The cost of running for office in America is about to go up -- a lot

“I don’t know how they’re going to cope with it,” Trevor Potter, former Federal Election Commission chairman and general counsel for John McCain’s presidential campaigns told me.

Political campaigns rely on armies of fresh-out-of-school idealists willing to work long hours for peanuts. One back-of-the-envelope analysis from Hamilton Place Strategies, an economic and public affairs consulting firm, found that junior staffers on Senate campaigns typically clock 69 hours a week, at an average salary of $25,000.

Under the new Labor Department rule, such a worker would receive about $27,000 in overtime, if the work took place over a full year. That means she’d receive more in overtime pay than she would in base salary.