|
Lawmakers Getting the Word Out
Utah legislative leaders seem to be communicating more with constituents and opinion leaders. I’ve written a lot about Rep. Steve Urquhart’s Weblog www.steveu.com (which, by the way, includes a number of new and interesting postings on gay marriage, head tax, wilderness, and flooding in Washington County at). Now House Majority Leader Jeff Alexander has initiated some interesting communications of his own. Alexander has issued another newsletter/quarterly calendar from his business, Alexander’s Print Advantage. In this newsletter he writes about several political topics, providing interesting insights and observations on the start of a new legislative session, budgeting, the transportation crisis, lobbyists, the part-time Legislature and approval ratings and popularity.
Over the next couple of days I will excerpt some of Alexander’s comments in Utah Policy Daily. As a key leader in the Legislature, his observations are well worth reading. Here is his introduction and first segment:
A New Day For Utah
By Jeff Alexander
“Usually I try to keep politics out of our calendar message, but 2005 promises to be a very exciting year for politics in Utah. Many of you already know that I serve in the Utah House of Representatives and this year I have an additional responsibility as the House Majority Leader. So, risky as it may be, I have chosen to share some perspectives on Utah politics with you.
“A New Governor -- A New Opportunity. During the campaign, Governor Jon Huntsman used the slogan, A New Day for Utah. He is right. A new governor has opportunities at the beginning of his term in office that he may never have again. He has the opportunity to change his cabinet, the individuals who manage the main departments of state government. With a new staff, a new governor can make many program changes and provide new leadership and new ideas.
“The real challenge for new governors is to remember that not all of the government changes come from the governor’s office. One of the great things about our political system is the separation of powers. While the governor has the opportunity to contribute fresh ideas, the legislature, which enacts the laws, will also have proposals, and the challenge is bringing the two branches of government together. If Governor Huntsman follows through on his plan to work closely with the Legislature, great things really can happen. At times of disagreement, compromise is critical, and good working relationships at the leadership levels of state government are imperative.” (Next: Balancing the Budget)
Communications with Constituents
If there is a trend toward state legislators communicating more with their constituents, I think it is a very healthy trend. I’d like to see more of it. We like to say at my consulting firm, the Exoro Group, that every public policy battle is, in large part, a communications battle. Nearly every political failure is a failure of communications. Nearly every win is a triumph of communications. Good communications is crucial to every political career and every public policy issue. Political leaders ought to be accomplished practitioners of great communications. They need to learn how to communicate effectively with the various audiences that are important to them.
Being a good communicator is more than being articulate and polished in speech. Good communications involves understanding your objectives, identifying the right audiences, development of the right messages, proper timing, and delivery of the messages to the right audiences through the best channels. The cool thing about today’s communications, with such tools as e-mail, Web sites, blogging and direct mail, is that you don’t have to rely entirely on the news media, which tend to filter and sometimes distort your messages.
I will write more about good political communications in the future. We had considered holding some communications seminars for elected officials in advance of the legislative session, but we’ve been too busy and are now out of time. But if any legislators or other elected officials would like to get together over lunch or take an hour to discuss this subject, we’d be happy to provide some help on how you can communicate effectively to the constituent audiences that are important to you. Send me an e-mail at info@utahpolicy.com, or call me at 537-0900 and we’ll get together.
What Went Right for the Democrats
There has been a lot of handwringing among Democrats over their big electoral defeat in 2004. In his e-mail column this week, National Journal’s Charlie Cook talks about some positives:
"As Democrats prepare to select a new party chairman next month, they should think not only about what went wrong in 2004 but about what went right. After all, a party that carried 19 states in four consecutive elections (with a total of 248 electoral votes, just 22 short of the 270 needed to win) is not fundamentally broken, it just needs some work. But for 118,599 votes out of the 5.6 million cast in Ohio and 119 million votes cast nationwide, a different half of America would be despondent today and another group of people would be headed to Washington to celebrate the presidential inauguration.
"By taking a full assessment of their condition, Democrats are more likely to make the most needed changes without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
"First, Democrats, the Democratic National Committee, the Kerry campaign and the Dean campaign early in the process, as well as other allied groups like America Coming Together and MoveOn.org, raised more money than anyone thought was possible. Together, they actually out-raised the Republican National Committee, the Bush campaign and their partners in the presidential campaign money game, an amazing development. Democrats had the money to do what they needed to do, something that is new and noteworthy.
"Second, Democrats, chiefly through Americans Coming Together, mounted what was not only the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation in the party's history, but it was probably the best field work by a factor of at least 10. Merging the latest in technology with old-fashioned shoe leather, Democrats not only met, but surpassed, their vote total targets in key states such as Ohio and Florida. With voter turnout unexpectedly climbing from 105 million in 2000 to 119 million in 2004 and a parallel effort by the GOP that took them to startling heights of organization as well, the Democratic GOTV operation was not quite good enough to win, but it was awfully close.
"No doubt a big part of the Democrats' problem has been in candidate selection. Given the narrowness of the Democrats' two losses in 2000 and 2004, one wonders how the party might have fared had they not nominated stiff, aloof candidates who would be uncomfortable at backyard barbecues in all but the very finest of homes. Nominating a candidate who was capable of saying that he voted for funding for the war before he voted against it -- a remark that Bush presidential adviser Karl Rove later said was "the gift that kept on giving" -- makes one wonder how a less flawed candidate might have fared.
"John Kerry's inadequacies as a candidate were hardly a shock to his Democratic Senate colleagues, many of who have always seen Kerry as a distant figure and questioned his ability to relate well to rank-and-file voters. One would imagine that in the days of the smoke-filled room, the judgment of peers would have carried more weight in this particular case.
"While DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe has been the target of some criticism, to his credit, he made sure the national party was more than well funded and technologically advanced. He poured millions into making the Democratic Party's voter lists and ability to target voters light years more advanced than anyone would have imagined. But one of the smartest decisions McAuliffe made was among his last as party leader: to commission a study of the party's nominating process to see what might be done to enable the party to nominate more electable candidates in the future. McAuliffe turned to Rep. David Price of North Carolina, a former Duke University political scientist and authority on the presidential nominating process. Price served on the Hunt Commission that studied the issue several decades ago.
"While many speak of the importance of a party picking a nominee quickly to allow time for nomination battle wounds to heal and to prepare for the general election, the pendulum has swung way too far in that direction. In 2004, the nominating process seemed to end almost as soon as it started. It is extremely important for two inexpensive, touch-the-flesh, retail campaign states like Iowa and New Hampshire to begin the process, but they should not also be the end of that process. Something has to be done to ensure that the primary nominating process lasts for at least a couple of months to make sure that the eventual nominee wears well over time.
"Parenthetically, it will be interesting to see if Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack seeks the Democratic nomination in 2008. If Vilsack runs, there is no doubt that the Iowa Caucus will become a moot event, as it was in 1992 when another Iowan, Sen. Tom Harkin, ran and all other contenders simply stayed out and focused their energies on New Hampshire. Iowa has a choice: They can have a candidate or a caucus, not both, and it is delusional for them to think otherwise.
"The problem, of course, is to get states, the state Legislatures and governors and in some cases the party apparatus in each state, to go along with a solution. In some ways, perhaps McAuliffe should have enticed the RNC to join the commission, since their elected and party officials at the state level will have as much say as their Democratic counterparts on whether the changes are adopted."
|
