.
July 2008 article:
7/20/2008, "Obama's paid staff dwarfing McCain's," Boston Globe, Brian C. Mooney
(parag. 14): "Obama's
campaign is optimistic it can reach its lofty targets because it
achieved ambitious goals in its long, brutal fight to upset Hillary
Clinton and win the Democratic nomination. Underlying the optimism is an
unerring faith in the premise of the Obama candidacy that many
Americans are angry, anxious, and engaged as never before in the
political process because they want change....
His campaign already has by far the largest full-time paid staff in
presidential campaign history, and unlike Republican rival John
McCain's, continues to grow by the day....
Under Obama, the state
party operations, which traditionally have been called victory
committees or coordinated campaigns, have been renamed in each state as
the "Campaign for Change."
"The climate has made millions of
Americans who haven't been involved in a political campaign ever in
their lifetimes very active," Hildebrand said. "We estimate that 70
percent of our grass-roots volunteers haven't worked in a campaign
before....We're somewhere just shy of 2 million volunteers, and we
think we can potentially triple that on Election Day."
That would mean 6 million volunteers. For comparison, about 116 million people voted in the 2004 presidential election.
The
Obama-Clinton battle set primary turnout records in state after state,
and Hildebrand expects more of the same in November....
To accomplish that, Obama's campaign is assembling
what would be the largest field operation in the history of American
politics. Advertising and campaign communications will be important and
debate performances will be critical, but the Obama campaign is
investing heavily in the importance of organizing voters and getting
them to the polls on Nov. 4....
As of May 31, the
Obama campaign staff was...nearly three times the size of McCain's
current staff, and has expanded significantly since.
Through the
end of May, the Obama campaign had spent $35.7 million on salaries and
benefits, triple the $11.9 million spent by the McCain campaign,
according to tabulations by the Center for Responsive Politics, a
nonpartisan research group."...
.........
.............
.....................
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment