It’s entirely possible to have a top tier of campaign staffers that looks like a frat party in a sausage factory.
Women are a big topic in politics. Whether you’re the first viable female presidential candidate, stumping for paid parental leave, campaigning on reducing access to abortion, or — if you're Donald Trump — talking about female reporters being on their period, the topic of women is inescapable on the campaign trail. You can't win an election without women. Well, women voters.
But can you win an election without any women on your senior staff?
The good folks at The Slot (a Jezebel sub-blog) did an interesting analysis of top-paid campaign staff for all the remaining Presidential candidates. (The list includes Rubio since it was written before he dropped out of the race on March 15th.)
What they found is that it’s entirely possible to have a top tier of campaign staffers that looks like a frat party in a sausage factory. It’s also possible to be a governor who recently defunded Planned Parenthood and still recruit a female campaign director.
The numbers are interesting and worth examining for yourself, but here are a few of the key takeaways that I noticed:
• You are not going to get rich — regardless of gender — working on a presidential primary campaign. Average salaries range from $39,000-$61,000.
• Hillary Clinton puts her equal opportunity money where her payroll is: She has more women than men on her staff.
• John Kasich is the only candidate with a female campaign director.
• Ted Cruz pays men a lot more than women. The average salary for male Cruz staffers is $69,000, and for female staffers, it’s $47,000.
• All of Bernie Sanders’s top earners are men.
For their second act, I’d love to see The Slot take a look at racial and ethnic make-ups of staff to see who’s hiring people of color for their campaigns. Diversity takes a lot of forms!
