Finally: After a few months of research into the challenges people who work in politics face, what can we do about it? How can we make working in this industry a better, more accessible experience?

My favorite part of the interview process was asking people for their most radical and most realistic solutions to make this industry more sustainable. (It was interesting to see what people thought of as crazy vs. practical!)

Here are some of the ideas that have really stuck with me and given me some hope:

1. Democrats have spent the last decade getting really good at raising small-dollar grassroots money online. Although we are nowhere close to not being reliant on ultrawealthy megadonors, the more money we raise online, the less accountable to the desires of billionaires we are. This means we’re getting closer to organizations being able to budget longer term and for things billionaires don’t seem to want to focus on, like training, benefits, and HR.
2. I went into this work thinking we had kind of tackled the pay issues and were ready to think about other aspects of equity, but I discovered there just isn’t consistency across the industry. Some organizations pay very well, and some don’t. One interviewee suggestion something I love to combat this: an organization that tracks and publicizes pay, benefits, hiring, and other data that would help people choose where to work, and engender a “race to the top” so that organizations would have to make real commitments to achieving equity in their workplace.
3. A few people mentioned that the DCCC, the congressional campaign arm of the party, has begun requiring its vendors to audit the diversity of their staff. (This came about after some scandal around their own lack of diversity in previous election cycles, so we know shame can be a powerful motivator!) Tying business interests and funding to requirements like this, and increasing data sharing around the subject of organizational diversity (including pay, seniority, etc.) could help hasten industry-wide change and would be another way to give employees more agency.
4. Several people suggested a four-day work week, mandatory minimum vacation days, and other ways to ensure people get and actually take time off. I know of a few organizations who are already implementing these policies. More transparency (see #2!) around this could create a snowball effect and bring these policies into the mainstream fairly quickly.
5. Another thing that multiple people mentioned was shuttering or combining organizations and firms, which have proliferated in recent years as more people seek agency in their careers, to consolidate resources and talent. This could help provide more resources for staffing between December of an election year and spring of the followin year, and would also encourage longer-term investment in employees, if there is less of a chance of them jumping ship to another firm/organization that can pay them better.
6. One subject that came up more often than I expected was the separation between young, generally more progessive staffers and organizational leadership when it comes to strategic direction or the best way to play the politics of a given issue or news cycle — especially around highly personal and high stakes issues. Several people, including senior staffers, spoke about how demoralizing it can be when their employer or party leaders act in ways that are contrary to their values, such as by endorsing a candidate who isn’t their favorite, or spending money in ways that indicate their community is not a priority, or failing to stand up for people like them. Another commonly cited, related challenge was feeling like leaders are just used to doing things a certain way and can be loath to try new approaches, which are generally the ones necessary to win over new or infrequent voters. In my experience, we had to *beg* for every dollar of digital ad budget, while TV consultants didn’t have to justify much of their recommendations at all. The solution is not completely breaking down all hierarchy, or ignoring the wisdom that comes from experience, but we need to find ways to provide more clarity around organizational purpose and room for employee input or at least transparency into strategy and values-based decisions, like whom to endorse or how to react to action by the administration.
7. Last but not least — this one is my personal favorite — if stability is our goal we need to create a way for people to not lose their job, salary, or health care after the election cycle ends. Several of my interviewees explicitly brought up the idea of a centralized organization or program that would employ people more permanently, almost like a staffing agency. There are certainly business model questions to work out here, but this is the idea I am most eager to keep exploring. (It could even serve some of the transparency purposes mentioned above.)

A quick note on who I interviewed

I knew it would be very important to interview a diverse group of Democratic staffers, with different backgrounds and from different parts of the industry. So for my research this summer, I interviewed 20 people, eight of whom have left electoral politics or stepped back in some way, and the rest of whom have thought about leaving at some point.

I interviewed 5 men, 13 women, and 1 trans person, and my interviewees were 55% white, 20% Hispanic, 25% Asian American, and 10% Black. For more demographic information on my interviewees, check out my blog!

The folks I spoke to worked at different kinds of organizations — political consulting firms, campaigns, PACs and other nonprofits — at a variety of seniority levels.

They grew up wealthier than average, with more than 40% describing their family as upper middle class, along with 30% middle class and 20% working class. Five are immigrants and three more first-generation Americans. Seven identified as LGBT. Everyone is between the ages of 25 and 45.

As I move forward with this research, I definitely want to speak to more people of color, especially Black women, and also more parents or people who are caretakers or financially support someone besides their kids. I also want to do further analysis (including more interviews and also a survey) of any differences in experiences, pay from the first job in politics, current pay, and other metrics by race, gender, education, immigration and citizenship status, and family of original socioeconomic status.

What comes next?

I’ll be continuing these interviews this fall, and launching a survey to gather a wider array of opinions. My goal is to eventually develop some sort of program that would address these concerns and make working in politics long-term more of an available path to more people.

I can’t wait to continue exploring how to make this industry a better place to work, so that we can serve voters better.

Thanks to the Women and Public Policy program, and especially my advisor Professor Kim Leary for supporting this work. Also a huge note of gratitude to everyone who has allowed me to take an hour of their time to interview them so far — you all are brilliant and give me a lot of hope about this work.

Next: Almost every organization in Democratic politics operates on the two-year election cycle. How does this unique structure affect employees’ ability and desire to continue working in this industry?

Working in politics generally means being unemployed every two years at best, for about 2–3 months at least. (Primaries and late hiring mean jobs are often even shorter.) That means losing your salary, of course, but also your health care. While the end-of-cycle downsizing is frustrating to everyone, it is much harder to justify working at a job with that as its inevitable endpoint if you have people (including yourself!) who rely on you for critical medical care or financial support.

Although I wish I could have talked to more parents and caregivers (and that is high on my list for further research this fall!), the one mom and former campaign manager I did speak to told me it was never even a possibility that she would continue doing that kind of cycle-based work when she had her daughter. She specifically sought out a full-time, non-cycle-based job based on its parental leave policy, and then ended up leaving that job to do her own consulting for the better flexibility and control over her own fate.

An operations director I spoke to told me she has seen many people, especially parents, turn down jobs because the instability was not workable for them.

Several people — men and women — said that their jobs have gotten in the way of finding a partner or starting a family. (This rings quite true to me!) And at least one person who left politics for a job in tech explicitly told me she did so because she wanted to start a family with her partner, and did not feel that was possible at her old political role.

And of course, cycle-based hiring is a product of the way these campaigns and organizations raise money — donors want to fund media budgets, not HR, in the words of one COO. There just is not often funding for “off-cycle” work, or even programs like trainings or fellowships that do not measurably contribute to current-cycle electoral victories, an executive director told me. And then by the time organizations are ready to begin staffing up for the next cycle, some talented people have moved out of politics, or at least decamped to the relative stability of a political consulting firm.

Stability will be my main focus as I try to develop solutions to make Democratic political work more sustainable.

P.S. One quick note — I’ve been asked a few times why I’m not also talking to Republican staffers or if my research is relevant across the aisle.

To that I’ll say three things:

• First, I’m a Democrat who has worked in Democratic politics and cares about improving electoral outcomes for progressives, so that’s where I have expertise and interest.
• Second, the equivalent elections “industry” on the Republican side is actually organized quite differently, and the way money flows in Republican politics actually alleviates some of the issues around stability. They hire more people on a standard, long-term basis, because they have the funding for it and have structured their organizations in this way.
• Third, as one of my interviewees told me, whenever she thinks about how to make her organization more sustainable while also winning elections, she remembers that Republican organizations, in general, do care about this. The coalition politics on the Democratic side are simply different, and cultivating a diverse pipeline to leadership is a strategic imperative.

So for all those reasons, this research is really only relevant to Democratic or progressive organizations.

First up: Unionizing is becoming more and more common in Democratic organizations and campaigns — which problems do these unions solve, and which do they not?

Democrats are the party of labor. We love unions. So what happens when Democratic workplaces start to unionize?

Although it’s far from universal, in the past few years we’ve seen the staffs of large campaigns like Bernie 2020, major Democratic nonprofits and PACs like the Center for American Progress, party committees like the DNC, consulting firms like Rising Tide Interactive, and even progressive Congressional offices begin the process of unionizing their workplaces. In some cases, the union was immediately recognized by management, in others the process took longer. Likewise, negotiating the contract can go quickly, but more often it takes a long time.

I’ve asked all my interviewees what they think the role of unions is in political workplaces, and specifically whether they are helpful in solving the issues we discussed in our conversation, namely increased job satisfaction and retention of diverse talent. I have been curious about this from the perspective of developing solutions to the

Keep in mind, these folks are at all stages of their career, and come from a variety of racial, socioecnomic, and even (to an extent — I will discuss this more in my final report) educational backgrounds. Some are managers, some are not. Some come from union families. However, I only interviewed one person who is actually a union member, which is a gap in my research I hope to fill in the future.

So with the caveat that I need to explore that missing perspective more, here is what I’ve learned.

First of all, as we would expect, progressives love unions, and to a person, everyone I spoke to said they support or would support a union in their workplace if that was what the workers demanded. I believe this attitude and the incentives that underlie it (from millions of literal dollars in union donations to preogressive bona fides considerations) put a union negotiating with the management of a progressive political nonprofit in a unique position compared to other union organizers.

Based on my research, I would divide the demands of union organizers in Democratic and progressive workplaces into two categories: The first category is the kind of standards we typically see unions advocate for in other industries — things like working conditions, fair pay, better benefits, guaranteed breaks, weekends, and limits on hours worked per week. The second category is a little more nebulous, but focuses on building inclusive workplaces and giving more junior workers a voice in organizational strategy.

All of these are also goals of this project, so I am especially keen to understand where unions fit in to the landscape of solutions to these challenges.

Most people believed it was their organization’s job to create a workplace that allows their employees to do their jobs successfully and grow professionally. Most thought that union should not be necessary if the organization is well-managed: “I don’t think nonprofits should have unions because they should just be fairly run,” said one COO I spoke to.

One organizational leader I spoke to said that from her perspective, “Unions are about, where is the pressure coming from?” She says she feels a sense of internal pressure to create an equitable, sustainable enviromentment for her employees, both because it’s the right thing to do and because “it makes us a well-run organization.” She believes that because of that work coming from the top down, her junior employees have not felt the need to for a union to put pressure on her and the rest of the management, though she would support their efforts if they did.

Several people I spoke to said they wholeheartedly support the right of their colleagues or any workers to unionize, but have felt that organizers who believe their unionization efforts will bring about significant change in the latter category end up disappointed. The most common refrain was — a union is good at doing what it is set up to do. The problems arise when workers expect the union to bring about change that it cannot reasonably accomplish, or that don’t really fit into a contract.

A few people who had been involved in union negotiations in the past, or witnessed them take place at their workplace, including the one union member I spoke to, mentioned something I had not thought of or realized before: organizers being disappointed in new barriers introduced by forcing all pegs, no matter their shape, into the round hole of a union contract.

The one union member I spoke to (of course, we should not read in to an n-size of 1, but anecdotally) said her union sometimes feels like “a facade” — she is glad to be a part of it, but doesn’t necessarily feel like it has brought about the change that was desired. She says although the union contract creates pay bands, most people she knows are paid at the lower end of those bands. Even if she wanted to participate in the union’s work, she doesn’t have time because she is “constantly working.”

One person also cited an example of high-achieving union organizers at one of her former workplaces, who were more likely to have their work rewarded with bonuses and promotions, getting frustrated when their path to advancement was limited by their contract to look more like that of “average performers.” Another mentioned how at her workplace, the union leadership ended up being much more white than the junior staff it was meant to represent.

The biggest struggle my interviewees identified was younger employees seeking more of a voice in decision-making — such as how the organization spends its money, what public statements it makes, or which politicians it supports — through the union. Although everyone is more or less in favor of junior staff being read-in to decisons and encouraged to speak up, they also just did not think breaking down the heirarchy entirely really made sense or was feasible anytime soon — and do not see it in workplaces with existing recognized unions. Most importantly, no one believed a union would or could fix this issue; it has to be dealt with by building trust between senior and junior staff.

The strongest argument I heard — from several people, but articulated most clearly by someone who has been involved in union negotiations in the past — is that there are clearly workers in this industry and clearly certain benefits and standards that should be under the protection of a union.

For field organizers, who are the most underpaid, overworked, and unstable workers in this industry, and perhaps some junior office workers, unions can provide minimum pay rates, standards for living and working conditions, gas reimbursement for organizers who might otherwise spend all their wages just getting around to do their car-dependent job, and maximum weekly hours and vacations/sick days and paid family. But, this person argues, this would only work if there were a universal, cross-campaign union providing these guarantees to anyone working in a “union shop,” so-to-speak, rather than each campaign having to organize itself every single cycle.

The refrain I heard most — and that I’ll take with me moving forward — is that unions provide an unmatched capability for workers to “create a collective voice,” in the words of one interviewee. The challenge is channeling the demands of that collective voice through the tool that is the union. Unions seem to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for making Democratic workplaces more sustainable and increasing the diversity of our leadership over time.

That night, she told us about how, for most of her early years in politics and advocating for children as a lawyer, Democrats just didn’t win much. And though she had just lost, she committed herself in that moment to continue to fight for progress — to “never doubt that fighting for what’s right is worth it,” in her words — and charged all of us to join her.

Politics is a long game. We need to treat our staff like it.

After that night (plus several months of unemployment-induced time off and one short-lived, desperately accepted job at a communications firm that was not a good fit), I spent four years dedicating myself to finishing the job I started on March 7, 2016: flip the House, flip the Senate, and ensure Donald Trump would not win his election. With Trump out and a tenuous but somewhat workable trifecta secured, I left full-time employment in Democrat politics to go to grad school at the Kennedy School.

It wasn’t exactly, “My work here is done,” but I felt like I had finished the job I set out to do and my sense of safety had returned a bit after disappearing for four years.

But I forgot to worry about what would happen when my theory of change — put the right people in power and keep the wrong people out — came to fruition.

It’s been a frustrating few years to be a Democratic staffer. Many of the people I’ve interviewed for this project expressed that disillusionment with the organizations, candidates, and party they work for is one of the chief challenges to their job satisfaction and desire to continue to work in this field. And for some it is what drove them to leave already.

How do you process the hours of sleep you lost, the plans you missed, the strategic arguments you got into, the bout of the flu you worked through (don’t do this!) to as part of a team that helped elect Krysten Sinema?

Getting elected is hard, and I get that governing is much harder. There will always be some delta between what the hardest-working members of our party — the junior staff — want and what is possible to accomplish, and some level of disagreement between the most progressive people in our coalition — who often make up the younger ranks of Democratic political organizations — and at least national party figures, if not their own immediate bosses and organizations’ senior leadership.

Dismissing their concerns, or acting like they just don’t understand how politics really works, is just a recipe for driving away talent — talent we need to challenge the status quo and achieve our goals and campaign promises. As one of my interview subjects noted: After 2016, it was cool to get into politics, to tell people you were going to work for a Democratic campaign. Now, it’s a little cringey.

And to be clear, while many people I’ve spoken to have mentioned their younger colleagues as the most vocal and progressive members of their organizations, folks in the middle of their careers and the top of their games — team leaders, high level directors, managers of large departments, former campaign managers — are very much feeling this sense of disillusionment. Their position might make them feel it even more strongly, because that power and longevity further entangle them with the more risk-averse politicians and institutions.

But, it’s amazing what a little sense of efficacy can do!

Because today, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. The IRA is the largest investment in clean energy and combatting climate change any country has ever passed, and concentrates those resources in the communities, disproportionately people of color, who are most affected by pollution and most suceptible to the effects of extreme weather. It caps the cost of insulin to $35 per month for people on Medicare and allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices, saving millions of people millions of dollars on lifesaving health care. It revitalizes American manufacturing and creates millions of clean energy jobs. It sets a minimum tax on corporations and even lowers the deficit, if that’s your thing to get excited about!

(It is also imperfect, not everything we wanted, and includes some frustrating concessions to the fossil fuel industry. We should not ignore the concerns of our colleagues who mourn the losses, even as we lift up their hard work that enabled this progress to be achieved.)

Check out this thread if you want to learn more on the new law.

And all of this is thanks, in no small part, to unseen, overworked and underpaid Senate staffers; folks like my inspiring, creative colleagues at Climate Power and other organizing and advocacy groups; and everyone who has worked over the last six years to build the coalition that voted in a Democratic House, Senate and president.

This is why doing this work matters so deeply, and why it matters that we take care of the people who make it happen. It is literally a matter of life and death on a global scale.

It is truly an amazing feeling to see your hard work and the hard work of so many people you love pay off, when that payoff is not guaranteed, or even something you dared to really expect at this point. As one of my interviewees messaged me today, “It’s hard to know how to react to good news these days.”

Hope is a hell of a drug.

If we want people to be in this work for the long game, we need to find ways to give them hope. It won’t be a once-in-a-generation climate bill all the time, and sometimes it won’t be any legislative progress at all, or even some serious, devastating setbacks. I’m still working out how I think we can make that happen — stay tuned for my report at the end of the summer !— but it definitely starts with investing in our employees growth. If progress is slow, we need them to stick around to see it through.

In order to understand what makes people stay or go in the progressive political world, one thing I wanted to ask people is what brought them to this work, and why do they keep at it through election cycle after election cycle, small win after crushing loss, slow, imperfect, halting progress. Almost every single person I spoke to, regardless of what they do now, highlighted a common thread, one that I have also seen unravel over and over again: People who work in politics do so because they care deeply about making the world around them a better place, for more people.

For many, the question of whether they stick around is one of figuring out how many frustrations that passion can withstand. Though some have largely washed their hands of political work explicitly in favor of better work life balance and prioritizing their personal lives, a few interviewees told me they really couldn’t imagine doing anything else, despite the problems they do see in the industry. And in fact, several thought some of the challenges in political workplaces stem from the fact that decision-makers calculate that people — especially young people — want to work on these campaigns, issues, and movements so badly that they’ll put up with low pay, burnout, disillusionment, etc.

What makes this work especially interesting to me, and why I feel especially lucky to do it, is that I identify with so much of this. The lack of boundaries around my work has been one of the most powerful forces shaping my life since I graduated college. For so long, I thrived in that kind of environment, almost relished it.

One of my favorite Survivor players (yes, it’s an obsession of mine) recently said on a podcast that he loves when the show gets really difficult and gives the contestants very little food, because other people falter more under those conditions, whereas he can get along alright by comparison, so it ends up giving him a competitive edge. That’s how I felt for a long time working in the political world. Not the competitiveness part, but it felt like I had found a way to succeed under conditions that hurt everyone, including me.

Even when my friends and I began to realize that we needed and deserved more balance, the prevailing attitude for a long while was sort of that this is the way things work. You don’t want to try to run up a mountain while subsisting on a half a cup of rice a day? Then Survivor isn’t for you. You don’t want to work 7 days a week, get on calls at 9pm on a Friday, and put all your other obligations and priorities behind your work? Then politics isn’t for you.

I think that there are promising changes happening already — prominent progressive group Run For Something has switched to a 4-day work week; my former employer Priorities USA has done excellent work to shift pay scales up, which trickles out to other organizations; an organization called Blue Leadership Collaborative helps train, place, and pay campaign managers for down ballot races, and continues to pay them for a few months between election cycles. But we need more change like this, and I’m excited to keep working to figure out how to make it happen.

If you are someone who works in Democratic campaigns or for progressive electorally focused organizations, or someone who has left that industry, I want to talk to you! I’m looking to talk to staffers at all seniority levels — from fellows to Executive Directors — about how Democratic and progressive organizations can better retain talent and achieve more diversity in leadership roles.

Sign up here to be interviewed as part of my research, conducted with the generous support of the Women and Government Fellowship at Harvard’s Women in Public Policy Program.

If you’re interested, keep reading to learn more about who I am and why I’m doing this work. (And check out this previous post for more detail on what my research will look like.)

Over the last few months, I’ve picked up my phone several times to find dozens of unread texts from friends and fellow Democratic political staffers.

Our chats careen back and forth from the latest Harry Styles album to the news of a former colleague’s engagement, to the TV consultant who got his way in a budget allocation meeting without needing an ounce of reasoning, just his gravitas. We share birthday wishes alongside a Twitter thread from an acquaintance, fed up with how she was treated in her political jobs, on why she decided to leave the industry. We privately unleash our fury at Republicans over their total callousness and inaction after the latest mass shooting, as well as our desperate hopelessness that that our collective decades of work electing Democratic politicians has done nothing to stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade.

The group chats are not okay.

Almost every friend I have ever made in working in politics is demoralized and has thought about or is thinking about leaving the industry, or has done so already. Of course this is anecdotal, but I don’t think my friends and I are alone.

Today, my phone kept buzzing with updates on what everyone thinks about Ryan Grim’s Dems-in-disarry banger, Elephant in the Zoom. I think this piece gets some things right and some things wrong, but it undoubtedly shows that (at least some) progressive workplaces are at a tipping point. COVID, burnout, institutional racism — and progressive organizations’ response to all of these — seem to be affecting the productivity and motivation of progressive staffers. Workers and senior leaders alike recognize that the status quo is not sustainable. The question is…what do we do about it?

My name is Maddie Kriger and I am a longtime Democratic campaign and political staffer (digital and paid media, specifically), as well as a Master’s of Public Administration student at the Harvard Kennedy School. I’m using this blog to document my summer research into how to making working in politics more sustainable, especially for women and people of color, in order to diversify Democratic leadership and better serve voters.

As I begin my research, I wanted to share a little bit about my own connection to the subject matter.

I have worked in Democratic politics for almost a decade and loved (almost!) every minute of it. Friendships forged in the fires of early morning pacing check-ins and late-night hunts for the one formula not adding up in our budget tracker are strong friendships, indeed. The hard-fought surprise wins (I’ll never forget Doug Jones’ special election win in December 2017) and earth-shattering losses (HFA 2016 ❤) can bond you for life.

I have managed more than $270 million in advertising campaigns for Democratic candidates and causes, from state senate to the presidency. Hiring and managing the teams that made those campaigns possible is one of my favorite parts of the job. I care deeply about building the bench of campaign strategists who understand how to communicate authentically with voters, especially online.

Throughout my career, I’ve noticed that, while the junior ranks of Democratic campaigns and organizations are starting to look more like the voters we are trying to win over, that hasn’t translated into more diversity at the top. And I am, of course, saying this as a white woman who has managed mostly Black, Latino and Asian employees. Executive directors, campaign managers, and other organizational leaders are a lot more male and a lot more white than the rest of their staff.

That is why this summer, I am conducting research into why people, especially women, people of color, and other underrepresented folks, leave politics, and what frustrations and barriers to advancement those who do stay still feel. I have seen this industry disappoint and lose a ton of really talented people, and I hope to figure out some workable solutions that could change that.

While I think diversity is intrisically an important value for a progressive organization to hold and act on, I also believe that campaigns make decisions that better serve voters when there are different kinds of voices in the room, and when we expand the definition of what kinds of data are treated as valuable.

The structures of electoral politics make it an incredibly unstable and grueling environment to work in. It is this structure, I hypothesize, that leads talented staffers to leave the industry. And the instability is a stronger deterrent for people who, for example, don’t have outside access to health insurance or other sources of financial support, are parents, etc. The people who can withstand a few months of unemployment every other year tend to be those with the most resources to begin with. On the other hand, the people who don’t see a path for professional growth, or who feel their organization isn’t taking its racist structures seriously have no reason not to take their talents elsewhere.

This instability is bad for the employees, obviously, but it also means that Democratic institutions lose talented staff who have often undergone extensive, expensive training, who hold important institutional knowledge, and who have built skills that will be key to winning future elections. It is standard practice — understandably fueled by financial considerations — that most political organizations let huge portions of their staff go every other November or December, but come spring or summer, many have trouble hiring the teams they need again. It’s an inefficient cycle that can leave all parties frustrated.

I’ve been on both sides of that cycle, and this work is very personal to me. I love working to elect candidates and support issues I care about, but I also write this while on a much-needed two-year hiatus from electoral politics. I know that if we want to win long-term we need working in this industry to feel more sustainable.

So I’ll conclude the way I started, with an ask:

If you work in Democratic politics at any kind of organization (camapign, PAC, c3, c4, campaigns, consulting firm), in any role at any level (ED, CM, field organizer, digital content manager, research director — anything!), or if you previously worked in this space but have since left for another field, I’d love to interview you.

I want to know what is going right and what is going wrong. What are your crazy ideas to fix things? What do you think there are resources and will to actually accomplish? What is something your manager does that just makes you feel valued and productive? What is something you wish your employees knew? How do your colleagues help you maintain the hope it takes to do this work?

I’m nothing if not a progressive who gets things done (sorry, I couldn’t resist!). So I’m ready to think big, but my goal is to find solutions that can actually be implemented. (That means managers, senior staff, finance/fundraising staff, and even donors, I’m eager to hear from you.)

Sign up here to be interviewed (anonymously!), and I’ll reach out about coordinating a time and answer any questions you may have.

(Note: If you’re not up for an in-depth interview, I’ll also be putting together an anonymous survey at a later date, and I’d love for you to fill it out! You can indicate your interest in participating in that survey here too, and I’ll make sure to send you the link.)

Candidates matter, but it matters who’s on their team too.

I am a long-time member of teams like these: I got my start as an intern transcribing debate focus groups on President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 and have since worked in digital advertising for Hillary Clinton and led paid media for Priorities USA, the country’s largest Democratic PAC, during the 2020 cycle. I care deeply about building the bench of campaign strategists to communicate creatively and authentically with voters, especially online — and “raising awareness” about diversity issues does not cut it to improve retention of these highly effective staff or our communications with voters.

Having been in many a room in which millions of campaign or PAC dollars are allocated among tactics, mediums, and constituencies, I have seen how, like anyone, political staffers bring to bear their biases and incentives on their choices. The problem is, even as some political organizations make strides toward gender and racial diversity among junior staffers, the senior leadership tends to remain starkly male and white — which means the white, male point of view is the one most often driving strategic decisions.

Not all, but many, of these decision-makers see smart strategy in what is familiar to them or what worked in the past, and disregard certain kinds of data, expertise, and knowledge that challenge their dogmas or that tend to be held by women and people of color. Without senior staff who understand the communities they need to reach, campaigns risk taking certain votes for granted, misusing hundreds of millions of dollars, and losing elections with life or death stakes for millions.

But we also have an industry that can sometimes seem like it is built to drive away such talent.

My hypothesis is that structural factors like job instability, lack of sponsorship and investment in employees’ long-term growth, and pay gaps drive the lack of racial and gender diversity among campaign managers, executive directors, and other leaders of political organizations. The lucrative allure of the private sector, especially tech companies; the instability of the two-year boom and bust of election cycle employment; the weekend work, late hours, management opposition to remote work, and the stress of competing for resources all make it difficult to “stay in the game,” especially if you don’t have outside access to health insurance or other sources of financial support, if you’re a parent, etc.

The work we do can be grueling and frustrating, with progress slow and results delivered years down the road. If we hope to retain talent we must provide more supportive working environments and growth opportunities to our staff. Employees are right to demand equity in their workplaces, especially when those workplaces are meant to stand for inclusivity and opportunity for all. At the same time, we must recognize that any viable solutions to the challenges that drive talent away from politics will have to work within the realities of electoral politics, election cycles, and — of course — funding. But that does not meant the status quo is the only way to approach the organizational issues in our industry.

I’m here to figure out how to try something new.

The right solutions to these problems will both empower staff and help Democratic and progressive organizations to better serve voters, constituents, and our missions.

Through both surveys and in-depth interviews with stakeholders throughout the industry, my research will seek to assess the impact of these structural challenges on the racial and gender gap in employee retention and growth.

The main questions that I hope to answer are:

• Who leaves politics? Why do they leave politics? What would make them stay? Does it differ by race, age, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.?
• For those who do stick around, what are the challenges they face to job satisfaction and growth? (And how does that differ by race, age, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.?)
• What makes a political job or workplace attractive to an employee?
• What are organizations (party committees, PACs, campaigns, etc.) willing to do to foster talent long-term? What would be useful but not sustainable under existing infrastructure?
• What would an employee be looking for in a new organization or tool to help solve this challenge? How about an employer?

I am hoping to find industry-wide best practices and solutions that can build on top of current DEI work, which largely focuses on making individuals more skilled and better connected. Trainings and skills-building conferences, resume workshops and job fairs, management and anti-racism trainings, and employee satisfaction surveys are a great start, but I think we need to think bigger and tackle these structural issues, working across organizations for the purpose of developing better industry-wide standards for employees.

I cannot and should not come up with solutions to close the gender and racial gap in leadership based on my experience and hunches alone. That is why, thanks to the generosity of the Women and Government Fellowship at Harvard’s Women in Public Policy Program, I get to spend the summer testing these hypotheses, generating responsive recommendations, and producing a report on the state of staff retention and senior staff diversity in political organizations with my recommendations for future research, standards, and policies.

It is possible — likely, even — that this research will uncover other causes for employee dissatisfaction aside from my hypothesized structural barriers (things like organizational culture, DEI efforts, and policy agendas come to mind), and I plan to follow these threads where they lead. In the fall and beyond, my goal is to develop a program or tool that would help the industry fill the gaps I identify.