2016 ELECTION/CAMPAIGN/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “One appointee went from ‘battleground states’ director for the Trump presidential campaign to a role at the State Department that sent him to South Africa to meet with health officials… And another, who spent four months on the campaign in New York after graduating from college, landed a job as an aide to the commerce secretary with a résumé that included work as a receptionist at an animal hospital and a summer job at a country club’s golf shop.
The three newly minted federal employees are among the nearly 260 or so former Trump campaign and inauguration workers who have gotten jobs reserved for political appointees in the administration, according to public records compiled by ProPublica and analyzed by The New York Times… A database of the employees, assembled through hundreds of open records requests, has been posted online by ProPublica… Handing out political jobs to former campaign workers, like-minded experts, lawyers and erstwhile lobbyists is a grand tradition in Washington, where, to the victor, go the spoils. Each president has about 4,000 political posts to fill; separately, there are two million civilian federal workers who are largely hired through a competitive process.
Just over a year into his presidency, Mr. Trump has yet to formally nominate candidates for nearly 35 percent of the 639 positions needing Senate confirmation, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that tracks federal appointments… No comparative database exists from previous administrations, but scholars and other experts on presidential transitions say the Trump appointments stand out.”
-Eric Lipton and Danielle Ivory, “Keeping With Tradition, Trump Awards Jobs to Campaign Workers and Allies,” The New York Times online, Mar. 7, 2018