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Of the candidates I watched most closely, the advance teams of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama benefited from having among their ranks veterans of Bill Clinton's White House years, Al Gore's 2000 campaign, and John Kerry's 2004 campaign. At least one was a "dinosaur"—the affectionate moniker for an advance person who's seen it all: A throwback to the Jimmy Carter era, Rick Jasculca, 60, is a Chicago public relations legend whom Senator Clinton called on to orchestrate her initial campaign announcement in Des Moines on January 27, 2007. It was only the latest in a lifetime of history-making moments around the globe for which Jasculca was the offstage maestro, his hand firmly on every detail.
Among dinosaurs, the advance world's Tyrannosaurus Rex is Mort Engelberg, 65, a curmudgeonly lovable movie producer who emerged during Hubert Humphrey's 1968 campaign and then banked enough royalties on the Smokey and the Bandit series and other films to subsidize his stalking the planet since 1991 in advance of former president Clinton. The lure of the road still draws him from his lair in the Hollywood Hills for lengthy stretches for little more reward than plane fare and a hotel room. Last seen in campaign mode producing a 2004 Kerry–Edwards cross-country train tour, he has so far been extinct from the current contest, though the whiff of a general election is known to draw him back to battle.
Following in Jasculca's and Engelberg's outsize footprints—offering, to some, unlimited adventure in the service of politicians, statesmen, and other leaders—is why young people get in the game. It's what motivated me in the 1988 campaign, and I saw the same gleam in the eyes of Will Ritter, 24, Charlie Pearce, 24, and their fellow travelers in the cause of Romney for president. Ritter (pictured above, seen from behind, his eyes trained on his candidate) is Romney's "body guy," the tireless aide who typically awakens the candidate in the morning, bids him farewell at night, and never leaves his side in between, always looking around the corner for the next political pothole in the media obstacle course of every politician's day.
Pearce (left), with MacGyver-like skills and powder-blue shorts, is one of Romney's top advance men although this is only his first national campaign. He hails from an odd mix of Brahmin and steelworker stock. In an e-mail from his peripatetic travels, he says, "It's probable that I'm the first male to go to college on my father's side of the family and the first male not to go Harvard on my mother's side of the family." (He went to Berkeley instead). Fearless but friendly, he needlepoints his own belts and chronicles the minutiae of his adventures on his laptop.
The August 11 straw poll in Ames, which Romney won comfortably but at great cost—a reported $2 million, or $442 for each of the 4,516 votes he received—was a high-water mark for his advance team, one of the last times they massed in one place before fanning out to new assignments across the nation. With all the men and matériel assembled, will they look back on it as Overlord or Gettysburg? Flush with straw poll victory is the core of the corps (left to right): Will Ritter, T.J. Struhs, Mark Glanville, Charlie Pearce, and David Vidosic. Win or lose in 2008, if their journey is anything like mine over 20 years, they'll emerge from the campaign with something enduring far longer than presidencies: lasting friendships, the residue of advance work.
Get a sense of their experience watching the five-minute mini-documentary shot in hi-def, edited on a laptop, and posted online in rapid fire by Mitt TV's Michael Kolowich, head of the Romney campaign's tactical video unit.
