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Working for the RNC this election cycle, I get asked a lot of questions. One of the most frequent, especially from friends, family, acquaintances (and BlogHers I e-mail with) is: What’s it like working for the RNC with just weeks to go until the presidential election?
Well, this week, rather than talking about a particular area of policy, or a given issue in the race (for example, helping small businesses, or improving health care or education), I thought I’d give you an extended answer to that, and an overview of what just one of the many women working to elect John McCain and other Republicans does on a day-to-day basis.
Lately, that “what” has been a little harder to predict and less than routine, with both parties having held their conventions over recent weeks and Election Day drawing nearer all the time.Of course, my remit remains communicating with online media about what the RNC perceives as the most important stories and the most important information on any given day, irrespective of time, date, or location. Being one of the RNC staffers who handled communications and traveled both to Denver for the Democratic National Convention and Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican National Convention, it is fair to say that of late, I’ve been doing a lot more of that — and from the dual nerve centers of all political activity for a packed, two-week period, to boot.
Typically, I start work at about 7 in the morning, and finish up around 7:30 in the evening (usually with a quick foray online, to see what’s going on, just before I go to bed around 11). It goes without saying that my BlackBerry rarely stops buzzing.
However, when conventions start, days invariably get longer.Media attention spikes as the American public has virtually a solid two weeks to focus in on the presidential race and watch both parties’ big names and nominees speak directly to them. In addition, speeches run well into the night, meaning that in Denver, I was at work longer, watching speeches and responding to distortions and inaccuracies contained in them and in coverage of them. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, I was watching, monitoring, and acting in relation to responses to what I was seeing, and emailing and talking continually with the hundreds of bloggers covering the convention, there on the ground, nonstop, from morning until night.
I’ll admit it: In Minneapolis-St. Paul, at least on Wednesday and Thursday, the focus for me was on the watching. When John McCain selected Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate just days before the convention began, like many Americans, I was excited. Before joining the RNC last year, I tracked Gov. Palin’s record and action in office fairly closely, and the point that stood out to me was that, like John McCain, she was a “doer,” not a “talker.” Also like him, she is a tough reformer. As governor, she has fought against corruption, passed comprehensive landmark ethics reform, and fought against wasteful spending (just ask Alaska's Democrats). Gov. Palin is an ideal addition to a ticket headed by John McCain because she has shaken up Alaska, just as he has worked to shake up Washington, and it is that quality that so many Americans are finding exciting about the Republican presidential team right now. It certainly made me, and millions of other Americans, excited to watch her convention speech, which I thought was nothing short of fantastic.
That excitement is to be welcomed, of course, by anyone working to elect Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin. However, I’d be lying if I said that her selection has not resulted in plenty of activity on blogs and across online media, just as it has on cable news and in the traditional press. The result has, of course, been busier days for me and my colleagues — something that is unlikely to change or reverse as a trend at any point between now and November. As I write this, I am receiving e-mails at the rate of about one per minute,
