Each year, thousands of nationwide campaigns are organized to elect a candidate or pass a ballot initiative. They range in duration from mere months to two years, and in scale from a few paid staffers to hundreds of volunteers and consultants. Campaigns are highly demanding of prospective staffers, with hours often exceeding those of full-time jobs and requiring work on evenings and weekends. The demands can also be socially and emotionally exhausting, and are often met with high levels of burnout among staffers.
Despite these demands, many individuals find working on a political campaign to be very rewarding professionally and personally. It is a unique opportunity to gain valuable professional skills in a short period of time, and to learn how to promote political ideas while building relationships with a diverse group of people. In addition, it is often possible to parlay a volunteer position on a campaign into a paid job later in the election cycle.
Campaigns are most common for legislative offices, and are often organized by a party committee. These committees are constituted by elected members of a branch or caucus, and exist to protect their incumbents and gain seats for their party or coalition. Competitive legislative races are the most expensive and highest-profile campaigns, as they attract the attention of major donors and the broader political ecosystem.
As such, they typically have the most experienced and professional campaign operations. They are also the most likely to offer opportunities for future careers in policymaking and other politics-adjacent fields. In the majority of cases, opportunities are partisan, meaning that you must affiliate with a particular party in order to apply to them; switching parties incurs reputational and career costs that increase over the course of a campaign.