Deputy Campaign Manager

Reports To: Campaign Manager, Taylor Gillespie Salary: $7,000–$8,000/month (commensurate with experience) Start Date: ASAP Position Type: Full-time, through November 2026 Location: Primarily in-person, based in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. You are expected to work on-site most weekdays, with limited telework flexibility. Evening and weekend availability is required for in-person events and campaign activities. About the Campaign We are building a people-powered campaign to flip Colorado’s 4th Congressional District and elect Rear Admiral (Ret.) Eileen Laubacher. Eileen is a national security leader, mom of five, and lifelong public servant who believes in service over partisanship and delivering real results for Colorado communities. This district represents one of the country’s most competitive opportunities for change, and we are seeking a Deputy Campaign Manager who can help drive strategy, coordination, and execution across the campaign. Position Overview The Deputy Campaign Manager will serve as a senior member of the campaign team, with responsibility for political relationships, endorsements, stakeholder engagement, and targeted voter engagement. This role requires someone who understands both the political ecosystem surrounding a competitive congressional campaign and how modern campaigns use data, digital targeting, and direct communication to reach and persuade voters. The ideal candidate is highly organized, politically savvy, persistent, and comfortable moving between external relationship management and campaign execution. They should be someone who can take a promising political conversation and turn it into an endorsement, take a strategic voter universe and turn it into a targeted communications program, and ensure that opportunities do not fall through the cracks. Responsibilities Political, Stakeholder & Coalition Responsibilities Serve as a primary point of responsibility for building and maintaining the campaign's political and stakeholder relationships across the district, ensuring the campaign is consistently developing relationships beyond traditional Democratic and campaign networks. Develop a deep understanding of the district—its communities, industries, employers, institutions, local leaders, economic drivers, and regional differences—and help ensure that understanding informs campaign strategy and candidate engagement. Build and maintain relationships with leaders and stakeholders across key sectors throughout the district, including agriculture and farming, ranching, water, labor, energy, small business, healthcare, education, veterans and military communities, local government, and other industries and constituencies important to the district. Proactively identify individuals, organizations, associations, businesses, community leaders, and subject-matter experts the candidate and campaign should know and develop strategies for establishing those relationships. Create opportunities for the candidate to listen and learn directly from people across the district, including stakeholder meetings, roundtables, facility tours, farm and ranch visits, business visits, labor meetings, community conversations, and other substantive engagements. Work with stakeholders to develop thoughtful candidate visits and tours that provide meaningful exposure to the issues affecting their industries and communities - not simply campaign events or photo opportunities. Conduct advance research and prepare the candidate for stakeholder engagements, including background on the organization or industry, key individuals, relevant local issues, previous campaign interactions, and potential areas for continued engagement. Ensure relationships developed during candidate travel and events are captured and followed up on. When the candidate meets a farmer, business owner, local official, union leader, water expert, community advocate, or other important contact on the campaign trail, ensure that relationship does not end when the event does. Maintain and continuously update the campaign's political and stakeholder contact database, including relationship history, campaign connections, areas of expertise or interest, previous meetings, commitments, follow-up needs, and recommended next steps. Develop systems to ensure introductions, business cards, event contacts, candidate conversations, staff relationships, and other connections made throughout the campaign are incorporated into the campaign's broader political program. Regularly assess gaps in the campaign's relationships and recommend where the candidate and senior staff should spend additional time—for example, identifying communities, industries, geographic areas, or constituencies where the campaign needs stronger relationships or a deeper understanding of local concerns. Work closely with the Campaign Manager and communications teams to surface what the campaign is hearing from stakeholders and communities and help translate those conversations into policy development, candidate messaging, earned media, and campaign strategy. Coalitions & Constituency Engagement Oversee the campaign's coalition and constituency engagement program and manage staff supporting those efforts. Develop clear goals, strategies, and accountability for coalition programs, ensuring they are focused on meaningful relationship-building and voter engagement rather than simply creating lists of supporters. Identify priority constituencies and communities where dedicated coalition-building can strengthen the campaign's relationships and voter outreach. Support staff in recruiting coalition members, developing leadership structures, organizing events and meetings, and creating opportunities for coalition members to participate meaningfully in the campaign. Ensure coalition programs are integrated with the campaign's broader political, communications, digital, and field strategies. Identify strong validators and community leaders who can become campaign surrogates, hosts, advisors, volunteers, endorsers, or trusted messengers within their communities. Develop opportunities to activate coalition members and political relationships through targeted voter contact, events, earned media, digital content, letters to the editor, relational organizing, and other campaign activities. Manage staff responsible for coalition outreach, including setting priorities, reviewing progress, troubleshooting challenges, and ensuring consistent follow-through. Endorsements & Political Support Lead and manage the campaign's endorsement strategy across national, regional, state, and local organizations, while recognizing that the campaign's political program is fundamentally about building durable relationships—not simply collecting endorsements. Identify potential endorsing organizations, elected officials, political leaders, constituency groups, advocacy organizations, labor organizations, industry groups, and other influential stakeholders. Build and maintain a comprehensive pipeline of potential endorsements, including deadlines, interviews, meetings, outstanding requests, next steps, and campaign points of contact. Develop relationships with political directors, endorsement committees, organizational leadership, elected officials, and other key stakeholders. Conduct consistent political follow-up to move relationships forward, whether the ultimate result is an endorsement, an introduction, a candidate meeting, participation in an event, policy guidance, a partnership, or another form of engagement with the campaign. Coordinate endorsement questionnaires and interview preparation with the candidate, Campaign Manager, policy, communications, and other relevant staff. Maintain relationships after an endorsement is secured and identify opportunities to activate supporters through events, earned media, fundraising, digital content, surrogate activity, volunteer recruitment, and voter contact. Manage political follow-up from the candidate and Campaign Manager, ensuring commitments, introductions, requests, and next steps are tracked and completed. Political Intelligence & Follow-Through Serve as a central repository for what the campaign is learning from political and stakeholder conversations across the district. Develop a strong understanding of who the trusted voices are in different communities, who knows whom, which organizations matter, what issues are driving conversations locally, and where the campaign needs to invest additional time and attention. Regularly brief the Campaign Manager and senior staff on emerging issues, stakeholder concerns, political opportunities, relationship gaps, and important developments across the district. Ensure information gathered through stakeholder meetings, tours, coalition conversations, candidate travel, and political outreach is shared appropriately across the campaign rather than remaining siloed with individual staff members. Above all, create a culture of persistent political follow-through: every meaningful introduction, candidate conversation, stakeholder meeting, tour, or campaign‑trail connection should have a clear next step, an owner, and a record that allows the relationship to continue growing over the course of the campaign. Voter Engagement & Targeted Communications Help manage the campaign's direct-to-voter communications program, with a particular focus on digital targeting, peer‑to‑peer and campaign text messaging, and other targeted voter outreach. Work in close coordination with the campaign's digital media firm to develop and execute targeted voter‑contact strategies based on geography, demographics, voting history, persuasion targets, and campaign priorities. Translate broader campaign strategy into specific voter audiences and communications opportunities—for example, identifying when and how the campaign should communicate directly with veterans, unaffiliated voters, rural voters, parents, seniors, or other strategically important constituencies. Develop and manage targeted text‑message programs, including identifying audiences, coordinating messaging, managing timing and deployment, and tracking results. Coordinate with the digital media firm on voter targeting and paid digital programs to ensure campaign priorities and changing political conditions are reflected in the campaign's digital strategy. Work with the field, communications, and digital teams to ensure voter‑contact programs complement one another rather than operating in silos. Identify opportunities to use endorsements, validators, events, news moments, and candidate activity as targeted voter‑contact opportunities. Track performance of direct voter‑contact programs and recommend adjustments based on engagement, response, and campaign needs. Help develop programs specifically designed to reach voters who may be less accessible through traditional door‑to‑door or volunteer‑based organizing. Ensure that voter targeting and messaging programs are executed on schedule and that the campaign and outside consultants have the information, approvals, and materials necessary to move quickly. Candidate Staffing & Campaign Operations Serve as a key member of the candidate staffing rotation, accompanying the candidate to campaign events, stakeholder meetings, political engagements, fundraisers, media appearances, tours, roundtables, community events, and other campaign activities as needed. Provide professional, proactive staffing support to the candidate, ensuring she is prepared for each engagement and has the context, materials, schedule, objectives, and background necessary to make the most of her time. Work closely with the Campaign Manager and scheduling team to understand the purpose and strategic objective of candidate engagements and ensure events are advancing broader campaign goals. Anticipate candidate and campaign needs throughout the day, troubleshoot issues in real time, and help keep the candidate on schedule while maintaining flexibility when valuable conversations or unexpected opportunities arise. Help manage candidate movement and event execution, including arrival and departure logistics, introductions, stakeholder interactions, staff coordination, materials, photography needs, and transitions between events. Ensure the candidate knows who she is meeting, why the conversation matters, what we hope to learn or accomplish. Capture meaningful information from candidate conversations and ensure important commitments, introductions, personal stories, political intelligence, and follow‑up items are documented and assigned after events. Identify individuals the candidate meets on the campaign trail who warrant continued engagement and ensure those relationships are incorporated into the campaign's political and stakeholder program. Capture stories, photos, stakeholder feedback, voter concerns, and other insights from the field and ensure they are shared with communications, digital, political, and field teams as appropriate. Conduct post‑event follow‑up to ensure commitments are fulfilled, contacts are entered into campaign systems, thank‑you messages are sent when appropriate, and valuable relationships continue beyond the event itself. Team Operations & Coordination Support the Campaign Manager in the day‑to‑day operations of the campaign and help maintain coordination across departments. Serve as a problem‑solver and additional point of leadership when the Campaign Manager is unavailable or focused on other campaign priorities. Help ensure decisions, assignments, and follow‑up items from senior staff meetings are communicated, tracked, and completed. Maintain visibility across political, field, communications, digital, finance, scheduling, and coalition operations and identify areas where greater coordination is needed. Help establish systems and processes that keep a fast‑moving campaign organized, particularly around candidate travel, political follow‑up, events, voter engagement, and cross‑departmental projects. Step in to support priority projects across departments when additional capacity or senior‑level coordination is needed. Help ensure outside consultants and vendors are appropriately integrated with the internal campaign team and have the information, approvals, and direction necessary to execute their work. Support staff management and development by providing clear direction, helping staff prioritize competing demands, and reinforcing a culture of accountability, collaboration, and follow‑through. Identify operational gaps before they become problems and proactively recommend solutions to the Campaign Manager. Maintain a strong understanding of the campaign's overall priorities so that day‑to‑day decisions about candidate time, staff capacity, events, and political engagement remain aligned with the campaign's path to victory Qualifications Previous experience on a political campaign, with an elected official, political organization, advocacy organization, labor organization, or similar environment. Familiarity with political endorsement processes and experience interacting with national, regional, state, or local political and advocacy organizations. Experience with voter targeting, campaign data, digital voter contact, text messaging, or other direct‑to‑voter communications strongly preferred. Understanding of how voter files, targeting, digital advertising, and campaign communications work together to reach specific voter audiences. Experience managing or working closely with political consultants, digital firms, vendors, or other outside partners. Strong political judgment and an ability to understand both individual relationships and the broader strategic value those relationships can provide. Exceptional follow‑through and organizational skills, with the ability to manage a large number of conversations, deadlines, programs, and next steps simultaneously. Strong written and verbal communication skills and comfort representing the campaign externally. Ability to work independently, anticipate needs, and proactively move projects and relationships forward without waiting for direction. Discretion and sound judgment when handling sensitive political conversations, campaign strategy, voter data, and relationships. #J-18808-Ljbffr