Biography

David Plouffe managed Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

What the Filings Show

Obama for America’s own FEC filings itemize 62 disbursements to Plouffe totalling $209,090.99. The first is payroll dated 23 February 2007 — before a single primary vote — and the series runs as regular payroll and per diem through to a final payment on 26 December 2008. He was on the campaign’s books for its entire life.

The Digital Operation

The campaign Plouffe ran is frequently cited as an example of digital organizing in American politics, and the numbers behind that citation are specific. My.BarackObama.com, built by the campaign’s director of online organizing under Plouffe’s management, ended the campaign with more than 2 million profiles, 200,000 offline events, 35,000 groups, 400,000 blog posts, and $30 million raised across 70,000 personal fundraising pages.

Plouffe described the campaign’s recruitment in a contemporaneous profile: “We were very lucky that Chris gravitated to the campaign early.”

Digital Political Impact

  • Ran a campaign built around a campaign-owned platform, small-dollar fundraising at scale, and volunteer self-organization rather than centrally directed field work — structural choices later campaigns have cited as influential
  • The distinguishing structural choice was building the platform rather than renting reach on someone else’s — the opposite of what became standard a decade later
  • The FEC record shows the operation was staffed from February 2007, before the primaries began

What Is Not Established Here

This page was previously a two-line stub. His birth year is retained from that version and is not corroborated by anything cited here. His career before and after the 2008 campaign — including roles in the Obama White House, in the technology industry, and on subsequent Democratic campaigns — is not covered, because nothing sourced in this pass supports it. The characterization of the 2008 operation as “widely cited as a model” has been replaced with the figures it is cited for.

Sources

  1. 01.

    Federal Election Commission. Schedule B itemized disbursements, Obama for America (C00431445), to David Plouffe. Retrieved through the OpenFEC API on 2026-09-01. The committee's own filings itemize 62 disbursements to David Plouffe totalling $209,090.99. The series begins with payroll of $2,842.38 on 23 February 2007 — before the primaries — runs as regular payroll and per diem through the campaign, and ends with payroll of $5,609.92 on 26 December 2008. A later travel and lodging reimbursement of $442.55 is recorded on 7 May 2012. This is the campaign's own documentation of his employment and its dates.

    www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00431445
  2. 02.

    McGirt, E. (2009). How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign. Profile of 1 April 2009, read through an Internet Archive capture because fastcompany.com returns 403. Source for Plouffe's assessment of the campaign's digital operation — 'We were very lucky that Chris gravitated to the campaign early' — and for the end-of-campaign figures for My.BarackObama.com, the platform built under his management: more than 2 million profiles created, 200,000 offline events planned, 35,000 groups formed, 400,000 blogs posted, and $30 million raised on 70,000 personal fundraising pages.

    www.fastcompany.com/1207594/how-chris-hughes-helped-launch-facebook-and-barack-obama-campaignarchived copy