Since many of you might right now be in the hiring process…a warning:
If you’re an underdog, underfunded, inexperienced candidate, DO NOT hire the guy who tells you he or she has an 80-90 percent win rate without looking a LOT closer into that record!
To get that kind of winning percentage, the consultant is probably cherry-picking clients; managing a lot of well-funded, incumbent re-election campaigns AGAINST underfunded, inexperienced challengers (like yourself).
And, frankly, those guys often don’t know squat about running a guerilla campaign on a shoe-string budget…because they have so little experience in those kinds of tough, uphill campaigns.
So don’t necessarily judge a consultant by the number of campaigns he’s won. That number can be VERY misleading.
Understand that I’m not saying that all campaign managers and consultants are crooks or lousy at what they do. On the contrary, I know quite a few very good ones.
But I hate to see inexperienced candidates led down a losing path because they didn’t know about misleading “win rates.” In your interview with a prospective consultant, ask him or her about the toughest races they’ve LOST, not the slam-dunks they’ve won.