American Campaign Consulting: Trends and Concerns

Extract

I want to begin by reading you a quotation which was point eight of a fourteen point memo on campaign strategy:

“More and more-over seek out and discover men in every district, make acquaintance with them, solicit them, make them promises, take care that they canvass for you in their neighborhood and become as it were candidates for themselves for your city.”

Lee Atwater to George Bush? No, it's Quintos Cicero advising his brother, M. P. Cicero. So, campaign consulting did not start forty years ago in California.

A major reason—if not the only reason—for having campaign consultants is that political parties basically failed to do their job in a changing technological and social environment.

The first trend is the tremendous growth of campaign consulting during the past 20 years. In 1967, the American Association of Political Consultants was formed in New York City by Cliff White, Joe Napolitan, and myself. It has been in operation for 21 years. Enormous changes in political campaigns have occurred within those 21 years. At that time, the American Association of Political Consultants had 30 or 40 members. Over the years, however, there has been a geometric growth in the organization's membership. Today, the AAPC has 800 members and represents about 400 firms. But that statistic is really insignificant because hundreds of persons who are not members of the AAPC are doing business as campaign consultants today. An estimated 12,000 people in America earn part or most of their living on political campaign consulting. That trend will likely continue.