NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – Not only is Donald Trump an unconventional candidate, he’s got a campaign operation that turns the conventional wisdom of electoral politics on its head.
While Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton boasts an army of more than 350 paid staffers, Trump’s operation fields less than a tenth that number.
It includes a coterie of about a dozen paid staffers operating out of the campaign headquarters at Trump Tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue – the same building where Trump lives and runs his real estate empire.
His team has no pollster, fundraisers or media consultant and only announced its first fulltime, big-name policy adviser this week.
The rest of the 25 or so paid members of the Trump campaign are mostly in the early- voting states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, states where the billionaire businessman-turned-reality TV host is ahead in polls, leaving the Republican establishment scratching its head.