Archives for Drew McKissick

How to Have a Productive Meeting with Elected Officials

June 24, 2015 by Drew McKissick in Buzzworthy | Leave a comment

gearsWhen it comes to lobbying, the squeaky wheel tends to get the grease.  And while many different forms of lobbying can produce positive results, the most effective method is to meet with your elected officials personally.

But if you’re going to have a personal meeting with elected officials, you want to do what you need to do in order to get the most out of the visit. You want them to know what you think and why. You want to know what they think – and what they will do. And you want to make it as likely – and easy – as possible for them to agree to say “yes”.

Here are some simple tips to keep in mind that will help you get the most out of it.

Plan Your Visit

Treat it like you would any important business meeting (or at least the ones that you actually prepare for!). Be clear about what you want to accomplish. Identify which members of the legislative body (or council) you need to talk with to help achieve your goals. Elected officials usually won’t give as much priority to people who are not in their districts, so be sure to meet with the ones who represent YOU. If you don’t live in their district, take someone with you who does. Know what you want to say beforehand. Prepare a fact sheet or position paper that you can leave with them AFTER the meeting is over, (along with your contact information).

Schedule an Appointment

The “higher up” the political food chain the official is, the more staff they are likely to have. For local (and some state) officials, you can probably contact them directly. Federal officials with have a scheduler that you will need to contact to arrange a meeting. Explain your purpose and why you want to meet with them. Make sure that you have an understanding of how long the meeting will last. Elected officials typically like them short and sweet. Fifteen minutes is a good rule of thumb.

That’s enough time for you to accomplish two goals: 1) tell them what you want them to do and why, and 2) get feedback so you know what to expect from them, (and if whether or not they need more pressure from others who think like you do).

Be Prepared

Make sure that you have accurate information and material available on your issue. Elected officials have to deal with many issues, and it’s possible that they might not have the information that you can provide. Remember that there are always two sides to any issue (at least), and the more you know about the arguments of the opposition, the more effective your information should be in countering it.

Remember, frame the “problem” to fit your “solution”. Of course this doesn’t mean you have to be an expert. The most important points for you to get across are why the issue is important to you, and that you feel passionately about it. You’re a citizen with concerns. More importantly (to them), you’re a registered voter.

Be On Time and Be Patient

When seeing any elected official, be punctual. But remember, it’s not uncommon for them to run behind schedule or to have meetings get interrupted. If there is an interruption, be flexible. If possible, continue the meeting with a member of their staff.

Don’t Be Intimidated

Don’t let yourself get nervous or intimidated. Sure, you’re on their turf, but you’re also their boss. They work for you. Just remember to be polite about it. You’ve got something they want (your vote…and maybe even your help).

Pin Them Down

Elected officials will usually try to be noncommittal because as soon as they take a position they probably make someone angry. They would rather just listen politely, empathize, then shake hands and lead you to the door. Your job is to get to the bottom line. Sure it’s nice to have the satisfaction of being heard, but where do they stand at the end of the day? Be polite, but pin them down. (For example, “I’m glad that you’re concerned, but will you vote for or against the bill?” or, “I’m glad to hear you agree in concept, but will you cosponsor the bill?”) They may not like it, but they will respect you for it.

Be Political

Most elected officials try to represent the best interests of their constituents, (or at least the good ones do). Whenever possible, draw a correlation between what you want and the interests of your community, (i.e. their district). Show them that you are not the only one who feels the way you do.

They may not want to take your side in order to avoid taking “heat” over the issue, but you could offer to help solve this problem by working to counteract the heat. Offer to write supportive letters-to-the-editor, phone calls to local talk radio, or even send out a press release from your group thanking them for their support. Find out what “cover” they may need to help get them over the line. Offer to work with their staff to get it done. Be helpful and make it easy for them to say yes.

Be Responsive

If an elected official expresses an interest in your issue or request, be ready to answer questions or provide any additional information they may need. Afterwards, follow up with a thank-you letter highlighting your discussion, (especially if they agreed to anything), and include any additional information they may have requested.

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In our system of government, the squeaky wheel usually gets the grease, and given that the percentage of people who take the time to meet personally with elected officials is so incredibly low, it shows commitment on your part. And it lets them know just how squeaky you might be.

If done consistently and professionally, meeting with your elected officials will help you be a much more effective advocate for the things that you care about. Building relationships with them will not only further your credibility as a citizen (or organization), but it will also provide opportunities for you to have a greater impact for the conservative cause in the future.

Make sure to get the most out of it!

HOW to Have Meetings that Matter

June 3, 2015 by Drew McKissick in Grassroots Tips | Leave a comment

groupIt’s hard to have an organization without meetings, and you can’t have meetings without people. But meetings that aren’t organized or run well can be one of the quickest ways to kill interest and run people away from any organization.

As I have mentioned several times, “politics is people” – and if you can’t attract people to get involved to begin with and keep them involved, then you aren’t going to get much done. It’s hard enough to find people who are interested in having anything to do with grassroots politics to begin with, which makes it self-defeating when we subject them to long, boring meetings after we manage to get them into the room.

There are five key words to remember: Do – Not – Have – Boring – Meetings!

If you’re just getting involved and organizing something for the first time, then you’re probably less likely to have bad habits to break out of. But if you’re running a large, formal, preexisting organization, then you need to take a look and see if there are some old habits that may be holding the group back.

It doesn’t matter if your group is five people or five-hundred, BORING kills. Don’t let the necessity of meetings get you in a process that drains interest and frustrates the overall purposes of the group.

All Meetings Are Not Created Equally

Different types of meetings serve different purposes, and you have different purposes that you need to accomplish in order to succeed. You need to attract people, you need to inform people, you need to involve people and you need to organize people and conduct business. And all of those different purposes work better with differently structured meetings.

So what do you do? Before you decide what “type” of meeting to have, know what the objective is. Determine that, then build the meeting and the agenda around it.

And remember that each type of purpose as well as each type of meeting format attracts different types of people. All people don’t like all types of meetings. Everyone doesn’t want to listen to speeches. Everyone doesn’t want to sit through “Roberts Rules” style business meetings. Everyone doesn’t want to do social time.

The point is that you need to make an effort to be sure that the type of meetings that you hold are as diverse as the people that you are trying to attract.

The usual format of: prayer, pledge, minutes from last time, treasurer’s report, chairman’s report, new business, old business, then a speech from someone political is NOT the way to go about attracting new people into an organization. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have it’s place, but the problem is that too many of us typically run ALL meetings that way.

Rotate the types of meetings you have. Do you have regular monthly meetings? What about alternating “business” meetings with “social” meetings/events? Or holding shorter business meetings just before larger social events or meal. Or maybe a quick business meeting, then a meal, then a larger, more public social/informational/recruitment style event?

Remember, make your meeting formats serve the purposes of the group, not the other way around.

Different Meetings Serve Different Purposes:

Have Meetings that RECRUIT

Remember, one of the most important aspects of politics is to recruit other people to the cause. If you don’t attract people to your group or project to begin with, then you won’t get things off of the ground. Have social events. Think dinners, a Saturday breakfast, mixers, pig-pickins, oyster roasts, bands, etc. Throw a big-name politician in the mix if you can to attract more people. Think of it as a sales pitch that describes the problem, your group’s solution and the organization that you want to build.

And don’t forget to focus on doing something to attract young people. Remember, they’re a critical part of the farm team.

Have Meetings that INFORM

You need to have meetings that “new” people can attend and get their feet wet and decide how they want to fit in, without getting bored not bothering to come back to another meeting. Larger “general” informational meetings that describe what the group is about, what you’re trying to do and why, and what you’re trying to find volunteers to help accomplish. Talk about the jobs people can fill. Make the pitch about all the different types of opportunities people have to get involved.

Have Meetings that ORGANIZE

Once people have been recruited and informed, you still can’t really have an “organization” without getting organized. At the most basic level, this is simply a matter of sketching out what areas need to be covered and what needs to get done and then playing a glorified game of “fill in the blank”. Have meetings that focus on fleshing out the organization. Then there’s also the regular “business” meetings that you need in order to keep things organized. Just note that this is only ONE of many types of meetings, so don’t overdo it.

Have Meetings that INVOLVE

Remember the axiom, “good projects build good organization”. So think “project” meetings where everyone knows ahead of time what the point of the meeting is and comes prepared to work or with ideas to contribute. The list of possibilities is as long as the list of things that the group needs to get done in order to be effective:

Activist identification and recruitment efforts to grow the group; updates from elected officials; organizing the group’s grassroots lobbying infrastructure and plugging members into the effort to speak out on important issues when necessary; communications and media outreach, (such as letters-to-the-editor to op-eds); activists training seminars geared around hands-on training from experienced hands on specific needs; candidate recruitment meetings focusing on identifying candidates to run for specific offices and convincing them to run; voter registration project planning; candidate forums; get-out-the-vote strategy planning… The list goes on and on.

Identify the things that the group needs to do, then plan meetings around those specific items.

***
Remember, volunteers are at a premium, so don’t run them off. Keep your meeting topics and formats centered around the purposes of the group.

Have meetings that matter.  Do. Not. Have. Boring. Meetings.

Religious Liberty and Republican Opportunity

April 8, 2015 by Drew McKissick in Commentary | Leave a comment

church and stateThe recent battles over religious liberty in Indiana and Arkansas demonstrate an ironic truth: that we are actually debating whether or not you can be forced to violate your faith in a country originally settled by people looking for the freedom to practice their faith.

Let that soak in for a minute.

The hysteria was truly something to behold. Liberals descended on Indiana and its politicians like flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Protesters stormed the state capital. Reporters ambushed flat-footed politicians and business owners. Corporations pontificated. Democrats huffed and puffed. Social media melted.

The source of all the fuss was passage of state-level versions of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, simply mandating that government must have a “compelling interest” to infringe on religion (a higher legal standard), and that it must use the “least restrictive” means possible whenever it does.

The federal version was probably the most bi-partisan, (nearly) unanimously passed law in modern American history (435-0 in the House and 97-3 in the Senate) and signed by Bill Clinton no less in 1993. Congress can’t generate that much bipartisan support for a resolution declaring water to be wet, but there it is, in all of its “hate mongering” glory.

The liberal claim is that such laws are just a tool to discriminate against gays, but the unavoidable fact is that allowing people of faith to decline to participate in something that violates their faith (like a gay wedding) in a country whose First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion is NOT discrimination. (And just how do you “discriminate” against an activity?)

As usual, the liberal hypocrisy was delicious. Democrat Governor Dan Malloy of Connecticut jumped to criticize and join a “boycott Indiana” movement despite having the same law in his own state. Many of the corporations who jeered the loudest do business in countries that not only lack religious freedom, but where women and homosexuals have NO rights whatsoever.

The Forces of Intolerance

Of course the media knew this, but chose to ignore it. Scalps had to be taken. The forces of “tolerance” now demand that government enforce their views on everyone else, and they eagerly engage in the public-relations lynching of anyone who disagrees. They have no “tolerance” for unconformity.

As Pat Buchanan put it years ago, “If we’re going to have tolerance in this country, then there has to be tolerance for the views of the majority”. But it’s truly amazing how far and how quickly things have degenerated. On the issue of gay marriage, we have gone from “just civil unions”, to so-called “marriage equality”, to “you WILL celebrate and serve” and “You will NOT publicly object”

Christian businesses are being sought out for legal retribution. Employees and even CEOs have lost their jobs simply because they contributed to referendums calling for the traditional definition of marriage. Individual supporters have even had their home addresses posted online to make organized harassment even easier.

It’s all straight out of Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” liberal play-book: “Rule 12 – Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

Sound familiar? They’re working to isolate religious conservatives – particularly evangelical Christians – and marginalize them and make them toxic to others in order to chill public advocacy and philanthropy on their behalf. To make it difficult for them to live their faith and openly operate in polite society or even earn a living.

Republican Opportunities

You really have to wonder when Democrat leaders will get a little worried about their minions taking this whole anti-religion thing too far, considering the fact that religious Americans have been leaving their party for years (most recently including white Catholics). But if the party whose national delegates booed having a reference to God in their platform in 2012 wants to officially become the anti-religion party, Republicans should help them by reminding pro-faith Americans every chance they get.

The point is that religious liberty is an incredible political opportunity for Republicans, if we will learn how to make the most of it. Lesson one is to know how to talk about the issue. And lesson two is to actually talk about it. Often.

We need to recognize that liberals have won their major political battles by turning someone into a victim and winning the sympathy of Americans in the political mushy-middle. The media pounces, businesses cringe and politicians cave. It’s a familiar pattern. But now we have the opportunity to turn the tables and use the same tactic to great effect by framing the debate around our own victims.

Republicans should remember that polls show a clear majority (over 70% in the latest Rasmussen poll) favoring the rights of Christian business people to live out their faith in the course of their business and not be made to choose between their faith and their livelihood.

They should remember that tens of thousands of Americans responded with over $840,000 in less than 48 hours for a small pizzeria when it was threatened by the liberal grievance machine. How many politicians who trip over themselves to chase donors are paying attention?

They should remember that religious conservatives are their most loyal supporters, and that the estimated forty to fifty million unregistered and/or nonvoting evangelicals on the sidelines are the largest untapped reservoir in American politics. But they have to be engaged on an emotional level.

The Republican platform should continue to stand for traditional values and liberty, and grassroots conservatives should organize to reject the certain coming attempts to water down its support for the traditional definition of marriage. If that happens, we lose. Which is precisely why the liberal media will beat the drum for it next year

Elections are about math. They’re about addition and the leverage (or multiplication) you get when your base is fully engaged and truly energized. In 2008 and 2012 that wasn’t the case. The opportunity for Republicans in 2016 is clear. If religious liberty isn’t a political hill for Republicans to fight and win on, then no such hill exists.

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Let’s be clear, for people of faith, “religious liberty” is quickly becoming the “OK, take the culture and the country and just leave me alone” position. It’s the last stand. There’s really nothing else to lose after that. It’s the terms of our surrender in the culture war. The place where we hope to make a stand and then grow and regroup for the future.

In a way, it’s kind of the same position that the original American pilgrims had. They gave up trying to live their faith at home, so they left home and came here. And several hundred years later, here we are, but with no “new world” to go to.

The other side will never accommodate. It’s time to fight or else.

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