By Michael Falcone
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Smoke-filled rooms, closed-door strategy meetings and long
nights spent planning rebuttals to the opposition’s
allegations are more than campaign myths, according to one UCLA
graduate.
“It’s pretty much what you hear about,” said
Ardasces Kassakhian (“˜00) who managed Paul Krekorian’s
campaign for State Assembly in California’s 43rd
district.
Kassakhian has worked on several campaigns ““ both Democrat
and Republican. But he said switching back and forth is
advantageous.
“If you’re on the organizational level where
you’re planning strategy, it’s useful when you come of
from the other party ““ you bring things the other party does
not know,” he said. “I’ve always believed in
working for the candidate, not necessarily the party
itself.”
The candidate ““ his previous experience, and personal
character ““ is the most important component of any political
campaign, said political consultant Bill Carrick, who has been in
the political strategy business for 25 years.
Carrick, a partner in the consulting firm Morris, Carrick and
Guma, said he treats every campaign he works on differently.
“There’s no formulas in it, people who use formulas
are generally the losers,” Carrick said. “In every
campaign the overall things you’re trying to accomplish are
the same, it’s the mechanisms you use to accomplish them that
are different.”
From the candidate’s perspective, it’s a constant
balance between being the controller and being controlled.
Paul Koretz, a Democrat running for State Assembly in
UCLA’s district, said previous behind-the-scenes campaign
experience has helped him now that he is a candidate.
“People run campaigns in different ways, and I’ve
run campaigns myself, and played a pretty significant role in the
management of my own,” Koretz said.
“I like to run a campaign where you adjust and pay careful
attention to what’s working and what’s not,”
Koretz said.
Koretz said some managers come up with their overall strategy
many months before the campaign begins, but the candidate and staff
must constantly react and change their strategy throughout the
election cycle.
Koretz, who raised $600,000 in a close March primary race, said
more time spent fund-raising means fewer chances to get out and
connect with voters.
“Having to raise enough money kept me from walking the
precincts as much as I wanted to,” Koretz said.
Campaign finance reform continues to be a major concern those
involved with campaigns ““ local or national ““ and for
Koretz, Carrick and Kassakhian, the consensus is that reform is
needed, but the question is what kind.
“The unintended consequences (of reform) is sometimes
worse than the original problem,” Carrick said. “The
cure can be worse than the disease.”
But Kassakhian said campaign finance is just one of the problems
associated with politics, and he doesn’t plan to continue
after this year.
“Politics is very emotionally taxing,” he said.
“I have seen first hand what happens to people’s
private lives when they are a candidate for office. I would never
want to put anyone who I care for through that, unless the call for
public service was resounding.”