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The Logistics of a Presidential Campaign
The Logistics of a Presidential Campaign
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0:00
At 1:46 pm on Sunday, July 21st, the Biden for President campaign ended. This had never happened
0:08
before—a major-party candidate dropping out three months from the election. Thus,
0:12
Harris was immediately thrust into the final months of one of the world’s most expensive,
0:17
most complex political exercises—a phase typically preceded by over a year of careful,
0:23
mounting, methodical campaign construction. Presidential campaigns are sprawling, complex
0:28
organizations. While not exactly analogous, the Harris campaign brought in $500 million across
0:35
its first month—that’s more than the company Lyft brought in in revenue that month. So the campaign
0:40
needs to organize to a similar level of a major corporation like Lyft, but only for a few months,
0:45
then it disappears in an instant come November 6th. This is no easy feat.
0:52
Of course Vice President Harris was gifted a major shortcut just minutes later—the President
0:57
endorsed her, functionally guaranteeing that she’d be the party’s nominee, and therefore
1:01
guaranteeing the full 108 days to run against Trump, rather than the 75 or so that’d be left
1:07
had the party conducted a shortened primary process leading up to its national convention.
1:12
And an even bigger shortcut came at 4:51 pm. You see, an American Presidential campaign is not
1:18
just a concept or a collection of people, it’s a specific legal entity, strictly regulated by the
1:24
Federal Election Commission. And at that hour, the Biden for President campaign filed FEC form
1:30
1805326, amending its name to Harris for President, and amending its
1:35
URL to KamalaHarris.org. That’s to say: the short answer for how the Harris campaign was
1:38
able to start so quickly was that it didn’t—rather than starting from nothing and having to hire a
1:43
campaign manager, set up payroll, lease office space, build an IT department, find lawyers,
1:48
do all the tiny, intricate details of setting up a new organization of this scale, they rather
1:53
just took the existing Biden for President campaign and transformed it to Harris for
1:56
President—something believed to only be legally possible given her unique status as Biden’s VP.
2:03
This was an enormous shortcut—it quite literally might not have been possible for another candidate
2:08
to mobilize a campaign competing in scale to Trump’s—but the adaptation process still was
2:12
not easy. Despite their similarities, Harris and Biden had some fundamental differences that the
2:17
campaign had to adapt to. To start, their names were different. As of 4:51 pm, the campaign’s new,
2:25
legally-registered URL didn’t even have a website attached to it—it simply redirected to the Biden
2:31
for President website. To capture an enormous wave of inbound support, a new redirect was quickly set
2:37
up towards Act Blue—the campaign’s fundraising platform of choice—customized to include a
2:42
quote from Biden’s endorsement of Harris. But work simultaneously went on to get
2:46
to a full website. Across Sunday evening, the campaign’s in-house graphic design team prepared
2:51
48 options for a temporary logo, and leadership quickly landed on this—a simple, uncontroversial
2:58
option that would serve the purpose until they had a name to put under Harris’. With that,
3:02
the website design team was able to wrap up their work in creating a full website off of
3:06
the template previously used by Biden, which the URL was once again switched to direct to.
3:12
The suddenness of the transition from Biden to Harris meant that there was no grand campaign
3:16
kick-off scheduled to mark Harris’ first day, but rather just a normal Washington work-day. So,
3:22
the following morning, the Vice President’s motorcade emerged from her DC residence at
3:26
the US Naval Observatory to make the short journey down to the White House. With Biden still stuck at
3:31
home in Delaware with COVID, she had previously committed to taking his place at a celebration
3:35
event of NCAA champion athletes, and therefore this largely inconsequential event was quickly
3:40
transformed into a media circus as it would represent the first public appearance of the
3:44
Democratic Party’s new presumptive nominee. She didn’t directly address the elephant in the room,
3:49
but rather did so indirectly by spending her first two minutes of public appearance since
3:54
Biden’s announcement praising his legacy, before moving on to more event-focused remarks. But with
3:59
this out of the way, Harris could turn her focus more firmly onto the campaign and made
4:03
her way to Maryland’s Andrews Air Force Base. There, she boarded Air Force Two and took off
4:08
at 3:23 pm for the quick, thirty-minute flight up to Wilmington, Delaware to visit her new campaign
4:14
headquarters. But the office was familiar—after all, 1000 North West Street was previously the
4:19
Biden campaign headquarters up until 26 hours prior, and the Harris campaign decided not to
4:24
relocate. This was all down to practicality. While the Wilmington location was ultimately picked due
4:29
to Biden’s influence—Delaware’s his home state and where he often spends his weekends—it’s not
4:34
tremendously different from where the campaign might have picked otherwise. Normally, the
4:38
philosophy is to not put the campaign headquarters in DC—it’s too much of a bubble, has high cost of
4:44
living, and is too full of distractions. So in 2020, the Biden campaign headquartered nearby in
4:49
Philadelphia, which featured easy access to both DC and the crucial swing-state of Pennsylvania.
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While clearly not in Pennsylvania, Wilmington boasted more or less the same benefits, the
5:00
office was already set up, and staff was already settled in the city. So in the afternoon of the
5:04
first full day of her campaign, Harris walked in, shook hands, took photos, fired up the staff,
5:10
then descended into meetings to start to plot days three through 108 of her bid for presidency. And
5:16
perhaps the most looming question of all was who’s name should go below hers on the signs—who would
5:22
the Vice President pick as Vice President? Now, for this, there’s traditionally no
5:29
hard and fast timeline. But as precedent since 1984, Democratic candidates have announced their
5:34
running mates before the convention, thus giving the newfound Harris campaign all of 30 days to
5:39
complete what is typically a months-long process. The decision of who to pick as a running mate is
5:44
perhaps the biggest single decision a candidate makes—the one that has the most potential
5:49
for either a positive or negative impact—so making a confident, and ultimately correct,
5:54
choice requires a lot of box checking. The presidential nominee, for instance,
5:59
needs to build a personal relationship and a sense of trust with the potential VP; the campaign must
6:03
develop confidence in the candidate’s ability to balance the ticket and optimize the nominee’s
6:07
chances of winning; for their part, the potential VP must begin presenting themself to a national
6:12
audience; and then the most concrete process of the bunch: the candidate must successfully
6:16
pass an extremely rigorous background check. Unlike almost every other aspect of the campaign,
6:22
there was no shortcut gained by borrowing the work of the Biden campaign—clearly, they already
6:26
had a VP—so to move this to-do list forward in a fraction of the time normally allotted,
6:30
the Harris campaign turned to some outside help by some familiar names: Eric Holder, the former
6:35
attorney general under Obama, Dana Remus, a long time legal counsel for arms of the democratic
6:40
party and notable democrats individually, and their law firm, Covington and Burling. This move
6:45
saved time—as these payments made to the then Biden now Harris campaign provide, Covington
6:50
and Burling was already deeply integrated in the campaign effort, while Remus herself had worked
6:54
as general counsel for the 2020 Biden campaign. Rather than beginning the process with an extended
6:59
list, the DC firm immediately initiated the vetting process on just nine names.
7:05
There’s no public guide as to how exactly a potential vice president gets vetted and
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every campaign does it a bit differently, but those familiar with the process describe it
7:13
as incredibly intense. First there’s the issue of what the politician has done publicly—their
7:19
policies, their voting record, their sound bytes from every single moment of their public career
7:23
and life. Then there’s the questionnaire which has garnered a host of creative similes and metaphors
7:28
but can generally be understood as definitively not fun. The goal of this is to unearth any dirt
7:35
before it inevitably comes to light once they enter the absurdly bright spotlight of the
7:40
general election. The questions range from how people in college would describe them,
7:44
to whether they’ve had an extramarital affair or pay for a subscription to a pornographic
7:48
website. Because it will inevitably come out now or later, there’s not much point in lying across
7:53
the 200 or so deeply personal questions. Beyond the questionnaire, there’s also
7:58
background checks on personal finances, along with extensive and exhaustive interviews with friends,
8:03
family, coworkers, and even the vaguest of acquaintances. It’s a massive, extraordinarily
8:09
expensive process which, in the end, results in a hundreds-of-pages-long report and,
8:13
as was the case of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, can involve the work of two hundred lawyers.
8:20
But not much of the vetting process becomes public—while anonymous sources stated that by
8:24
the 23rd of July the process of vetting VPs had begun, the public and the media didn’t
8:28
know exactly who—so they speculated, which in turn is another critical part of the process.
8:35
Outside the campaign, and away from its control, VP selection is also informed in part by who
8:40
proactively starts building their own case. The press presents potential options that would fit
8:45
the campaign's needs—in the case of Harris, the assumption being a white man from either
8:49
the sun belt or rust belt—and then those names mentioned suddenly have a platform from which to
8:53
present themselves to an increasingly interested national audience. In the final week of July,
8:58
governors Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania,
9:03
along with representative Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Department of Transportation
9:06
head Pete Buttigieg were getting increasing attention and questions about their viability
9:10
as potential vice presidents. And some were also beginning to mention the name Tim Walz, the
9:16
governor of a blue, albeit midwestern Minnesota. Where exactly Walz stood on the list of nine being
9:23
vetted in warp speed by Remus and team as of July 23rd is not known, but after an appearance
9:28
that morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, his standing began to rise. Not only does a vice presidential
9:34
candidate have to pass a rigorous background check, they have to build their own momentum,
9:38
and for Walz, sitting in front of a fake backdrop of Minneapolis somewhere else in Minneapolis,
9:43
it began with this line: “…well it’s true these guys are just weird…”
9:50
Walz’s “weird” characterization stuck and his national presence grew. Following MSNBC,
9:56
Walz appeared on FOX, something that caught the attention and the
9:59
ire of Donald Trump. Momentum was building as he then appeared on MSNBC again, then again,
10:05
then CNN, then Pod Save America all within the same week. Even the new presidential nominee, on
10:11
the road making a public appearance in Wisconsin, then Indiana, then returning to DC, then appearing
10:15
in Houston, then western Massachusetts, before eventually ending up in Atlanta,
10:19
gave a nod to the moniker in her own speech. That same day, another announcement from the
10:24
Harris campaign: she’d be taking off on a battleground state tour on August 6th, and by
10:29
then, she’d be setting off with a running mate. That gave the campaign just five more days, but
10:35
by then the list had gotten shorter. From nine at the beginning of the process, the vetting team and
10:40
advisors narrowed the list down to six by the time of completion on Thursday the first of August. Now
10:46
interviews: Friday, all 6 candidates met over Zoom with a screening team composed of Holder, Remus,
10:51
and a three person committee of Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden White House
10:56
adviser; former Boston mayor and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh; and Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez
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Masto. On Saturday, the list slimmed from six to three after discussions between
11:05
the screening team and vice president Harris narrowed the list to Walz, Shapiro, and Kelly.
11:10
Next: face-to-face meetings at the Naval Observatory where Harris met
11:14
with all three individually on Sunday to hammer out the final front—who could
11:18
best connect on a personal level to Harris. While the decision was needed by Tuesday,
11:23
Harris spent Monday mulling over the decision, while the campaign, with no time to wait, sent
11:27
advance teams to all three home locations of the potential running mates to begin crafting speeches
11:32
and rollout plans. The campaign even went so far as to begin crafting the branding and imagery of
11:37
the campaign signs for all three potential pairings. Finally on Tuesday, Harris called
11:42
all three, Kelly—no, Shapiro—no, Walz—yes. In conjunction with making the VP selection, the
11:51
campaign was also pushing to finalize the details of the breathless seven-state campaign blitz.
11:56
Campaigns are, at their core, resource-allocation exercises—Harris only has so much time and money,
12:02
so the question is where the deployment of these resources would be most effective. For this week,
12:07
the answer was here. All of these states can be characterized as swing or potential swing states,
12:13
as five flipped from red to blue in 2020, while Nevada was a narrow win and North Carolina a
12:18
narrow loss for Biden. Almost all of them also hold claim to 10 or more electoral college votes,
12:24
with the exception of Nevada. And what crystallized the justification of each as
12:28
campaign-stop worthy for a campaign so short on time were the demographics of their voter
12:33
bases. With these states within the rust belt, investing time in each and debuting a running
12:38
mate with a generally positive standing among labor leaders would strengthen support within
12:42
wavering union workers. While visiting these sun belt states, more ethnically diverse than average
12:47
America, the campaign hoped to leverage Harris’s comparative youth and ethnic background to present
12:51
a more relatable and in-touch candidate. So with all the pieces together—a schedule for the
12:56
week and a VP candidate to tag along—Harris was back at Andrews Air Force Base Tuesday afternoon,
13:01
this time boarding Air Force Two for a quick, 31-minute flight up to Philadelphia to introduce
13:06
Walz in a packed evening rally. But while Walz stayed overnight in Philadelphia,
13:10
Harris flew back to DC and was back in her own bed just hours after leaving the stage.
13:15
But next morning it was more of the same—back to Andrews Air Force Base,
13:19
back on Air Force Two, taking off at 11:02 am bound for Eau Claire, Wisconsin. After a quick
13:24
four hours on the ground for another rally, it was back in the air and over to Detroit.
13:30
Now, this Wednesday night rally looked familiar. That’s because it took place in an airport hangar,
13:35
and for decades, these buildings—not traditionally designed for events—have been some of the most
13:41
popular settings for American political rallies. And there are good reasons for that. To start,
13:45
there are practical benefits. One of a campaign’s most scarce resources is a candidate's time,
13:51
so the time saved by not having to motorcade in and out of a city is well-worth it. Motorcades
13:56
are also disruptive—the headlines about traffic relating to a political rally can sour the mood
14:00
around a visit, and airports are often far removed enough from city centers that even
14:04
the traffic created by attendees is of lesser impact. The Secret Service also likes it:
14:09
airports are controlled, secure environments, so there are fewer variables that they have to
14:13
account for in maintaining the candidate’s safety. But perhaps the biggest benefit
14:17
of all is not practical, but rather visual. Incumbency in office is, at least on average,
14:24
a benefit for candidates for President. Therefore, Presidents and Vice Presidents typically make a
14:30
big point in their campaigns to remind people of their existing positions. So the ability to
14:35
arrive to a rally on Air Force One or Two—some of the most iconic symbols of the American executive
14:40
branch—then use them as a backdrop for a speech is a powerful, unmissable visual reminder to
14:45
attendees and viewers that the candidate is, in fact, the incumbent. Non-incumbent candidates
14:51
certainly do schedule events at hangers, especially in the case of Trump with his
14:54
private 757, but it appears more common with the incumbent. In the case of this evening’s rally,
15:00
Harris only arrived on Air Force Two yet left by motorcade as she was bound for a hotel to
15:05
finally get some sleep. The following morning was unexpectedly leisurely as the scheduled stop
15:10
in Raleigh, North Carolina was canceled due to an impending tropical storm—an example of
15:14
the tremendous logistical flexibility campaigns need to maintain on these tightly-packed weeks.
15:18
Instead, the campaign used Harris’ time to visit a United Auto Workers union hall. This is indicative
15:24
of a tried-and-tested strategy for Democratic Presidential campaigns. In recent elections,
15:29
Midwest states like Michigan have been the most closely fought for, yet a group within
15:34
these states that the party has been able to consistently win over is union workers. But
15:38
the Trump campaign has been going after them, and for the first time ever, the President of
15:42
the US’ largest labor union, the Teamsters, gave a speech at the Republican National Convention,
15:47
although stopped short of anything resembling an endorsement. So the Harris campaign believed it
15:51
was worth devoting some resources to shoring up union support by demonstrating unique commitment
15:55
to them through this smaller, more focused event. But shortly after Harris was back on Air Force Two
16:01
for an evening flight across the country to Phoenix, Arizona, followed by a motorcade to
16:05
the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown for her overnight. The following morning was also unexpectedly open
16:10
due to another tropical-storm rally cancellation, this time in Savannah, Georgia, so she used the
16:15
opportunity to visit one of her campaign field offices in Phoenix. The campaign’s job is,
16:20
of course, to motivate the public to vote for their candidate, but the campaign itself
16:24
doesn’t have nearly enough staff to do the in-person work it takes to make this happen,
16:28
so ultimately the direct job of campaign staff is to collect and coordinate volunteers who actually
16:33
knock on doors and make phone calls. These field offices serve as the hubs of this activity—they
16:38
are hurriedly opened in the months leading up to the election, and only a few campaign staffers
16:42
will coordinate hoards of volunteers to roam the streets, deliver talking points, and hand out
16:47
literature. So just as the United Auto Workers visit was meant to act as a demonstration of
16:52
unique appreciation for that group, this was the same—Harris hoped to show her appreciation for
16:57
the work of the volunteers through her time. The Vice President’s next stop was a Mexican
17:02
Restaurant called Cocina Adamex where she picked up Tamales and took photos with the owners. These
17:07
restaurant visit are another archetype of political campaign appearances—candidates
17:11
are typically seen giving speeches to massive crowds, getting on private jets,
17:15
and generally existing in a world inaccessible to the public, so by thrusting the candidate
17:19
out into the real world the campaign attempts to portray the candidate as relatable, especially
17:24
to the demographic that will most closely attach to the restaurant of choice. The Harris campaign
17:29
believes that hispanic voters are a key target demographic in the crucial swing-state—after all,
17:34
according to a recent poll, Harris leads this group by 59 percent vs Trump’s 34,
17:39
but 35 percent of this group have not completely made up their minds and therefore on-the-ground
17:43
action, like this, could make a difference. But finally it was time for the main event:
17:49
the 15,000-person Friday-night rally at the Desert Diamond Arena—reportedly, her largest
17:55
to date. This was followed by another overnight at her downtown hotel, then another flight the
17:59
next day on Air Force Two over to Las Vegas for another packed arena rally. While that was the
18:04
last of Harris asking for votes that week, she still needed to ask for something else. After all,
18:10
she can’t ask for votes unless she has money. So, following the Vegas rally, Harris took an evening
18:15
flight over to her home state of California, landing in San Francisco well past dark.
18:21
Roughly 700 attendees paid between $3,300 and $500,000 for a seat at Harris’ Sunday
18:27
morning fundraiser at the Fairmont San Francisco. Following an introduction by Nancy Pelosi, Harris
18:32
took to the stage, thanked the attendees for their support, took photos with the highest-contributing
18:36
few, and walked out an hour or so later having amassed $12 million additional dollars. Finally,
18:42
after passing through eight states in just six days, Harris’ work-week was over,
18:47
and it was back to DC on Air Force Two, and back to her day-job as Vice President.
18:52
Now, one aspect of this week might stand out to the American taxpayer—the thousands
18:57
of miles racked up on Air Force Two as it jetted from state to state not to facilitate
19:01
Harris serving as Vice President, but rather to facilitate her quest for electoral college
19:06
votes. But the taxpayer doesn’t pay for this, the campaign does—at least, sort of. You see,
19:12
the Federal Election Commission more or less requires that campaigns pay for their own travel,
19:17
and that includes for incumbent office holders who must use Air Force One or Two for their
19:21
travels for security purposes. Both aircraft are far larger and more capable than what campaigns
19:26
normally use to shuttle candidates—notwithstanding Trump—and therefore it’s considered unfair to
19:30
make them pay more for the aircraft they’re required to use. Therefore, the FEC doesn’t
19:35
require campaigns compensate for the actual cost to operate these government aircraft, but rather
19:40
for what would be the cost of operating the likely aircraft they’d use if they were not the President
19:44
or Vice President. Details are murky, but it’s reported that the FEC’s reimbursement guidelines
19:50
index this to the charter cost of a 737, like that being used by Republican vice-presidential
19:54
candidate JD Vance. And even then, the campaign doesn’t reimburse for the full operating cost, but
20:00
rather for the proportion of the aircraft filled by campaign staff, while excluding non-campaign
20:04
personnel like that of the secret service. But we are able to get some sense of the numbers.
20:10
That’s because the FEC requires effectively full transparency on how campaigns spend their money,
20:15
all published in sprawling spreadsheets. Through the end of May 2024, the Biden/Harris campaign
20:19
sent some $4.1 million over to the accounts of the Democratic National Committee Travel
20:24
Escrow Political Action Committee, which handles the bureaucracy of reimbursement for
20:28
travel expenses. Political Action Committees are also required to report their expenses,
20:32
so we’re also able to see that this PAC reimbursed the White House a total of half a million dollars
20:37
through June 2024, when the campaign was still in its early stages—clearly a minuscule fraction
20:42
of the actual operating cost of Air Force One, estimated around $200,00 per hour.
20:48
But these spreadsheets also provide a fascinating insight into the other expenses that go into
20:53
the day-to-day operations of a campaign. For example, on June 25th, an unremarkable Tuesday,
20:59
what was then Biden For President spent a total of $327,418.67. Many of the filings
21:06
were rather mundane—postage for shipping, fees for their expensing software, a subscription
21:11
to perhaps Photoshop, mileage reimbursement for work-related driving done by a staffer.
21:15
Getting into the highest-dollar expenses, most are reimbursing companies for their work—three
21:20
payments of $9,500 plus another of $13,500 to a video production company, for example. Or there’s
21:27
this $10,000 payment to a political strategy firm led by Jorge Neri, who previously worked in the
21:31
Obama administration and, based on his history, was likely helping to craft a strategy to target
21:36
latino voters in Nevada. There’s also one massive lump-sum payment to fund the DNC Travel Escrow
21:42
account that pays for campaign-related travel. But the rest of the high-value payments largely
21:47
went to events and their associated costs—$6,000 for site rental in Wisconsin, $9,000 for equipment
21:52
rental in Maryland, $35,000 to an event production company in New York, or a colossal $160,000 to an
21:59
event production company based in Maryland. More broadly, these payments act as an answer
22:04
to how these campaigns are able to handle such massive, temporary mobilization all across the
22:09
country—it’s that, for the most part, they don’t. They pay others to do so. The campaign
22:15
organization, itself, is really just a central node connecting together the work of event
22:19
planning companies, political strategy firms, video production companies, marketing agencies,
22:24
social media consultants, and more—companies that always exist, yet step into their campaign-related
22:29
roles for those few chaotic months leading up to the American presidential election.
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One of the most crucial jobs in a Presidential campaign is that of the data scientists. To decide
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where to best allocate those scare resources, after all, you first need to understand the
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