Is Ben Carson’s campaign for real?

The renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, a quasi-celebrity since retiring from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, at times adds to that impression with peculiar moves — like piggybacking a national tour to promote his latest book on top of his existing 2016 campaign schedule. The odd pairing forced Carson to spend several days fending off accusations that his presidential bid was but a front for selling books and padding his personal bank account.

So it might surprise some Republicans to find out that Carson’s campaign headquarters, perched adjacent to Washington in Northern Virginia, has all the hallmarks of a traditional candidate who is serious about winning the White House. Carson occupies 2,100 square feet, spread across two separate suites of barebones appointed offices that are situated above Joe Theismann’s Restaurant in a nondescript office building in Alexandria. On a recent Monday, the joint was humming with activity.

“You only have so many hours, you got to put it towards one goal, and the one goal here is, do the best we can with the candidate we’ve got, in the marketplace that we’re going towards,” Carson’s senior communications adviser, Doug Watts, said during a discussion about the campaign’s philosophy. “It’s worked pretty effectively for us. It’s liberating.”

Carson, 64, emerged this month as the Republican front-runner in Iowa, host of the first nominating contest of the 2016 presidential primary, and has for several weeks been running second nationally among GOP voters to New York billionaire businessman and reality television star Donald Trump. Carson ranks second in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings.

But having never run for office before, and possessing an unusually soft-spoken, non-combative stump style (granted, Carson generates his share of controversy thanks to his sharp rhetoric), his campaign has elicited as much curiosity as it has bewilderment at its initial success. Carson was the Republican presidential field’s top fundraiser in the third quarter, hauling in $20.8 million during the three-month period ending Sept. 30.

What exactly is Carson spending his money on? Aside from a sizable investment in fundraising itself — more on that later — it turns out that he’s just as focused on assembling the nuts and bolts of a typical campaign organization as the wealth of experienced contenders he’s competing against for the nomination, with a few caveats. In particular, Carson doesn’t employ a pollster, nor does his operation feature a rapid-response media war room.

Carson’s penchant for provocative, politically impolitic commentary on a variety of issues provides his team with plenty of rapid-response opportunities. His headline-generating rhetoric has run the gamut over the course of the campaign, from suggesting that prison can turn men gay (he later apologized) to stating that there should be a religious test for the presidency (which is unconstitutional) to comparing abortion to slavery, as he did this past weekend.

But much like Carson himself, senior strategist Ed Brookover said the campaign doesn’t get too excited. He described their press engagement strategy by referencing a legendary adviser to President Ronald Reagan. “We believe that Michael Deaver had a lot of it right, when he said that campaigns are about big events,” Brookover said. “If you can identify whether this is a big event or not, it helps you figure out how much attention to pay to it.”

“And, we’d also rather create our own big events,” he added.

The Carson campaign, which now numbers around 85 paid staff, including those based at headquarters and those based in the states, is broken down into teams: five serve on the communications team; six to seven on research and policy; eight to 10 on social media; six to 10 on finance; and about 30 on political/field, including seven state directors and five regional directors; six to seven on advance; and four to five on ballot access, plus some outside attorneys.

For the latest technologically driven voter micro-targeting, including the employment of psychographic, behavior and other data points, Carson is contracting with Cambridge Analytics, the same firm used by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Carson’s senior advisers believe they’re using data in ways unique and different from their Republican competition, but declined to reveal their micro-targeting strategy. The campaign did share this: it turns out they’ve had better luck raising money online if the “donate” button is red, versus green.

The atmosphere at Carson headquarters was relaxed during a tour granted to the Examiner.

Only one closed-door meeting was underway — the lawyers, according to Watts — and only one piece of information was deemed off limits: the large wall where Carson’s campaign schedule was posted and constantly being updated. In Brookover’s office, one wall is the equivalent of a giant white board that is adorned with ballot-access information for all states and U.S. territories; Carson had qualified for the ballot in 13 of them as of Oct. 26.

The other walls in Brookover’s office are plastered with pin maps so that the campaign can track every location that Carson or his surrogates have visited. There are maps of the U.S., and the four early states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, and the pins are color-coded. Black pins are for Carson; white is for Carson’s wife; blue are for his three sons; green are for communities that drew campaign rallies of at least 2,000 people; yellow pins are for the Carson campaign bus.

“Our campaign bus now has its own schedule,” Brookover said. “The most fun thing we’ve done so far is, [NASCAR race car driver] Richard Petty drove the bus in North Carolina.”

Operationally, the Carson campaign is taking some heat for its fundraising.

The amount he’s raised is the envy of the Republican field. But Carson spent so much money in the third quarter to raise his $20.8 million, just over $11 million, that he finished the period with under $12 million in cash on hand to spend going forward, good enough for second place — behind Cruz — among all GOP candidates. Campaign manager Barry Bennett defended the investment.

“We started out with no lists [of donors.] Everyone else had a Christmas Card list, we didn’t have one,” Bennett said. “We started out with zero and we started investing and we built it up to over two million last quarter. This quarter we want to add another million, so we’re going to continue to invest. But you know, if I can get to three and a half, four million, the monthly spinoff of that is massive.”

“Why shouldn’t we keep adding donors at no net loss?” Brookover added.

As surprisingly “establishment” as Carson’s campaign appears, there are a few things they’re doing that, at least in their eyes, are atypical.

There’s a designated “director of marketing” on the team to help push Carson’s brand and the campaign’s message. There’s no figurehead campaign chairman of the kind that most presidential candidates appoint to assist with fundraising. Brookover and Watts described the campaign as jointly “co-managed” by them, Bennett and the top Carson officials in the early primary states. Decisions aren’t made in Alexandria and then transmitted to the field. All strategy is developed in equal consultation with top field advisers.

And of course, the Carson campaign does not work with any professional pollsters. This much he has in common with Trump, who likes to brag that he doesn’t use pollsters the way the politically experienced candidates do. The campaign conducted a couple of focus groups at the outset of the race, but otherwise has compiled no data of its own beyond voter data and what it culls via social media.

“It can be pretty distracting, because — I don’t care if you have two pollsters or three pollsters — one eye is on the rest of the campaigns. Our eye is only on one campaign, and that goes along ways,” Watts said.