Andrea Jones began her 23rd birthday with a 7 a.m. breakfast at Philadelphia's Ritz-Carlton Hotel and ended it in a suite at the Republican National Convention.
In between, she was interviewed by a columnist for the Washington Post, helped organize a press conference for a new television campaign, attended an invitation-only dinner for U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and appeared on a Webcast with Rep. Asa Hutchinson, an Arkansas Republican who helped impeach President Clinton last year.
"For the convention," Jones said, "it was a pretty typical day."
Just over a year ago, fresh out of Pepperdine University, about the most ambitious thing Jones had in mind was traveling cross-country. Then a casual conversation between McCain and Jones, daughter of California Secretary of State Bill Jones, led her on a dizzying path to politics.
Last year, McCain hired her to court the youth vote in his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for president.
Now, she is campaign manager for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell, the San Jose congressman who is challenging Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein.
Jones's job: Direct the day-to-day events of a campaign that is long on ideas and short on money. "I never thought I'd be doing this in a million years," she said.
Jones weighs in on near- and long-term strategies for the campaign while focusing mostly on operations. "Making sure all the trains run on time," she said.
Every day, from a small storefront office near Campbell Avenue in the Silicon Valley city of Campbell, the Campbell campaign's field operations, scheduling, policy positions and media all--in one way or another--come under her scrutiny.
Is her ascension a fluke? Or is Jones the future of politics? Both, perhaps.
"I've been in my dad's campaigns since I was 5," she said, laughing. "But does that count?"
Early last year, Jones joined McCain's campaign almost by chance. After a year at London's Huron University studying international business, she returned to California, graduated from Pepperdine and volunteered for a voter outreach program in the secretary of state's office.
She met McCain at a political fund-raiser.
"He said, 'When are you going to work for me?' " Jones recalled. "And I said, 'When are you going to hire me?' "
The next day, Jones was talking with one of McCain's top staffers about signing on. She believed McCain's message could better attract young voters with some retooling, especially on complex perennial issues, such as campaign finance reform.
