Eric Wilson 0:04

Welcome to the Campaign Trend Podcast, where you're joining in on a conversation with the entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. I'm your host, Eric Wilson. My guest today is Dustin Trapp, founder of Republican Jobs, the headhunting firm that's placed close to 3,000 conservative professionals and sits on a database of more than 22,000 vetted operatives. And that's why Dustin and I partnered on the 2026 Political Career Survey. We had 427 political pros telling us what they actually make, what benefits they actually get, and whether they plan to stick around. So today we're digging into questions like why the employer, not the job, determines whether this is a career for someone, what AI is actually doing to the industry, and what Dustin sees in the hiring market that the survey didn't capture. So Dustin, you see the demand side of this industry every day. Lots of postings, lots of resumes. So when we started this survey, what were you, you know, maybe hoping to prove or disprove about what you were already seeing in your inbox every day?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

It wasn't anything I was trying to prove or disprove, but a lot of what we're seeing was was pretty much addressed and a little bit more clear. Um I think the big thing for me was, you know, we kind of saw this, but the survey really kind of screamed it here. People assume that the campaign staff are kind of just, you know, 22-year-old kids here. A lot of them aren't. There's a lot of staff that um they have families, they have kids, they have mortgages. And so in a lot of the campaign staff is just as far in the career in their careers as the staff on the the uh vendor and the consulting side, too. And so I think it's really important that we kind of distinguish that as well. And I think the survey kind of showed it. Um these guys are not you know transient, a lot of them are here for the long run.

Eric Wilson 1:57

This was the second year in a row that we've run this survey together, and so we learned quite a bit on how to put the the the questionnaire together last year and uh put that into place this year. And one of the things that we were able to do this year, and and it really produced the clearest division, which was we had 271 respondents who said that they serve candidate campaigns. All right. And then we looked at, okay, well, who actually employs you? So if you're employed by a firm or a committee, only 16% said they have zero benefits. But if they were employed by the campaign itself, that jumps to 64% without any benefits. So same candidates, roughly the same work. What is driving that gap and and and why is it so pronounced?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

There's a couple different things here is a problem we're running into. Is they're not they're not offering benefits, which is understandable. These campaigns dissolve their temporary organizations. The problem we're running into is they're not compensating with the understanding that most of the staff they have that are not 22-year-olds, they they do need the healthcare and they are paying for it on their own. So I think there is a little bit of a divide there. Um there's other reasons too. I think um there are a lot of these consulting firms are hiring, you know, in-house, right? And so they have people full year round. A lot of the campaigns don't, and so the campaigns are less competitive, and we're seeing it, you know, especially with the talent shortage happening right now. One of the issues we're running into is you know, the Trump administration has hired more people than we've ever seen ever, and the the hill is empty for the first time. And so we've also seen a lot of junior staff jump up a few notches in their career because there's a talent shortage on the campaign side. There's jobs that we're struggling with the most are the senior staff on the campaigns this time around, where the average search for us might be a two or three-week process, right? Um, for a normal campaign staffing job, right? Uh, we had a two Senate races and a governor's race earlier this year that took two or three months to get the person placed. And because the shortage was that bad. So I think there's a little bit of a um market crash here with all the talent shortages that's starting to hit. And I think the market hasn't fluctuated on the salaries and and and stuff, and people are acting like it's 2020 and 2026, and they're trying to hire a bunch of 22-year-olds and offer benefits or try to pay competitively for those rates. Um, half of my job, I feel like I'm telling clients, listen, like you're you're paying too low, you're way below market rate. Um a little bit of a tangent there, but it's uh a lot of stuff's happening all at once at the same time.

Eric Wilson 4:26

A lot of people might be surprised at how much of a competitive market this is. I mean, it does function as a market. There's no, you know, it's not like the Republican National Committee sets a here's a salary for a campaign manager. Different campaigns, depending on you know their setup, have to come up with with different different salaries. And the the benefits are uh are a huge piece because, you know, uh younger staffers don't have to worry about things like that because they might still be on their uh parents' insurance plan and parents' cell phone plan and all those sorts of things. And they they don't care at all about things like life insurance or their retirement plan. Uh and so you have these campaign committees that are designed as legal entities to dissolve. Once they meet their purpose, they go away. So you can't vest a retirement plan or or or carry someone over from between the election to February of the next year. And so for one of those campaigns, like a congressional campaign or a state-ledge campaign that really wants to take care of its people, what's actually available out there? Or is there um any other workaround be besides, you know, go work for a firm, go work for a party committee?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Generally what we see is that once you work in a firm, you pretty much are your job security is there. I know one of the numbers that we saw was an interesting stat. We saw once someone gets around 125,000, that they're mostly they're no longer salary is not their top priority, it becomes career growth, right? And the reason that's important, that's usually someone making money in a vendor or consulting firm, right? And so the job security is really in the vendors and the consulting firms. Um, most of the jobs that I place are usually in that space, right? And so a lot of people after campaign season, we're trying to place them into those firms. Also, sometimes we're trying to temporarily park them into a state house, right? Um, I think really, if you're a campaign staffer, your only option is either go into a firm or go into a campaign committee. Because historically, the next hiring cycle would be the following March or May. Now, the one trend that I'm seeing that may not be represented in the numbers here is that's starting to change. And so a lot of these firms have called me and said, listen, we are so understaffed, we're 90 days out. And I actually had a call this morning, another one, same conversation. We're understaffed. At this point, I can't hire my way out of it because the trading time's too short. So I want to start next year's search in October of this year. I want to grab someone right off the cycle on the campaigns. And so I have two weeks of straight calls in October to start these searches and start getting talent right off the November. So now we have about 107 openings right now that we're working on, closing between 12 and 20 a week. And so right now I don't think there's gonna be an off-cycle. So I think the good news is although this is an issue, I think 2026 going to 2027, 2028, you're gonna see a lot of hiring happening in November instead of March.

Eric Wilson 7:18

Uh so you're gonna go around in October and do some pulse checks to see, you know, what campaign is on the on the downward swing and and who's who's taking meetings. Um two things that I might share with our audience who may not be familiar with this, which is it is nerve-wracking. When you you go out on a campaign, you know, I I did that. I left a a stable job at a at a persistent institution to go work on a campaign. That win or lose, that job was gonna be done at the end of 12 months. And you know, it was it was nerve-wracking because you know, you got to run through the tape on the the race, and then you wonder like, is anyone gonna want to talk to me at the the end of it? And and you you do this a couple of times and you realize, yes, people do want to talk to you, but it is just kind of nerve-wracking um when you're trying to get on another campaign. And you're like, well, you know, it's been three months that I since I've you know had had work and I've got offers that that have benefits, and I I want to do this. So it is nerve-wracking. I think another way to think about it for our you know, maybe donors who who are who are listening is think about it as sort of like working for a startup, right? So you're gonna go out as as a uh a professional, and you may be a young person, you may be in the middle of your career and say, look, I want to go into politics. You've I mean, this is my advice I give to everyone. You have to actually work on a campaign. You can't just sit here in DC, be on a consultant, you know, like you have to go out and talk and and and meet voters. And you're taking a risk when you do that, just like you would be going on a startup. You know, you may work on one that that launches and then you've got a great team of consultants, and they're gonna get a ton of work next cycle, and then they place you somewhere else, or they bring you in, or you know, one of the national committees wants you. We need good people to work on those campaigns. That's the the tough part here. Like it it clearly makes sense to work at the firm, but we need people on on those campaigns.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

To your point, there's actually two things that we see as well. Um, October, I get a lot of calls from campaign staff freaking out and panicking. Um, half my job, I feel like would become therapists and say stay in the campaign, get through the end of it. Um, and so you do see that. Um, in some extreme cases, some of the campaign staff panic, apply for a job outside of politics, thinking they'll get it in November. The job wants to hire them in October, and they leave in the most important month. We've seen that. I mean, obviously, we see a lot more just the sheer volume that we do. It's not the norm, it's probably less than 1%. It does happen. Um, and this is the first cycle that I've ever seen. I've been doing this for about 10 years, um, that we've really seen uh staff actually skip the campaign and go to the hill because they're so empty. We've also seen field staff go into congressional campaign manager roles for the first time with a shortage. So that's been crazy to see too. But um, anything to your kind of point, anything we can do to keep staff going, we try to do. I mean, here at Republican Jobs, we also do a career fair every two years at the end of the cycle to try to get people lined up through our virtual career fair in the state houses. We had over a hundred state legislators come in from 15 states. We were able to place, and I think 30 of those were actually in Texas, which is our biggest state. I'm based out of Austin, but we uh were able to get staff onto these temporary um legislative jobs for session-only jobs and then get them held over through May. I think that's been productive, but we're only one person, we're only one company here. So um there's only so much we can do.

Eric Wilson 10:34

And so on the on the left, they've they've addressed this challenge a little bit differently, where they have things like campaign unions, staffing standards, they negotiate benefits, and and so setting aside how how you feel about organized labor, um, they've at least identified this as a problem to solve, which I think is more than than we have done. And so what you know should we take from that uh versus you know, don't don't copy that? I mean, th these they have kind of ridiculous things like staff striking in the middle of campaigns that we obviously don't want to do, but but is there something there worth adapting to our side?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Um I will say I don't want to delegitimize the concerns. I think I think the the issue is valid, right? The issue is camp how do we keep government campaign staff. I don't agree with their solution. And I think the issue we have to stay away from as Republicans is the issue is we don't want campaign staff striking and all the crazy nonsense we see. Their staff isn't the most productive. Um you know, it's it's good for the staff they hire, but actually what ends up happening is a lot less campaign staff get hired because what they're object basically what they're doing is they're giving the power of their campaign away to a third party, right? And that's a real issue. Um, but we need to also address the solution, but I think you know, us believing in free markets have better ideas here. Um I do think, you know, one good thing about Republican politics, we have a lot of for-profit firms. A lot of these vendors and consulting firms that do hire. Also, like groups like Americans for Prosperity run the virtual career fair and got a lot of talent right after the election. So there is, I think, movement on our end to get those people. Um, I do think the campaign's one solution too is you're gonna have to pay more and the rates are gonna have to go up. I do think a lot of these consultants I work with don't want to hear it from someone in their 30s saying, hey, like you can't pay 2016 and 2020 rates. You've got to pay more for the staff and these benefits. Inflation's here, right? And finding that they're having a lot more um competitive hiring and doing a lot better, having a lot less issues than some of these guys who've been in the game for 20 years who think it's the old salary. So I will say the newer firms on the block are starting to adjust to that and that's solving some problems. Win bonuses are a big thing right now. I am seeing state legislative uh salaries go up. That's been good. So people going in, Texas had a pay raise, and they're probably just gonna have another one here. Um, so there are solutions here, but I think again, going for the for-profit side, and the for-profit side does pay very well. So you get to work on campaigns all the time, be employed year-round, had paid vacations in November, right? And so I just think there's also a lack when I talk to Gen Z, they don't know about these other sides of the industry that even exist.

Eric Wilson 12:59

Yeah, and and I think there's another trend that has has changed maybe even the last 10 years, right, that would that would sort of affect people's priors, which is the the yes, we sort of have our mental model of this is what it costs or what what it should cost to staff a campaign, but that's not happening in a vacuum. There is a there's competition from these for-profit firms and agencies who now, by the way, um are working on really big uh independent expenditure initiatives that uh uh weren't there maybe 10 years ago. They're they're working for more corporate and issue advocacy in a way that wasn't as common ten years ago. And so the competition from the outside campaign world, which kind of overlaps with that talent pool, ha has really come come up and setting aside you know sort of inflation and cost of living increases. Um but but all of that comes together to to really make it um I think more expensive to to staff quality um talent on on campaigns.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

The other shift we're gonna see here, and I'm curious what next year's survey is gonna show. Um you saw obviously the NRSC versus F FEC ruling that happened. Um staff go into the state parties where it might have better benefits in your round two. That also may trend in having the party have more of your campaign staff on the ground through the party.

Eric Wilson 14:24

This is the campaign trend podcast. I'm speaking to Dustin Tropp from Republican Jobs about our 2026 political career survey. And and so, Dustin, you've alluded to this a couple of times, but you're the person that candidates and firms call when they they need someone right away. Um what are the are the roles that we see uh kind of hardest to fill or having the most difficult time, does that align with what you're seeing as well?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Now I will say like today we have about 107 uh 107 openings right now. 16 are in legal and compliance on the on the political side. So we do everything from like you know, almost 300,000 a year doing like political legal down to the $20 an hour canvassers, right? And so 14 of our openings are field in Canvas. Um, 12 jobs are comms and creative. I have 12 in like account management sales for political vendors, 11 in operations and admin, and about seven in polling and data. Um, nothing that was on here, and again, I really encourage people after this podcast to take a look at the nothing here was really uh too surprising from what we kind of see on our end. Um I think there's a lot more stability in the firms as we kind of saw there as well. For sure.

Eric Wilson 15:38

And and it is it's 2026, so we have to talk about artificial intelligence. And so that was something that we asked a lot more of in the the political career survey this year. And 42% of respondents said AI significantly changed or transformed their work, and yet only 12% see it as a career threat. So, you know, looking through this data, my read is that that this is, you know, an industry where people are already doing three jobs. So automation finally helps you clear some of that backlog. Um are you seeing AI competence or familiarity um showing up in job descriptions, or is this something that we're just not capturing yet?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah, and one quick side point to his comment, we launched the GOP's biggest internship program, and half of them were taken away by AI. So it is definitely coming on that side, unfortunately. But um one thing I kind of noticed from the from the survey, which is interesting, you know, if you look at our our openings, I took a look this morning, only about 10 of them actually mention AI in the job description, right? And so of the 107 jobs that I have, 10 mention it, and nine of them are AI-focused policy jobs. So to give you context, the employers are not asking for AI. Now, to be fair, it is assumed in most jobs that you know how to use the basic stuff, Claude, chat, GPT, right? But they're not they're not vetting for it, which means they're probably not paying you for it, right? And if they're not paying you for it, you're not being compensated. But in the survey, people said everything from um, and you know I know you have a really good idea of the numbers here, but um they used AI to almost open a fourth job, do the jobs they thought they didn't have time to do, and they said they were going from three hats to wearing like four or five hats, right? And so people are using it, right? But I don't think they're being compensated for it. What we also found in the survey was that people were saying that they're busier than ever, they have more responsibilities to do, and I think that it's because of people using AI they're expecting more out of you, but the employers have not really shifted yet into compensating you for using AI. But also that being said, most of these people surveyed said they liked it. I think only like 5% saw it as a deep threat. Most of them did find that um they uh liked using it in their job, they used it, they weren't afraid to use it.

Eric Wilson 17:50

Yeah, we saw that uh pollsters and researchers were the one group where AI concern sort of outpaces opportunity. So 48% said they were concerned about AI, you know, replacing them. And and and counter that with field organizing. It's it is the least automatable function in politics, going door to door, going to those county meetings, getting people registered to vote. Um, but it was also the worst paid. So 74% of people in that role were making under $80,000 a year, half of them had no benefits. So if AI is compressing the the cost of everything that's sort of produced at a desk, um the value of what can't be done at a desk, like field organizing, should go up. Uh, but we're not seeing that re-repricing in in the market right now. Why not?

SPEAKER_00 18:51

It it's like a paradox. And uh so I think you and I have been trying to solve this one. Um, and it it's a little bit of everything. We also see it, uh, the cost of hiring is higher, the regulations in states like California, the cost of lawsuits and things like that. Certain firms won't go into other firms, you have to have more insurances than ever. So the cost of doing these products are high, but you can now stand behind a cash register for 20 bucks an hour. And if you're a competent college grad who's knocked doors in college, you can go straight to the hill, right? And so it's getting harder to get good talent, these costs of living, the cost of the hotels, the deployments, the rental cars are going up. So it's getting tougher, and yet these are the jobs that are not gonna be automated. We're running into some problems where there's so much noise now that someone's investing in texting and digital because it's cheaper. And I'm not bashing texting or digital, they're great services, you need to be using them. But it's it's flood, everyone's getting flooded. You saw what's going on with Apple and trying to block out political text. And so I think you're gonna see a big push, and we're seeing it now for grassroots to the end of the cycle, but the rates aren't going up. Some firms are moving it up, some are even going as high as 30 bucks an hour plus housing flight rental cars. So some firms are adjusting, but it is very expensive, knockdoors right now.

Eric Wilson 19:58

So I for a listener, you know, who might be saying, Who cares? Crimea River, campaigns are temporary, hire the firm, move on. Um, I I want to offer kind of a counterpoint here, which has to do with campaign effectiveness. So when a campaign can't staff in-house because they're competing against these really well-paying firms that, by the way, might have outside investment uh nowadays, they're they're buying that same labor, that same role back from the agency at a premium. And the campaign is doing that in hard dollars. So when I look at that, I see there's kind of a an efficiency gap with our our dollars um in the campaign finance ecosystem, which you know, hard dollars we really have to optimize for and maximize. And and so I I'm I'm wondering is anyone thinking about this? Is anyone trying to fix this? Um should donors be concerned? I or or am I you know panicking about nothing?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Uh I think all your points are valid. Um this has been an issue I've been talking about for 10 years. I mean, this is a real problem here, and I think the problem that we're seeing, at least on our side, is that, and I actually was surprised how many loyal people still stay in the industry despite these problems. Um we do see a high turnover, and I think the problem we have is that there's our party is suffering at the mid-level because of the entry-level talent. Because the senior staff are secure. You get there's a lot of entry-level jobs, but getting people to entry or mid, they start leaving the industry because of these issues. And so I think right now we're starting to lose the bench a little bit, and it's starting to come to roost even this cycle. We're seeing it. And a lot of these people treat it like a full-time job, they have that mental state, like we're like, I'm here for the long run.

Eric Wilson 21:44

Listeners have heard me talk about this before, but I I really blame the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform for kind of gutting our political parties and then leading to the rise of independent expenditures, which led to the rise of more sort of for-profit firms, which do great work, but they have a different incentive than someone who might have a career within the party. And so that's why I'm really excited about this new well, the Supreme Court decision that that hopefully is going to breathe new life into parties where we can have more of a stable career where someone can be a part of the the campaign or the party and work directly with campaigns, have some of that longevity. Um, I I also hope people will think about, well, you know, what are some innovative ways that we can provide benefits to people who want to work in this industry? I I think there's an opportunity there. I think we happen to have an obligation to taking care of the people who who run our campaign. So uh I think there's a lot going on here. Um, but uh again, I just remain impressed by the people who are willing to, you know, take the risk, go work on campaigns and and and do it for cycle after cycle. And I'm sure you can too.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Yeah, Moon's got to take care of our own. Yeah.

Eric Wilson 23:02

So my thanks to Dustin for a great conversation. You can learn more about him and Republican jobs in our show notes, as well as read the report for yourself. If this episode made you a little bit smarter, give you something to think about. You know that we only ask that you share it with a friend or colleague. You're gonna look smarter in the process. More people find out about the show, the kind of win-win we like around here. Remember to subscribe to the Campaign Spencer Podcast wherever you get your shows. That includes YouTube, where you can watch if you prefer doing that. And you can also sign up on our website, campaignfencus.com. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.