TUPELO - With big budgets and paid staff members, this city's mayoral race is anything but small-town politics.

Democrat Doyce Deas and her Republican opponent, Jack Reed Jr., together have amassed more than $135,000 in donations and spent nearly $80,000 in their bid for the city's top job.

Each also employs at least one paid staffer to help run the campaign.

To coordinate his volunteers, Reed hired Mary Kathryn Flanagan, a 21-year-old University of Mississippi student and former press secretary for state Sen. Merle Flowers.

Flanagan nurtured an early love of politics and during high school volunteered for Gov. Haley Barbour in his first gubernatorial run. She also served as an aide to U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

Deas picked Tom Oppel to run her campaign. Oppel is a former Clarion-Ledger reporter and veteran campaign strategist who co-founded his New Hampshire-based All Points Communications firm with wife Myra, a Tupelo native.

He has worked numerous campaigns, including that of former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus when he defeated Jack Reed Sr. in the 1987 gubernatorial race.

Deas said she didn't realize when hiring Oppel that he helped defeat her opponent's father more than 20 years ago. She said she met him through a mutual friend and was impressed with his credentials.

"He does everything - scheduling, media, strategy, organization, anything that has to be done is what he does," Deas said. "I found there is just no way to do it yourself and keep everything moving."

Contrary to Oppel's lead role in the Deas campaign, Flanagan's primary job is to keep the campaign headquarters open and assign tasks to Reed's numerous volunteers.

"I'm my own campaign manager ... and I'm basically my own scheduler," Reed said. "We have a pretty flat-line professional team. I don't have a hired-gun campaign manager from New Hampshire."

Reed said Flanagan is the daughter of a family friend and has done a good job in her role.

That both mayoral candidates have a paid campaign worker is nothing new, even in non-big city municipal races like Tupelo's, said Marty Wiseman, executive director of Mississippi State University's John C. Stennis Institute of Government.

"It's getting more and more common," said Wiseman, whose own son and current Starkville mayoral candidate, Parker, hired a campaign manager for his political bid.

"It's not so much doubling the manpower, it's that there are so many different ways that you have to get your name out and ... there are Web sites to be maintained, mass mailings, on and on," Wiseman said. "It takes someone with a lot of energy but also technical skills. If you don't do that you risk losing."

But rarely, if ever, do campaign consultants transform their candidates into entirely different people. Oppel said his client, like her opponent, already has a firm grip on who she is and her reasons for running. He just handles the logistics, he said.

"I've worked in political campaigns for more than 20 years," Oppel said. "Neither of these people are going to be the type to be manipulated by others."

Contact Emily Le Coz at (662) 678-1588 or emily.lecoz@djournal.com.