Ask aides to presidential campaigns how their candidate is faring and you'll get as much candor as you used to get out of the Kremlin: No matter how bad things are, they're always perfect. But the truth is out there, as they say, and it's just gotten a bit easier to find. New Hampshire political consultant Chip Griffin has provided the invaluable service of culling Federal Election Commission reports to compile a list of all the people on the payroll of each presidential candidate; he's put them all on his Web site, www.griffinsg.com, and, more important, included the estimated annual salaries of these people (extrapolated from the most recent FEC reports).
So how do things look? Al Gore has the biggest staff, topping out at 64 (Bill Bradley has a more modest 33). The Republican numbers are as follows: Dan Quayle 37, Gary Bauer 26, George W. Bush 25, Lamar Alexander 24, John McCain 16, Pat Buchanan 11, Bob Smith 7, and Elizabeth Dole, just 4.
As for John Kasich, he didn't file a report with the FEC. And Steve Forbes didn't include the names or the salaries of any of his staffers. That's too bad. Some of the mid-level staffers on the Forbes campaign have been talking about their six-figure compensation. We look forward to finding out if they're telling the truth. As for the highest-paid staffers, one stands out from all the others: Mark Tipps, Lamar Alexander's campaign manager, appears to be making $ 156,058. And that's after taxes. Only five other campaign staffers have take-home pay exceeding $ 100,000, and, interestingly, none of them works for Bush.