Paul Bass Photo
The gubernatorial campaign brought some new jobs and coffee customers downtown, as Ned Lamont opened his campaign nerve center on Orange Street.
The first 11 staffers for the front-running Democratic candidate were already working in their new storefront at 169 Orange St. Tuesday. An official opening is coming soon.
The space, recently vacated by the Convention and Visitors Bureau (which merged with the Regional Growth Partnership and moved to 900 Chapel St.), will serve as the Lamont camp’s statewide headquarters. For now the 800 square-foot space will serve as the campaign’s operations center. Over the course of March the campaign will gradually move in to 3,700 square feet on the second floor and put field staffers there. Eventually up to 30 paid staffers and dozens of volunteers and interns are expected to be working out of the office.
Lamont has courted New Haven in his quest for the party’s gubernatorial nomination. He won the city in his 2006 Democratic U.S. Senate primary bid — even though he was running against a hometown incumbent (Sen. Joe Lieberman). New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp has already endorsed him this year; Lamont has courted Mayor John DeStefano, publicly praising the city’s school reform drive on the stump. The city sends the most delegates, 81, to the state convention that endorses a candidate.
But none of that figured into the decision to locate the statewide HQ in the Elm City, according to 31-year-old campaign manager Joe Abbey, who comes to Connecticut after running campaigns in Virginia.
Abbey said the decision came down to location, location, location: Center of the state. Center of the city. Near loads of volunteers.
“Campaigns live and die off their volunteers. I wanted to be in an office that’s accessible to its volunteers, they can walk to,” he said. “If you’re not accessible to your volunteers, you don’t have a candidate.”
After one day in their new space, the staffers have already discovered Bru Cafe down the block. The panini and the cookies got thumbs up.
Having run a few campaigns in my day I always like to say that how a candidate will run his/ her campaign is a good indication of how they will govern.
Eleven employees! Going up to 30 paid staffers? First field staff needs to be, ah, in the field. Two, what could 11 staffers be doing now?
The fact is back in the old days campaigns needed large amounts of staff to collate mailings, make phone calls and take on many mundane tasks to "get the message out".
Today, and as a technological wizard Mr. Lamont would agree, you can run an entire state wide campaign with a PDA, a gas card, a car with good tires and a driver. The driver so the candidate can make calls going from here to there.
So many of the campaign efforts on communication are handled through internet use that many of the old school jobs are no longer needed.
The first sign a campaign is in trouble is when the campaign office is full of staff. Since campaigns are, in the end, about getting votes one can assume everyone at campaign HQ is for the candidate "staffers" need to be out getting more votes.
One place to begin might be to prepare Mr. Lamont for interviews. His performance, after already running statewide once before, on Face the State was very weak.
I wish the Lamont effort well. We need help and I believe Ned has the ability to make the tough decisions. But, please, take a look at what all that staff is really doing.