By Steve Peoples

The campaign-related hiring keeps coming.

Last week's batch includes one for GOP gubernatorial hopeful Rory Smith, one for a potential attorney general candidate, and two for the Moderate Party, a further sign that the newly formed organization hopes to become a political force.

Smith tells us he has hired his first staffer, Kate Schreitmueller, as his office manager.
Campaign staff salaries are among the items candidates are required to disclose, but that was not Smith's first instinct. While promising to report what he is required to report, he told Political Scene: "I don't know that I can tell you that."

In the race for attorney general, Rose Jackson has been hired to "manage the team" of potential candidate Joseph M. Fernandez, the former Providence city solicitor.

Jackson, 25, previously worked on Sheldon Whitehouse's 2006 senatorial campaign, an Indiana congressional campaign, and the Obama campaign. She also declined to give her salary, but said, "I am honored to be building a winning campaign for the next attorney general of Rhode Island."

The Moderate Party, meanwhile, added two full-time $35,000-a-year staffers to its Warwick headquarters, which already included an executive director. That's three times more people than the state GOP, which employs just one full-timer.

The Moderate's hires include communications director Kathryn Cantwell, 26, and campaign liaison, 22-year-old University of Rhode Island student Matthew Lenz.

Cantwell's recently worked for Massachusetts' Republican gubernatorial hopeful, Christy Mihos, and failed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Jeff Beatty. She is a Bridgewater State College graduate and native of Fall River.