Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:U.S. campaign managers

The following discussion comes from Categories for deletion, where it is currently listed as unresolved. It may be reviewed again in the future in the light of evolving standards and guidelines for categorization.

Category:U.S. campaign managers
Contains many people who aren't, strictly speaking, campaign managers (e.g. Karen Hughes). I'd like to depopulate and rename to "U.S. campaign professionals". OK? Meelar (talk) 03:49, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, campaign manager is the term used for these people, even if some of them have never been head of a presidential election campaign. - SimonP 05:50, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's not true, especially since many of these figures worked on the same campaign. For example, in the Bush campaign, Karl Rove was not and has never been the campaign manager; that role was filled by Ken Mehlman. Media accounts referred to Rove as chief strategist--I can't think of any major publications that referred to him as campaign manager. The same argument is true for many of the figures in this category. The term "campaign manager" means a very specific individual in the campaign hierarchy. Meelar (talk) 05:57, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
 * Every campaign has a person known as the campaign manager, but the profession of a number of the top members of a presidential campaign is campaign manager. It would be incorrect to call Karl Rove Bush's campaign manager, but his profession is campaign management. - SimonP 00:45, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * I've not heard it used that way myself. Sorry to bug you, but a few citations? Meelar (talk) 00:53, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)
 * This is kind of odd if it is the case. Citations would be good, because then it could be worked into campaign manager, and if there are no citations, it will surely come up again. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 01:07, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Doing some research it seems is that the more general usage of campaign manager is being reduced, perhaps because campaigns are becoming more formally structured. In previous decades the top figures were referred to as "the campaign mangers" see The Selling of the President or watch The War Room.  In the 2000 campaign it was not uncommon to refer to Karl Rove as a campaign manager, , , but in 2004 I could find almost no news organizations referring to him as a campaign manager.  It is interesting to note that in 2000 the American Association of Political Consultants' Pollie Awards for Campaign Manager of the Year was abolished in favour of a more nebulous MVP award, perhaps indicating that it was no longer acceptable to call any top campaigner a "manager". (Outside of the U.S. it still seems to be common practice to call the top directors of a campaign "managers".) - SimonP 19:31, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
 * Interesting! Thanks for your work. Apparently, that usage is becoming less common; do you think we should move to "U.S. campaign professionals"? Other suggestions? Best wishes, Meelar (talk) 16:33, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)
 * Campaign manager refers to a specific position which virtually every campaign has. However, in most campaigns of the past few years, including both 2004 presidentials, the campaign manager is not the chief strategist; this role usually falls to a separate political consultant (i.e., Karl Rove for Bush, Bob Shrum for Kerry, rather than Keh Mehlman and Mary Beth Cahill). People do sometimes speak of campaign management or, more commonly, political management (a field for which there are several graduate schools) as a field, but I can't imagine anyone in it worthy of an article who hasn't worked either as a political consultant or a campaign manager (most of the senior staff for presidential campaigns come to them directly from consulting firms, the party, or the Hill). For that reason, I'd propose two separate categories Category:U.S. presidential campaign managers (managers of lower-level campaigns are unlikely to be notable for that alone), and Category:Political consultants, with the understanding that there will be significant overlap. RadicalSubversiv E 03:54, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I've taken the liberty of creating Category:Political consultants, adding everyone applicable from the campaign managers category to it, and, of those, removing people who don't appear to have served as campaign managers. After thinking about it, both could probably be subcategories of some broader category, in the odd case we find a political pro who doesn't fall into either. Perhaps "political professional" would be better than "campaign professional," though, so we could also have lobbyists (Ed Gillespie) and political staff (John Podesta). I don't see a point in specifying U.S.-only (the same category of people exist in other well-developed democracies, though to a lesser extent) unless a category is created for presidential campaign managers. BTW, those trying to get a grasp on the whole field and how it's connected might find http://gspm.gwu.edu/ helpful. RadicalSubversiv E 10:29, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * "Political professionals", I assume, would include all elected politicians. (Was that the idea?) Good work! (How about you sort out where all of these articles need to end up and tell me if you think the category needs to be deleted when you are done?) -Aranel (" Sarah ") 19:08, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It's not as common a term as the others mentioned here, but I've definitely heard it used as so as to specifically exclude politicians -- i.e., political professionals are the people who work for them. I'm not coming up with a better term at the moment, though. Maybe it could just be explained on the category page? RadicalSubversiv E 21:12, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Are we going to have a parallel category, "Political volunteers"? -Willmcw 23:53, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. (and prune non-managers). A logical extension is state subcategories. Campaign manager is a definite role in politics and in the case of presidential politics, it may be the most significant job an individual ever holds. It may become a subcategory of "US political professionals", next to "political spokespersons." -Willmcw 23:53, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)