by Kenneth P. Vogel
Politico.com
10/24/09
The Democratic National Committee, often relatively inactive in the year after a presidential election, is ramping up its hiring and aggressively broadening its mission under the direction of Obama campaign veterans intent on applying the lessons of 2008 to races in 2010 and 2012.
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, the DNC chairman installed in January by President Barack Obama, has hired many of the top staffers, pollsters, ad makers and fundraisers who helped steer the Obama campaign, completing a takeover of the party machinery that began when Obama became the Democratic nominee 14 months ago.
A POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission records found that since the beginning of the year, the committee has paid at least $5.9 million to staffers and firms that worked on the campaign – but had little to no independent history with the DNC – to do a range of work that will boost the party as a whole, and also lay the foundation for Obama’s reelection campaign.
Financed in part by money left over from Obama’s record-breaking fund-raising operation, the DNC has built a staff of about 380 employees across the country – a hiring pace that puts it on track to far surpass the staffs assembled by Kaine’s predecessors.
The lion’s share of the hiring is to support a new organizing project called Organizing for America (echoing the name of his presidential campaign, Obama for America) created within the committee to perpetuate the grassroots mobilization that played a key role in Obama’s capture of the White House. The project acts as the custodian for the campaign’s 13-million email address list.
Paul Begala, who became a DNC consultant after helping guide Bill Clinton to victory in the 1992 presidential campaign, said Obama has earned the right to remake the DNC in his image. “Yes, this is an Obama-centered DNC,” he said, “but it ought to be. To the winner goes the spoils.”
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