We’ve built an industry that rewards gatekeeping over talent, access over results. It’s time for a reckoning.
By Randall Thompson | Pulse Communications
I’m going to say something that’s going to make some people in my industry uncomfortable. Good.
The political consulting business has a problem. And it’s not the one people usually talk about — the cost, the partisanship, the revolving door. Those are real issues. But the deeper problem is structural, and it’s been metastasizing for years.
The industry is eating its young.
Here’s what I mean. A talented 28-year-old walks into politics. She’s sharp, she’s hungry, she’s got instincts that can’t be taught. She works her first campaign as a field organizer — 80-hour weeks, terrible pay, no benefits. The campaign wins. She moves up to a junior staff role at a consulting firm. Same hours. Marginally better pay. She’s writing the memos and building the strategies, but the partner’s name is on the cover page.
Five years later, she’s good enough to run campaigns on her own. But she can’t, because the clients she helped win are “the firm’s clients.” The relationships she built are on the firm’s Rolodex. The party apparatus — the committees, the bundlers, the endorsement networks — all route work through the same twelve firms that have been getting the same work for the last twenty years.
Most of them leave. Not politics — just consulting. They go to corporate communications, or lobbying, or tech. And the industry loses another talented person while the same mediocre firms keep cashing the same checks.
I’ve watched this pattern repeat for two decades. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been part of the system. When you’ve been in this business as long as I have — Chief of Staff in Congress, communications director for statewide officers, national media — you accumulate relationships that give you access. That access becomes a moat. And most people in my position are perfectly happy to keep that moat as wide as possible.
But I’ve also watched what that moat produces. Too many campaigns are being run by firms that won their last competitive race in 2014. Too many candidates are paying premium rates for recycled strategies — the same message framework, the same mail plan, the same digital buy, with the candidate’s name swapped in like a form letter. And the candidates don’t know it, because they’ve never seen what a bespoke strategy actually looks like.
Meanwhile, the best young operatives — the ones with fresh ideas about data, digital, community organizing, social media — are locked out of the rooms where decisions get made. Not because they lack talent. Because they lack connections.
This is bad for democracy. Full stop. When the consulting class gets stale, campaigns get stale. Messaging gets generic. Voter contact becomes formulaic. And the electorate — which is changing faster than most consultants realize — stops responding.
So what’s the fix?
First, the industry needs to stop treating client relationships like intellectual property. If a junior strategist helps win a race, that strategist should be able to build on that relationship. Noncompete agreements in political consulting are absurd — we’re not protecting trade secrets, we’re protecting monopolies.
Second, party committees and major donors need to stop defaulting to the same firms. The track record should matter more than the Rolodex. Ask for results. Demand accountability. Stop funding mediocrity because it comes with a familiar name.
Third — and this is the part where I have skin in the game — technology needs to break the access barrier. That’s part of why I helped build OneCampaign.ai and MyAIStaffHQ. If the strategic frameworks that win campaigns can be delivered through technology, then the question of “who do you know” matters a lot less than “do you have the tools.” That doesn’t eliminate the need for experienced consultants. It eliminates the gatekeeping.
I’m not naive about this. The firms that benefit from the status quo have no incentive to change. Change is going to come from outside — from candidates who demand better, from young operatives who build their own paths, and from technology that routes around the bottleneck.
My name is Randall Thompson. I’ve been in this business long enough to have benefited from the old system and honest enough to tell you it’s broken. If you’re a candidate looking for a consultant who’ll give you original strategy instead of a recycled template, or if you’re a young operative looking for someone who’ll actually help you build your career instead of building on top of it, I’d welcome that conversation.
The industry can either fix itself or get disrupted. From where I’m sitting, the disruption has already started.