List of Barack Obama presidential campaign staff members, 2008

List of persons holding prominent positions within the Barack Obama presidential primary campaign, 2008.

According to Deputy Campaign Manager Steve Hildebrand, the Obama campaign will have "large-scale operations in 22 states, medium operations in many others, and small staffs in only a handful of states," [http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/20/obamas_paid_staff_dwarfing_mccains/ Obama's paid campaig staff dwarfing McCain's] , "Boston Globe" July 20, 2008] with several thousand paid operatives on the ground between Obama staff and Democratic Party staff. These numbers will include "about 200 paid staffers working in Florida and more on the way, 90 in Michigan with plans to expand to 200 by August, at least 200 each eventually in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and 50 in Missouri with plans to expand to 150, according to published reports and interviews with Obama campaign officials."

Inner circle

* David Axelrod, media strategist. Founder of Chicago-based AKP Media. Handled Obama's 2004 Senate race. Consults for Mayor Daley, Rep. Rahm Emanuel.
* David Plouffe, campaign manager. Partner, AKP Media, lives in Washington.
* Steve Hildebrand, Deputy Campaign Manager. Runs South Dakota-based political consulting firm and is an Iowa specialist.
* Betsy Myers, chief operating officer. Executive director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Director of President Bill Clinton's Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach. Sister of Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's first press secretary.
* Robert Gibbs, communications chief. Spokesman for Obama's Senate and political operations.
* Penny Pritzker, National Finance Director.The vice presidential search committee included:
* Eric Holder
* Caroline Kennedy

Early advisors

An early 2007 article in the "Chicago Sun-Times" lists the following persons in Obama's White House team:Lynn Sweet, [http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/222679,CST-NWS-sweet22.article Obama's campaign staff a work in progress] , "Chicago Sun-Times" January 27, 2007]
* Paul Tewes, adviser; business partner of Hildebrand's.
* Bill Burton, national press secretary. Spokesman, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this cycle.
* Paul Harstad, pollster. Handled Obama's 2004 campaign.
* Cornell Belcher, pollster. Democratic National Committee pollster.
* Devorah Adler, research director. DNC research director.
* Shauna Daly, deputy research director. DNC deputy research director.
* Alyssa Mastromonaco, scheduling and advance. Political director for Obama's Hope Fund political action committee.
* Saul Schorr, media consultant. Runs a Philadelphia firm.
* Julianna Smoot, finance director. Finance director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle.
* Cassandra Butts, policy advisor. Previoustly the Center for American Progress think tank. Obama law school classmate. Former senior policy adviser to then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt.
* Pete Giangreco, direct mail, Iowa adviser. Partner, the Strategy Group, Evanston. Veteran of several Iowa primaries.
* Dan Pfeiffer, traveling press secretary. Former press chief for Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.).
* Matt Rodriguez, New Hampshire campaign manager.

Foreign policy

By July, 2008 the Obama campaign had some 300 persons working on foreign policy, and organized along bureaucratic lines like a "miniature State Department."Elizabeth Bumiller, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/us/politics/18advisers.html A Cast of 300 advised Obama on Foreign Policy] "New York Times" July 18, 2008] Notable among these people are:
* Dennis McDonough, 38, Obama's "top foreign policy aide."
* Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration.
* Anthony Lake, Clinton’s first national security adviser, who was criticized for the administration’s failure to confront the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and now acknowledges the inaction as a major mistake.
* Gregory B. Craig, a former top official in the Clinton State Department; also served as Clinton’s lawyer during his impeachment trial.
* Richard J. Danzig, a Navy secretary in the Clinton administration.
* Mark W. Lippert, Obama’s former Senate foreign policy adviser.
* Dennis Ross, the Middle East envoy for President Clinton and the first President Bush, now a member of the Obama campaign’s Middle East team. [ [http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1823145,00.html Obama's conservative Mideast pick] , "Time" July 16 2008] He has advised the Obama campaign on legal issues, including the rights available to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. [ [http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18991.htm Alan Nairn interviewed by Amy Goodman] ]
* Michael McFaul, a Russia scholar at Stanford University and co-director of Hoover Institute's Iran Democracy Project [ [http://www.hoover.org/research/iran/coordinators Hoover Institute's Iran Democracy Project] ] with Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani, leads the Russia and Eurasia team for the Obama campaign.
* Ivo H. Daalder, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has organized his 40-member nuclear nonproliferation team into eight working groups.
* Philip H. Gordon, also of Brookings, is in charge of Obama’s Europe team.
* Sarah Sewall, a Kennedy School professor and former Clinton Defense Department official who wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the new counterinsurgency manual Gen. David Petraeus revised for the military, is advising on counterinsurgency strategy.
* John O. Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp., advises Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues. [http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/22/passport.files/index.html] He is also a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
* Merrill McPeak, USAF (ret) figures prominently among Obama's military advisors. [Tim Shorrock, [http://www.progressive.org/mag/shorrock0708 Hawks Behind the Dove: Who Makes Obama’s Foreign Policy?] , "The Progressive" July 2008]
* Colin L. Powell, former Secretary of State, "has contributed outside advice."
* As has Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter. [ [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/brzezinski-offers-support-for-obama/ Brzezinski Offers Support for Obama] ]

Former Hillary Clinton supporters:
* Madeleine K. Albright
* Warren Christopher

Energy policy

* Howard A. Learner, Senior Environmental and Energy policy adviser; prior to the campaign, Executive Director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center.
* Jason Grumet, formerly executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy. [ [http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/05/06/grumet/index.html Jason and the carbonauts] ]
* Elwood (Elgie) Holstein, Jr, former Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere under Bill Clinton. [http://clinton6.nara.gov/2000/12/2000-12-21-holstein-jr-named-assistant-secretary-for-noaa.html]

Economic policy

* Austan Goolsbee, 37, a University of Chicago professor and columnist for The New York Times
* Jeffrey Liebman 39, a pension and poverty expert at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
* David Cutler, 41, a Harvard health economist
* Karen Kornbluh, 44, served as policy director in Obama's Senate office, having joined in 2002 after working for the Clinton administration and the New America Foundation in Washington.
* Daniel Tarullo, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, and a former senior economic adviser in the Clinton administration
* Michael Froman, the chief of staff for former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who now works with his old boss at Citigroup.

New Media

* Chris Hughes, developer of Facebook.

Former members

* Samantha Power, journalist, academic; resigned in April 2008 after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster."
* James A. Johnson, tapped by Obama to lead his vice presidential search committee. However, Johnson soon became a source of controversy when it was reported that he had received loans directly from Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, a company implicated in the U.S. subprime mortgage lending crisis. [See "Obama VP Vetter Tied to Controversial Mortgage Crisis", http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/06/obama-vp-vetter.html?loc=interstitialskip, USA Today, 9 June 2008] , and resigned abruptly on June 11, 2008. [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/politics/12veep.html Obama Aide Quits Under Fire for His Business Ties] ]

See also

* List of John McCain presidential campaign staff members, 2008

References