I had the pleasure this morning of speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for a panel on Innovative Advocacy (cohosted by Adfero).

While much of the discussion centered on best practices and ideas around (what seemed to me to be) more traditional advocacy, I tried to add some of my thoughts on what might make for more effective non-traditional advocacy and outreach. Speaking in public is always useful exercise for me, and, as is often the case, my thoughts are better organized after speaking than before.

My initial thesis was that the form of our advocacy is determined by the form of our awareness, and that the Sunlight Foundation, by extending the reach of our awareness of Congress, is broadening the field of advocacy opportunities possible for both the public and for traditional advocacy organizations.

Sunlight grantees, and other similarly minded folks engaged in entrepreneurial political Web design are enabling these opportunities to flourish, and Congress is adapting, both as in terms of staff, and as a technological institution.

My advice for advocacy groups could probably be summed up in a few brief points:

• Simply overloading Congress with email has an upper limit of effectiveness, overloading members of advocacy organizations with similarly excessive appeals has similarly diminishing effectiveness.
• While re-imagining advocacy is unlikely to replace email anytime soon (as many prefer it when offered alternatives), adding other features to advocacy methods will increase effectiveness (retention, appeal, impact, ability to get attention from Congress)
• To best affect a legislative information ecology, you should be a part of it.
• This means taking advantage of Congressional data sources, being databases like opensecrets or opencongress, legislative support agency publications (like CBO, GAO, or CRS), or committee reports. These publications take immense staff effort to create, and they probably get some satisfaction out of people actually reading them.
• Members of Congress can’t ask you to do their work for them, but, if you’re interested in getting their attention, there’s nothing to stop you from doing it anyway. In other words, you can write legislation, read the House or Senate rules, suggest questions for a committee hearing, or outline arguments or messaging. If someone was trying to do your job for you online, wouldn’t you check to see how well they were doing?
• Blog Ads are a massively under-appreciated way of reaching specific and involved constituency groups, and well worth looking into. They’re also very very cheap when compared to advertising alternatives.
• By asking your members to engage with the substance of Congress (and helping them to do so), they’ll more likely be viewed as relevant, and likely to enforce political consequences reinforce good or bad decisions.

0 Comments

And we’re off… The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is advancing its political and business plan for the 2006 elections by firing an opening $10 million salvo of election ads in the districts of more than 30 of their allies in Congress. Allies that they’d like to see safely reelected, whatever the national mood toward Congress. The ads are slated to run in August, with another wave to follow after Labor Day.

This opening salvo – the biggest in the Chamber’s history – is as sure a barometric reading as you’re likely to find this election year that the nation’s business community is growing nervous about a potential shift in the balance of power in Congress.

It’s still something of a long shot to predict a Democratic takeover in the House, and it’s even less likely in the Senate. But the chance is there and the ones who are most troubled at the prospect are those who’ve fared the best on Capitol Hill in the years that the business-friendly Republicans have been in control. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing some of the biggest corporations in America, has been right up there at the head of the line.

What they fear – not without reason – is that this year’s elections for the U.S. House of Representatives may amount to a mid-term referendum on the Bush administration and its allies in Congress.

In sharp contrast to the CEO’s of America’s business community, most ordinary voters have about as dim a view of Congress these days as it’s possible to have. Gas prices, health insurance, the cost of prescription drugs – you name the issue and most Americans are anything but happy with the status quo.

Today’s news of record-breaking profits by the nation’s biggest oil companies is a timely reminder. If you’re a motorist, you’re probably groaning at the news. If you’re an executive with Exxon – or a big investor – you’re grinning, not groaning.

Unfortunately for the Chamber, there’ll be a lot more motorists in the voting booths on Election Day than corporate executives.

But against that broad public disapproval with the performance of Congress, there is a powerful counterforce: inertia and incumbency. Absent an indictment, congressional incumbents almost never lose their reelection bids. Voters routinely draw a sharp distinction between their opinion of Congress as a whole and that of their own representatives – especially in the House of Representatives, the most local of all national offices.

What the Chamber is worried about is that this year’s House elections will effectively become nationalized – with national issues, not local ones, dominating the races, and with voters concerned not just about their local seat in Congress, but about the balance of power in Washington.

That sort of thing does happen in Senate contests if there’s been a sea change in the national mood since the last election, but it rarely happens in the House. The last time it did was in 1994, the year that Newt Gingrich and his friends came up with the Contract with America and pulled off a smashing upset to end the Democrats’ 40-year hold on the House of Representatives.

Could it happen again this year? The Chamber certainly hopes not, but it’s concerned. You don’t spend $10 million on television ads in August unless you are.

0 Comments