I'm honestly really ignorant on what being a political staffer/consultant entails so here are some general political themed questions and if they're not related to your experience feel free to ignore them/sorry in advance:
No worries man, these are good questions.
In your experience who was the smartest person involved in a political campaign? Is the actual candidate the head honcho who delegates or is there a level of being a pretty face with someone more on the ball coordinating things?
As with anything it can vary significantly, but generally most candidates are not good at understanding or running campaigns. The campaign manager is almost always the smartest guy affiliated with the campaign because he or she understands all of the mechanics - field, finance, communications, political, opposition research, etc - that go into winning. It just requires campaign work experience to get to this level, which most candidates don't have. Which is unfortunate, because candidates with a campaign background would be infinitely better. The campaign manager usually becomes the chief of staff in the congressional office, and remains the close adviser that the candidate generally defers to.
It's not necessarily about being smarter either, it's just that as a politician you have so much pressure and public scrutiny on you, your decision-making process can get completely fucked up. The chief of staff/campaign manager/senior adviser is able to remain independent and rational in the face of sometimes difficult decisions.
Additionally, in a campaign the role of candidate is practically a job description filling a role, just like campaign manager or communications director. 50% of it consists of doing call time, which is calling up community leaders, donors, or voters for support. It's extremely formulaic and planned. The campaign staff ideally provides briefs on each caller - who they have donated to, who they are loyal to, what they want to hear, etc. Good candidates will shut up, sit down, and call who we put in front of them. Bad ones will try to take over strategizing or do things the campaign manager should be doing - these campaigns almost always fail.
What's the ratio of idealists to cynics? I imagine that at least like interns are gung ho about the rightness of the platform and whatnot, but I mean I could imagine (at least on the state level and lower) that an entire staff may legitimately be behind what they're working for. I can, of course, imagine the opposite. What has been your experience?
It gets so murky that I'm not sure I can answer this question. At the lower levels, absolutely. People are complete idealists, and that's why they do what they do. At the higher levels, it becomes this weird mix of cynics and people sort of arguing that the ends justify the means and all of that. Plus, you never know which staff member is bought up by a certain lobby or has their own agenda. Some staffers try to use campaign connections to launch their own political careers or to build up a for-profit business. With these folks you never know if they are truly loyal to the candidate or not, and it becomes a headache trying to figure out everyone's goal. If you guess wrong, you end up sharing info with someone who leaks it or sells it. That was one reason I gave it up, honestly. I don't mind doing shady things. Hell, I have a bad ideas background. But there is no such thing as a true team in politics. Everyone is there for their own reasons and it is tiring not having any compatriots to call your own. Business and start-ups are way better than that. Everyone just wants to make money, and that unites us haha.
Do consultants ever jump ship from election to election? If so do successful consultants ever work against an incumbent they helped get into office? If the previous two are so, is there meaningful regulation to prevent the leaking of privileged information?
Oh yeah, it definitely happens. First off, most consultants juggle multiple races. If we are imagining political staff as a hierarchy, your consultants are above regular staff. They charge more, and they have multiple candidates they work for because they are good enough to churn out work really quickly. Of course, most consultants are partisan, meaning they only work for one side. The best ones truly work for anyone as long as the money is green, though.
With staff, as in people employed directly by the campaign and not contracted out, jumping ship is much more rare, but it happens, mostly on the same side. A top communications director might be asked by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to switch campaigns if one is struggling with their messaging.
Consultants, being gun for hires, sometimes end up facing former clients, especially in primary battles. As far as leaking information or using it, any campaign manager worth their salary ensures everyone that touches the campaign signs a non-disclosure agreement. Even then, there is a weird honor among thieves. There are certain unspoken rules of the game that everyone generally adheres to. The folks that don't adhere ( often the best ones, if we are being honest) are regarded with respect and fear and as outsiders a little bit. They are often the types that double as lobbyists, which I did for a bit. Again, not much appetite for it long-term.
What's the incentive for a staffer/consultant to really get their candidate elected? Is it just reputation like that "Consultant X has won the election for their candidate the last Y times" is good advertising, or is there some kind of direct monetary/favor bonus for working for the winning team?
Weirdly enough, losses don't necessarily hurt staff/consultants' reputations as people know how fickle politics can be. You generally know if a staffer did a good job or not. For instance, if I'm hiring a field director or communications director for a campaign, and I see that their numbers or news coverage was fantastic but their candidate still lost, I don't really hold that against them.
So in a weird way, winning is more for social standing than career purposes. I can have a 6-campaign losing streak and still get hired, but I won't be able to talk shit about that really smug asshole from the Clinton campaign that is always a dick to me. Does that make sense? I know it's fucking weird, but it's another reason I wasn't into it.
Others, like myself, enjoy the influence that comes from having an elected official that owes you one. I still take their phone calls and give them advice, and if there is a bill or something I really don't like, I can call them up and lean on them pretty hard. It's a perk for sure.
For concretely, most consultants and managers have a "win bonus" written into their contracts, equivalent to a couple of months worth of salary or so. The candidate wins, you get an extra $10K or so. It helps with the loyalty thing quite a bit, making it pretty expensive for an opposing campaign to buy someone off.
