Making Ends Meet After Hoopla Is Over : Political Consultants Scramble for Other Jobs After Final Vote Tally

When an election ends, victorious candidates look forward to a new challenge, while losers quietly return to careers put on hold during campaigns.

But for the political consultants who helped shape a race’s outcome, the job--and, more importantly, the salary--usually ends when the votes are counted, regardless of who won or lost.

“For consultants, Election Day is the equivalent of getting two weeks’ notice--except you don’t even get the two weeks,” said David Lewis, whose firm, Johnston & Lewis, is one of about half a dozen local political consulting firms that handle most major San Diego campaigns. “You’re done right then.”

With the general election a month past, many consultants are into what Lewis’ partner, Jim Johnston, only half-jokingly termed the industry’s “November-to-who-knows-when” hiatus. It’s a period when political operatives hope for a quick start to next year’s campaigns, instead of basking in their immediate past successes--or dwelling on the failures.

‘You Start Thinking’

“You start thinking about the next campaign the minute one ends,” Democratic consultant Nick Johnson said. “You have to, if you want to keep the lights on.”

Because of the nature of their jobs, most consultants perform nonpolitical public relations work to tide them over in the electoral off-season or turn their attention to other business interests.

Lewis has been taking a more direct hand in the operation of a hotel that he owns, while his partner is looking for a second job. Others are working on projects ranging from publicizing San Diego’s plan for a new $1.5-billion sewer system to trying to entice people to enter the nursing field in New York. Johnson has used the current slow period to move his office and to design a humorous Christmas card featuring a photo of Vice President-elect Dan Quayle, “the Democrats’ savior.”

For the few consultants who rely on political work for their livelihood, the economic realities the day after an election are comparable to those that face Christmas tree salesmen on Dec. 26.

“If you’re going to do this for a living, you have to be like a squirrel storing away nuts for the winter,” Johnson said. “And sometimes, it’s a long winter.”

Changing Scene

But not as long as it used to be, most consultants agree. The increasing sophistication of campaigns, combined with odd-year council elections that guarantee major races every year, rather than every two years, is reducing the gap between the end of

one campaign and the start of another in San Diego.

“Ten years ago, the day after an election, it was, ‘OK, everybody go home now, and we’ll reassemble next year sometime,’ ” said Jay Townsend, whose New York-based consulting firm, Dresner-Sykes, has parlayed its success in the campaigns of San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) into a growing local presence. “There’s still down time, but it’s not nearly what it used to be.”

“It gets slow, but it’s not like there’s nothing to do,” added Johnson, whose clients include Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy and the Labor Party of Australia. “Most people get the idea that we’re like Santa Claus and that as soon as the big day is over, we quietly go away with seven elves to prepare for next year.”

Even so, most consultants say that the post-election period typically is one in which, as Lewis wryly put it, “There’s plenty of time to stare at the wallpaper--and wonder how you’re going to pay for it.”

Despite candidates’ growing reliance on political consultants, it is all but impossible, local consultants say, to prosper--or, in some cases, simply survive--strictly on political business. For even the most savvy money managers, the cyclical nature of political campaigns poses a formidable hurdle.

“I don’t know many businesses that can go two, three months or longer between jobs, without having problems,” Lewis said. During their 11-year partnership, Johnston and Lewis sometimes have been uncertain as late as April--six months after the previous election--about their workload for that year.

“This is not a job for anyone who needs a lot of security,” added Johnston, whose current search for a second job--despite his firm’s relatively successful track record in recent elections--offers compelling evidence of that comment. “By its very nature, it’s impossible to do a lot of economic planning in this business.”

Recognizing that fact, most political consultants supplement their income through other means. For most, that means handling corporate and commercial accounts that provide the ongoing income usually lacking in political work.

Townsend said that slightly more than half of Dresner-Sykes’ revenue comes from campaign consulting. The rest stems from a wide range of commercial accounts, including assisting lawyers with jury selections, a cable television home-shopping channel and a nurse-hiring program.

Similarly, Sara Katz, a local consultant who helped defeat two citizens’ slow-growth initiatives last month, estimates that her firm’s business is split evenly between politics and corporate accounts during busy election years. But during odd-numbered years, when there is little political work available beyond the council races, corporate jobs account for about 70% of Katz & Associates’ business, she said. Next year her firm will concentrate on a lucrative $275,000 contract from the city of San Diego to help publicize and solicit citizen reaction to the city’s new sewer system plan.

Unlike most other consulting firms, Johnston & Lewis has chosen to avoid handling corporate accounts, primarily because its two principals say they find the work boring compared to high-energy politicking. That approach, however, makes for extended slow periods and a need for other financial interests.

“This business is so cyclical that it makes sense to have something more permanent to fall back on,” Johnston said. “I knew this day was coming. And now it’s here.”

That is not to suggest that political consulting work cannot provide a comfortable living. With $200,000-plus City Council campaigns now commonplace--and with other local contests often costing twice that much or more--consulting fees have grown proportionately, allowing some consultants to make more in a six- to eight-month campaign than most San Diegans earn in a year.

Although fees structures vary--some consultants are paid a flat monthly retainer, others receive a percentage of radio and TV ads, and some get both--a rule of thumb is that consultants receive about 15% to 20% of a campaign’s overall expenditures.

Under that formula, Johnston & Lewis’ engineering of Republican Carol Bentley’s upset victory in the 77th Assembly District, a race in which she raised more than $340,000, generated a fee in the neighborhood of $50,000. The firm’s biggest fee ever was nearly $90,000, which it received in an unsuccessful campaign against a 1985 growth-management proposition.

In a trend becoming increasingly prevalent within their industry, many consultants also are paid performance bonuses for winning a campaign or at least attaining an agreed-upon vote target.

“That’s an arrangement that’s good for both the candidate and the consultant,” said consultant Tom Shepard, who had winners in all seven of the local races he managed last month. “I’ve found that candidates and I are able to develop a more trusting relationship if they know that we both have something at risk.”

If consultants had only their own salaries to worry about, the fees in local races--not to mention more costly statewide campaigns--would be a potent incentive for others to enter the field. Most, however, have offices, staffs and other overhead expenses that continue after the campaign ends--costs that can make the wait from this year’s post-election to next year’s pre-election an economically uneasy one.

To help, in Shepard’s words, “fill in the valleys between the peaks,” many consultants are trying to establish month-to-month retainers with successful candidates, to maintain a financial relationship between elections.

While the retainers typically call for smaller payments than those received during campaigns, they give consultants a steady economic base and give officeholders ready access to political advice that can enhance their performance and smooth the path toward reelection.

In the meantime, Johnston and Lewis met with their first prospective 1989 San Diego City Council candidate earlier this month, and other consultants have had at least preliminary contact with incumbents and potential challengers in next year’s four council races.

Council campaigns historically produce little activity until the spring, and consultants attribute these early inquiries to candidates’ growing recognition that successful campaigns are more like a marathon than a sprint.

“These people who think they can walk in in March and take out an incumbent that fall are dreaming,” Lewis said.

Another factor in the potential early start to Campaign ’89 stems from San Diego voters’ approval last month of Proposition E, which established district-only council races beginning next year. That shift, replacing the old system that featured district primaries and citywide runoffs, is a political wild card that has incumbents and challengers alike speculating over how the change will alter the dynamics of the races.

That uncertainty, Katz argues, could be a boon for consultants.

“The message is: ‘Start early,’ ” she said. “Also, candidates who might not have thought they had a chance in the past might think they do in a district race, so more people may run.”

Townsend and Johnson already have been contacted by candidates interested in statewide or national office in 1990 or beyond, where fund raising and organizational demands impose the need for even greater lead time.

As they search for ways to increase their earnings, most consultants argue that the job often offers greater psychic rewards than actual income. Campaigns that produce the largest payments also mean 80-hour work weeks for months at a time, reducing the per-hour fee to much less than could be earned in other top-level marketing or advertising positions.

Still, most willingly accept that trade-off.

“If you’re in political consulting in this town, you’re in it more for love than money,” Johnston said. “There’s nothing as exciting as working on a good campaign. In politics, you put together a plan, have a relatively short period to make it work and then, on one night, you find out whether you were right. In normal marketing, you might work for years trying to increase your market share by 1%. There’s just no comparison.”

Katz added: “You see your clients at the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. You get caught up in much more than you do most other kinds of business. The psychic rewards are immense.”

On the other hand, psychic income does not pay the mortgage.

“But that’s OK, because I really feel like I have a seat on the locomotive of history,” Johnson said. “I’m only working on things that I feel are important and that I believe in. So, my conscience is clear.” After a brief pause, he chuckled and added, “Clear but broke.”