List of Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign staff members

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List of persons holding prominent positions within the Barack Obama presidential primary campaign, 2008.

According to an August 2008 statement by Deputy Campaign Manager Steve Hildebrand, the Obama campaign had "large-scale operations in 22 states, medium operations in many others, and small staffs in only a handful of states,"[1] with several thousand paid operatives on the ground between Obama staff and Democratic Party staff. That month, these numbers included "about 200 paid staffers working in Florida and more on the way, 90 in Michigan with plans to expand to 200 by August, at least 200 each eventually in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and 50 in Missouri with plans to expand to 150."[1]

Inner circle[]

  • David Axelrod, media strategist. Founder of Chicago-based AKP Media. Handled Obama's 2004 Senate race. Consultant to Chicago Mayor Daley and Rep. Rahm Emanuel.
  • David Plouffe, campaign manager. Partner, AKP Media, lives in Washington.
  • Robert Gibbs, communications chief. Spokesman for Obama's Senate and political operations.
  • Anita Dunn, handled communications, research and policy. Principal with Washington-based Squier, Knapp, Dunn Communications.
  • Steve Hildebrand, Deputy Campaign Manager. Runs South Dakota-based political consulting firm and is an Iowa specialist.
  • Joel Benenson, Chief Pollster, runs the New York City-based Benenson Strategy Group.
  • , chief operating officer. Executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Director of President Bill Clinton's Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach. Sister of Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's first press secretary.
  • Penny Pritzker, National Finance Director.

The vice presidential search committee included:

Early advisors[]

An early 2007 article in the Chicago Sun-Times lists the following persons in Obama's White House team:[3]

  • Paul Tewes, adviser; business partner of Hildebrand's.
  • Bill Burton, national press secretary. Spokesman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this cycle.
  • Paul Harstad, pollster. Handled Obama's 2004 campaign.
  • Cornell Belcher, pollster. Democratic National Committee pollster.
  • Devorah Adler, research director. DNC research director.
  • Rakitha Hettiarachchi, The Political Campaign Director of Nevada State Democratic Party.
  • Shauna Daly, deputy research director. DNC deputy research director.
  • Alyssa Mastromonaco, scheduling and advance. Political director for Obama's political action committee.
  • Saul Schorr, media consultant. Runs a Philadelphia firm.
  • Julianna Smoot, finance director. Finance director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle.
  • Cassandra Butts, policy advisor. Previously the Center for American Progress think tank. Obama law school classmate. Former senior policy adviser to House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt.
  • Pete Giangreco, direct mail, Iowa adviser. Partner, the Strategy Group, Evanston. Veteran of several Iowa primaries.
  • Dan Pfeiffer, traveling press secretary. Former press chief for Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
  • Matt Rodriguez, New Hampshire state director.

Other key staff positions filled internally and from rival campaigns after the primaries included:[4]

Foreign policy[]

By July 2008 the Obama campaign had some 300 persons working on foreign policy, and organized along bureaucratic lines like a "miniature State Department."[5] Notable among these people are:

  • Denis McDonough, 38, Obama's "top foreign policy aide."
  • Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration.
  • Anthony Lake, Clinton’s first national security adviser, who was criticized for the administration’s failure to confront the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and now acknowledges the inaction as a major mistake.
  • Greg Craig, a former top official in the Clinton State Department; also served as Clinton’s lawyer during his impeachment trial.
  • Richard J. Danzig, a Navy secretary in the Clinton administration.
  • Mark Lippert, Obama’s former Senate foreign policy adviser.
  • Mark Brzezinski, foreign policy expert and partner at the McGuireWoods law firm. He is the son of former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
  • Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writer, and academic. She is currently affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Resigned in March 2008 after being quoted in an interview with The Scotsman that Hillary Clinton "is a monster."
  • Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy for President Clinton and the first President Bush, now a member of the Obama campaign’s Middle East team.[6] He has advised the Obama campaign on legal issues, including the rights available to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.[7]
  • Michael McFaul, a Russia scholar at Stanford University and co-director of Hoover Institute's [8] with Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani, leads the Russia and Eurasia team for the Obama campaign.
  • Ivo H. Daalder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has organized his 40-member nuclear nonproliferation team into eight working groups.
  • Philip H. Gordon, also of Brookings, is in charge of Obama’s Europe team.
  • Sarah Sewall, a Kennedy School professor and former Clinton Defense Department official who wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the new counterinsurgency manual Gen. David Petraeus revised for the military, is advising on counterinsurgency strategy.
  • John O. Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp., advises Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues.[9] He is also a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
  • Merrill McPeak, USAF (ret) figures prominently among Obama's military advisors.[10]
  • Colin L. Powell, former Secretary of State, "has contributed outside advice."[5]
  • As has Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter.[11]

Former Hillary Clinton supporters:

Energy policy[]

  • , Senior Environmental and Energy policy adviser; prior to the campaign, Executive Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
  • , formerly executive director of the .[12]
  • , former Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere under Bill Clinton.[13]

Economic policy[]

  • Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times
  • Jason Furman, 38, Brookings Institution scholar and expert on tax and budgetary policy and health care
  • Jeffrey Liebman 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist
  • Karen Kornbluh, 44, served as policy director in Obama's Senate office, having joined in 2002 after working for the Clinton administration and the New America Foundation in Washington.
  • Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and a former senior economic adviser in the Clinton administration
  • Michael Froman, the chief of staff for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who now works with his old boss at Citigroup.

Domestic policy[]

New media[]

Former members[]

  • Samantha Power, journalist, academic; resigned in April 2008 after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster."
  • Jim Johnson, tapped by Obama to lead his vice presidential search committee. However, Johnson soon became a source of controversy when it was reported that he had received loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, a company implicated in the U.S. subprime mortgage lending crisis.,[14] and resigned abruptly on June 11, 2008.[15]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Obama's paid campaign staff dwarfing McCain's, Boston Globe July 20, 2008
  2. ^ "Obama running mate adviser quits". BBC News. June 11, 2008. Retrieved October 27, 2008.
  3. ^ Lynn Sweet, Obama's campaign staff a work in progress Archived September 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Chicago Sun-Times January 27, 2007
  4. ^ Key People-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) General Election Edition
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Elizabeth Bumiller, A Cast of 300 advised Obama on Foreign Policy New York Times July 18, 2008
  6. ^ Obama's conservative Mideast pick, Time July 16, 2008
  7. ^ Alan Nairn interviewed by Amy Goodman
  8. ^ Hoover Institute's Iran Democracy Project Archived September 23, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ "Chief of firm involved in breach is Obama adviser - CNN.com". CNN. March 22, 2008. Retrieved May 8, 2010.
  10. ^ Tim Shorrock, Hawks Behind the Dove: Who Makes Obama’s Foreign Policy?, The Progressive July 2008
  11. ^ Brzezinski Offers Support for Obama
  12. ^ Jason and the carbonauts
  13. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on September 21, 2008. Retrieved August 6, 2008.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ^ See "Obama VP Vetter Tied to Controversial Mortgage Crisis", [1], USA Today, June 9, 2008
  15. ^ Obama Aide Quits Under Fire for His Business Ties

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