Romney Campaign spends same as Obama Campaign for HALF the staff.

[ProSense]

Romney Campaign spends same as Obama Campaign for HALF the staff.

by hungrycoyote

This is truly rich. Mitt Romney is running for President and one of the qualifications he claims is his superior business acumen. One thing I distinctly remember from the 2008 campaign is then candidate Obama, when asked what his qualifications for running anything were, responded by saying that we should just watch how he runs his campaign. I have already read several diaries about the fact that the Obama 2012 Campaign operation is superior to the Obama 2008 campaign.

So should Mitt Romney hold his campaign up as an example of his ability to lead an operation? According to this Los Angeles Times article I just read, not so much.

But the president appears to be getting a much bigger bang for his buck.

According to an analysis by the Times Data Desk, part of the Los Angeles Times, the Obama campaign had 901 people on its payroll last month, and paid them a median salary of $3,074 a month, or $36,886 a year.

The Romney campaign, in contrast, had 403 people on its payroll, and paid them a median salary of $6,437 in August, which would mean $77,250 a year.

(snip)

The disparity in the two campaigns’ compensation packages underscores a key difference in their strategic approach.

Much of Obama’s campaign staff consists of on-the-ground organizers deployed around the country early this year as part of a field program designed to identify and register Obama voters, and ultimately get them to cast ballots.

The Romney campaign has taken a different tack. It is relying on the Republican National Committee for the bulk of its voter registration and mobilization program this fall.

Obama campaign had twice the staff as Romney last month at same cost

If it wasn't bad enough that Mitt Romney's business experience at Bain Capital was one of destroying businesses that somebody else built and devastating the lives of the workers who helped to build the business, now we get confirmation that he's not so good at running a campaign either.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/24/1135932/-Romney-Campaign-spends-same-as-Obama-Campaign-for-HALF-the-staff

The LA Times article also points out that this doesn't include the bonuses Mitt paid after the RNC.

Romney campaign spends more than $200K on senior staff bonuses after Republican convention

by Jed Lewison

Mitt Romney's campaign handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses to top staff after the Republican National Convention:

Mitt Romney’s campaign took out a $20 million loan in August and ended the month with $38 million less in the bank than President Barack Obama.

At the same time, the campaign gave out about $200,000 in bonuses to senior employees just after the Republican National Convention, which ended with the candidate not getting much of a bounce in the polls.

What timing, eh? Maybe we should call it the Eastwood bonus. In all, nine staffers took home the cash, but as you can see at the top of this post, even as his campaign flushes money down the toilet with primary bonuses in August, Romney's campaign website is still pleading for money, in chunks as little as $15 a donation. But who can blame him for asking for cash? After all, he's got staff bonuses to pay.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/21/1134783/-Romney-campaign-spends-more-than-200K-on-senior-staff-bonuses-after-Republican-convention

Ouch! Mitt's "campaign is filled with people who spend their time avoiding him or resisting him"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021361146

Summary: The Obama campaign is the larger employer, and Mitt's throwing money at people who spend time trying to avoid him.

[Turbineguy]

1. There is an obvious need for Romney to

outsource!

[ProSense]

2. Romney proves that Democrats are better job creators.

His campaign could run into financial trouble. Yet he's paying bonuses, but pulling ads from key states.

Romney’s nightmare scenario
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021408282

[JHB]

9. Didn't he already do that?

Remember the the conference-call for the press attacking Obama's jobs record, which used a call center in the Philippines?

[SDjack]

3. If Willard ran government the same way as his campaign,

he would bloat the number of employees and the cost. That, my friend, is not improvement.

[underpants]

4. The Republicans are fleecing the Romney "campaign".

This may be why Romney spends all his time at fundraisers and not actually campaigning

[ProSense]

5. Could you imagine if this was opposite,

that news came out that Obama was spending the same amount for half the staff...what would the MSM do?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. I'll bet there's more than Paul Ryan calling him "The Stench"

"It's the smell."

[hughee99]

7. So Romney is paying is workers better than Obama and that's bad?

If Romney were paying half what Obama was, he'd be the evil boss underpaying his workers, but instead he's the evil boss that's wasting money. This actually works out pretty good since we can criticize him either way for this.

[ProSense]

10. Yes,

his ground game sucks. He created fewer jobs. He's paying bonuses and his campaign is running into financial trouble. What's he going to do if his campaign crashes? Did he promise bonuses? I see a disaster in the making, especially from a not exactly loyal staffers who are likely in it for the money.

If the Obama campaign had half the staff and a bigger payroll and was losing to Mitt, that would be viewed as bad.

Campaigns are built on people. The more people involved the better.

[hughee99]

11. Hold on, are you worried about the Romney campaign running out of money

and not being able to pay staffers their bonuses? Politicians often spends YEARS after the election is over trying to retire a campaign debt. I'm supremely confident Romney will be able to pay everyone eventually.

Mitt's not losing because of his staff, he's losing because he's a shitty candidate. Paying the BEST people a million dollars and hour won't fix that.

[ProSense]

12. Really?

"Politicians often spends YEARS after the election is over trying to retire a campaign debt. I'm supremely confident Romney will be able to pay everyone eventually."

Good grief! There have been a few sitituations over recent elections where staff salaries became a huge issue.

"Mitt's not losing because of his staff, he's losing because he's a shitty candidate."

The keystone team? The one that keeps leaking information about dissatisfaction? The one that keeps contradicting their candidate?

Romney’s nightmare scenario
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021408282

[hughee99]

13. Mittens isn't losing because the keystone team is leaking information,

though it's not helping. You also have continued instances of the candidate contradicting himself. Romney can raise a lot of money, but he hasn't sold his vision to the undecideds and even his own party fought against him in the primary in an "anybody but Romney" effort. Now Romney has turned right to appeal to his base (he didn't give a shit about abortion when he was MA governor) but they already don't trust him and that move isn't helping to bring in undecideds either. He's asked people to "trust him" rather than release specifics (on his tax plans or even his personal tax history), but seems to have only lead to speculation that he's hiding something people won't like.

I don't recall how much staffers made being a HUGE issue for McCain or Obama in '08, Kerry or * in '04, Gore or * in '00 or even Clinton or Dole in '96. Sure, maybe it matters in a congressional race where the amount of money is far, far less, but I can't recall it ever having a significant impact on a presidential race.

[ProSense]

14. Wait

I don't recall how much staffers made being a HUGE issue for McCain or Obama in '08, Kerry or * in '04, Gore or * in '00 or even Clinton or Dole in '96. Sure, maybe it matters in a congressional race where the amount of money is far, far less, but I can't recall it ever having a significant impact on a presidential race.

...that's not the point. The point is Mitt's ground game sucks. It has been reported. Obama has been able to attract more people to support his campaign. If Mitt's salaries aren't a problem, why didn't he hire more people? You know why: If he hired the same number of people as Obama, he'd have a huge payroll, which would look absurd by comparison. He knows damn well he can't create that perception. This is a campaign not Wall Street. Why do you think the bonuses are being panned?

[hughee99]

15. Mitt's ground game sucks for the same reason he can't attract more people to support his campaign.

He's not a good candidate. People don't want to work for him, because they don't want to have to sell to others a candidate the don't believe in themselves. Many have accused Mittens of being the Teabagger candidate, but the baggers don't trust him despite all his pandering (yes, they'll vote for him, but their support is a mile wide and an inch deep). At this point in the election, he shouldn't be trying to sure up his own base, and yet he still is.

Does Mitt have to pay people more to work for him because he's not a good candidate? Sure. Is the core issue how much he's paying them, or how good a candidate he actually is? I think that's clear.

You can say that big salaries and bonuses for his staffers are evidence that his support is not strong (even among his workers), but that's like standing in the middle of a blizzard saying that you can tell it's cold because your friend is wearing mittens.

[ProSense]

16. "He's not a good candidate. People don't want to work for him "

So he has to pay them a lot to get them to do so?

What exactly are you arguing?

The fact is that Obama has twice as many paid staffers working his campaign. The point of a campaign is to get more bang for the buck, not to enrich a few. I mean, what's the point of nine people receiving $200,000 in bonuses? That's the kind of cluelessness Mitt has shown. With his focus on the economy and his business experience, he hires fewer people at larger salaries and then doles out bonuses on top of that, all while his ground game sucks.

[hughee99]

17. My point is, the amount Mittens has to pay his staffers is a symptom of a larger problem.

The larger problem (for him) is that he's not a good candidate. His base doesn't trust him because he hasn't been a "true conservative" long enough and his religion doesn't help. The undecideds don't trust him because his record as Gov isn't even being mentioned and his "business" record seems to consist of his company being very successful at the expense of others. He's not trying to sell a specific vision of what he wants for America, in fact, he's doing everything he can to avoid specifics. He's trying to sell himself and his own personal integrity, as in "Trust me, I have a good plan for America, I just can't give you the specifics right now". The problem with this is that he doesn't have a lot in his personal background to make him seem very trustworthy. I'm sure he's willing to do what's right for Mitt Romney, I just have no faith that he's willing to, or even understands how to, do what's right for America.

Because of all this, the repukes who worked for * aren't excited about him. The churches that worked on the GOTV in previous elections aren't motivated, even the hacks don't want to jump on a doomed ship without a good financial incentive to do so.

[ProSense]

18. Agree. Here's a good example

of the importance of a ground game: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021420455

[hughee99]

19. I think we're on the same page here,

You're showing evidence that his ground game is F'd (which it is), and that he has to pay so much for his staffers because they don't really believe in him (which also affects his ability to have any kind of ground game). I think I've already accepted that as a given (so I was confused as to what you were getting at), but I didn't really think about the fact that this isn't necessarily a "given" to everyone else. This post may help those who haven't realized what a shitty campaign the repukes are running around a shitty candidate.

[brooklynite]

8. The Romney campaign sounds terribly expensive...maybe they could outsource overseas