Campaign Organizations Brace for Long Haul

Chris Cillizza has posted a "who's who" of Sen. Hillary Clinton's formidable roster of campaign staffers at The Fix . This is just the latest in his "Inner Circle" series. Previous entries dealt with Sam Brownback (R-KS), Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY), and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). Very interesting reading all around. Did you know that Detroit pizza magnate Tom Donahue Monaghan is in the Brownback camp? That Dodd picked up two key advisors who would have worked for Mark Warner (Jim Jordan and Amos Hochstein)? That Giuliani scooped up recent gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jim Nussle (R-IA), despite their deep differences over abortion and gay rights?

Overall, the lists are very impressive. There's nothing tentative about these campaign organizations, even though we're a year away from the first primary. The candidates are scrambling to load up with staffers and start raising money because they know that they are in for a significantly longer and more expensive battle than ever seen before. A front page story in the New York Times today details the "breathtakingly fast start" to this presidential election cycle, which is "exposing an ever-growing field of candidates to longer, more intensive scrutiny and increasing the amount of money they need to remain viable." Clinton has signalled that she will opt out of public financing for both the primary and general election parts of the cycle, which may lead most or all of the other front-runners to do the same.

The pressure felt in this early part of the process has also been intensified by the increasingly front-loaded nature of the primary calendar. South Carolina and Nevada have officially been moved up to the first few weeks along with Iowa and New Hampshire, and many other states are considering moving their primaries to earlier dates (California, Michigan, New Jersey and Illinois are mentioned in the Times article, but I've also heard rumblings about Florida). Consquently, the campaigns have to jockey for a strong position at the outset. It's hard to picture any late entrant to the field gaining significant traction.