Worried about an exodus of former midterm campaign staffers from the industry, a Democratic training organization moved faster than ever to standup a weekend skills session with an eye toward placing its class in the jobs of a presidential cycle that’s already underway.
The campaign industry has been anticipating a staffing shortage this cycle for some time. In fact, some consultants are adapting their business models to account for it. Now, training organizations are moving to fill some of the void as well.
“For us, this moment right now where we are transitioning from one cycle to another, this is really primetime,” said Lauren Baer, a managing partner at Democratic training shop Arena. “We consider this probably the most critical moment in our work because this is the moment where we are trying to capture talent that has worked on a previous cycle and ensure that we can retain and leverage that talent for future wins. We do this because we know there are massive attrition problems when it comes to staffing.”
To put the challenge into perspective, Baer estimates the left will need more than 18,500 campaign staff to “fully and adequately staff” campaigns from President Biden’s anticipated reelect to state legislative races in 2023-2024. In Arena’s class this week, called Academy 201, the group has 151 students.
Still, Baer sees a silver lining in the lack of a Democratic White House primary. “Historically, on the Democratic side, those down-ballot races have had real staffing droughts because the talent gets sucked to the top of the ticket,” she said.
Baer also sees her organization as able to help diversify her side of the industry. She notes the incoming class of trainees is majority female with 9 percent identifying as transgender or non-binary, 58 percent identifying as BIPOC (black, Indigenous and people of color) and 37 percent LGBTQ+.
“This is the most diverse class of individuals we have ever trained,” she said.
Looking ahead longer term, Baer sees her program as helping alleviate the lack of diversity at Democratic consulting firms as well.
“The consultant class is reflective of individuals who have previously worked on campaigns and have graduated onto the consulting level,” she said. “To expect right now that the consulting class would be fully reflective of the country or of the [Democratic] party sort of ignores where that group of talent has come from. We are trying to solve for this in the future by creating a pipeline of talent that can work on campaigns now and become the consultants of tomorrow.”
She added: “But what we’re also doing is equipping our campaign managers to think about diversity and equity and inclusion when they are hiring their consultant teams.”
Still, while the focus of the most recent training was on management skills, it still provides a session on “layering digital programs.” That’s because digital is an area where Arena has identified a large gap between the number of job openings and the available pool of skilled applicants.
“This is an area where we have noticed over the years increasing talent gaps at the same time as there has been an increasing need to run robust digital campaigns,” Baer said.
Part of the reason for the talent gap may be down to budget.
“[On] most races around the country this year, there will not be the budget or capacity to hire an independent digital director,” she said. “That’s just not something you would usually see on a race below a congressional level with a congressional budget. And so part of what we are trying to do in a program like [this] is equip anyone who’s going to be managing a campaign with the skills that they need to run a robust digital program, even if they can’t have an independent digital hire.”
Debra Cohen, partner and digital director at Arena, said that the focus of the training’s digital section will be on content creation — an area where the right has been leading for some time.
“Historically, progressive digital spending has prioritized fundraising and GOTV, and that needs to change. In order for us to effectively counter the right, we must invest in training staff in these skills and mindsets — particularly with a focus on content creation and strategy,” Cohen said.
