Most staffers for the recently folded presidential campaigns had health insurance through the campaign through much of March, but by April, they would be out on their own. But some were more stunned by the ending than others: Bloomberg’s campaign, after dangling yearlong contracts for many of its organizers, abruptly laid them off. State-based Bloomberg staffers had health coverage through April, while those in its New York City headquarters saw theirs end on March 31.
“Health insurance—that’s the scariest issue, more so than even the work or a job,” a former Bloomberg staffer said.
“Honestly, that’s been probably the biggest thing,” said Anjan Mukherjee, who was Klobuchar’s research director, referring to what he’s hearing from more junior staffers from the campaign. “‘Where will I get my health care?’”
Down in New Orleans, Erick Sanchez, who was the traveling press secretary for Andrew Yang, has health insurance through his wife’s job and still has sufficient consulting work. But he acknowledged the “depressing reality.”
“One of the things that Andrew used to say in his pitch that I really feel resonated with a lot of folks is that if our bodies were equipped with a self-destruct button surely there’s a period in anybody’s life where, you know, with their back against a wall, if it was that easy, they would just slam that button,” Sanchez said. “And right now, I can’t imagine how many people would just press that button.”
“It has prohibited any of us to try to rebuild a life after a campaign,” said Ware, the political director of the Klobuchar campaign. Especially staffers with less experience and smaller networks of contacts to lean on. “They don’t know how long it’s going to last or how they’re going to afford this.”
“Some have never filed for unemployment before,” said McLaughlin, Klobuchar’s field director. “We’ve had to walk them through that process.”
“It’s hard,” said Cook, the Iowa press secretary for Klobuchar, “knowing that I don’t really know when I’ll get back into it.”
“I really feel for the folks who are marooned in Boston, South Bend and Minneapolis,” said consultant Ian Russell, a former political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They’d go and do a million coffees on Capitol Hill in March and April. It’s scary enough to have a campaign end and no paycheck, but there are folks who are closing up campaign offices.”
“Presidential campaigns are more like pilgrimages than campaigns,” said Ace Smith, a Democratic consultant who was a top adviser to the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris. “You’re making this journey together with this group of people, and when it’s done, it’s simply heartbreaking. Under any circumstance, it’s difficult, but then you throw on these horrific, unique, external circumstances …”
“I was going to drive across the country,” said Stefan Smith, who was Buttigieg’s online engagement director. “My plan was: Get past this, go to the goodbye party, pack up, start driving. But you obviously can’t do that in the middle of the pandemic.”
Matt Corridoni, who was the deputy director of rapid response for the Buttigieg campaign and, before that worked for Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton on Capitol Hill and during his short-lived presidential effort before that, is at his mother’s house in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania. He has some irons in the fire, he said, and one in particular feels promising. But the timing now is up in the air.
“Everything sort of got thrown into a tizzy because of this,” he said, “and I also think, if I was looking to go back to the Hill, I don’t even know what that would look like right now. I mean, how would you onboard a new communications director in the middle of a pandemic? I don’t think it’s impossible, but it means, like, setting up your Hill email remotely and starting to flack and staff a member virtually.”
As jittery as they might be, though, these between-jobs staffers wanted to make sure they don’t sound like they’re complaining.
“I’m not in the same situation as, you know, a bartender with two kids,” said Randy Jones, who was Yang’s press secretary and then political director before briefly working for Bloomberg, from his apartment in Charleston, West Virginia. “When you work in politics, you have to plan for uncertainty. You don’t know if you’re going to win, you don’t know when the next job is going to be—so I expect that, but for so many people right now, this is the worst possible scenario.”
“I feel weird being kind of woe is me,” Ronan said.
Back in South Bend, at the Hibberd, Carnes is trying to make productive use of this unexpected downtime. Her house plants, for instance, are thriving, more consistently cared for than they ever were in the thick of the campaign. She’s getting better at baking. The second apple cake she made, she said, was better than the first. She has her regular (adequately social-distanced) sit-downs with Pacific. And she’s spent hours and hours on the phone. The Buttigieg campaign ended up having some 200 organizers on staff, and Carnes by now has talked to nearly every one of them, breaking down what worked where and what didn’t, plucking lessons to take into the next campaign—wherever, and whenever, that might be.
Still, she misses being able to just walk on down to Fiddler’s Hearth or Chicory Café, her favorite haunts in the place that’s been her adopted home since the day before Buttigieg launched.
And most of all she misses being able to do what often is a big part of how she heals after a campaign—helping people who worked with her and for her find new gigs. Take next steps.
“What’s been uniquely difficult is usually there are a ton of jobs immediately,” Carnes said. “I remember in 2016 in so many ways we could not hire fast enough. I was on the Hillary campaign, and it shifted from the primary to the general, and the hiring—we just had so many spots to fill. We had gone from having, like, seven regional organizing directors in Iowa to having like 50 in Florida and like 40 in Ohio. We were able to bring so many people on. And this time, talking to our organizing staff, they are all applying for the same tiny subset of jobs that are available.”
Not being able to move on has left her, too, with a little too much time to think.
“We won Iowa not that long ago, right?” Carnes said the other day. It’s been not even two months. “And to go from that to this,” she said, “is just jarring.”
Source: politico.com
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