Cox Still Looking For His Cal Naughton

Dan Cox still not having a campaign manager isn't even the most interesting thing in his latest desperate cry for help.

Well if you are absolutely positively desperate for a job, the Dan Cox campaign is hiring.

Like Ricky Bobby had Cal Naughton, like Harry needed his Lloyd, and like Wayne needed his Garth, Dan Cox needs to have a sidekick.

Look, we all know that the management of the Cox campaign has been nonexistent. It appears that it has been run by amateurs, for amateurs. The amusing thing about all of this is the fact that Cox has been trying to hire a campaign manager for more than six months. Cox apparently still hasn’t filled the role.

I doubt many good campaign managers will want to be the second mate on the Titanic.

The most bizarre thing about Cox’s inability to find a campaign manager is everything else on this cry for help job announcement.

You will note that the Campaign Manager position is listed third on this list. Meaning that the Cox campaign values that role as the LEAST important position they have available.

I can’t adequately explain enough had backwards that is.

As you may know, I know a little bit about campaigns and campaign organization. I have a Master’s Degree in this stuff, after all, and have navigated and led many campaigns in my time. The Campaign Manager is THE most important hire a candidate can make. A good, empowered campaign manager can make all the difference in the world. Think of the Campaign Manager as the head coach who is calling all the plays and making the calls on offense and defense. If you don’t have one, you’re lost. And yet Team Cox values it as their least important position available.

The wildest thing about this is the fact that Cox is looking for paid sign installers. Let’s take a look at that part again.

The Cox campaign is basically trying to hire somebody to put up signs who has a truck. Except they will give them “excellent pay” and cover their fuel. The campaign will go broke paying gas right now, but that’s another story.

Even the campaign manager isn’t guaranteed “excellent pay.”

I have been involved with campaigns for twenty years. I have worked with countless campaigns at every level of office that have dedicated sign teams to erect signs, usually 4’x8’ in nature, in each country across the state.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Have. Been. Staffed. By. Volunteers.

I have never known of a campaign that needed to pay somebody to erect signs. I’ve never even heard of a campaign considering hiring paid sign erectors.

Hiring sign installers tells me that the Cox campaign is having a hard time recruiting volunteers, at least volunteers who will do real work instead of being Facebook warriors.

We’ve now reached a bizarre inflection point in the 2022 gubernatorial campaign. For months, I have been calling the Cox campaign Charles Lollar 2.0. That apparently isn’t fair to Lollar. The Lollar campaign was far more competent and organized than this craptastic mess of a vanity project that Cox refers to as a campaign.

Shake n’ Bake indeed.