs needed to win. Worse, because the legislative jobs generally pay a bit better than party jobs, it means the couple dozen party, or victory, or top of ticket jobs are usually filled by complete novices who often do more harm than good. This translates to less effective statewide absentee drills, voter ID drills, and Election Day GOTV drills.

Obviously there are exceptions to the rule. But they are few and far between. One can probably think of the names in a few seconds: Jimmy Camp, Mike Richman, Brian Lanza, Chip Englander, and Paul Hegyi come to mind right away. Phil Paule, Carl Fogliani, and Steve Danon also come to mind but each is sort of doing other things now. I’m sure there are others, but I’ve only had one cup of coffee.

All this to note over the last couple of years I’ve seen a strong cadre of younger campaign workers generating in the southern part of the state… folks who had important roles in some of the big off year fights down here and who will be coming into their own this cycle and next. So I thought I’d note who they are, and where they are working, and track their careers a bit over the next year. I’m starting with the hotly contested 77th Assembly District primary:

77Assembly District (candidate – manager or account representative)

Jack Dale – Sam Oh (Horton 04, some ballot initiative experience) Joel Anderson – Collin McGlashen (Horton 04) Debbie Beyer – Heather Adams (New) Nancy Beecham – Chris Hansen (Faulconer 05) Bill Jenkins – Unknown

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.