K Street Cafe

The hard-working transparency advocates at the Sunlight Foundation have released a new suite of tools called Politiwidgets. Each tool in the 10-widget set is as easily customizable and embeddable by bloggers as searching for, resizing, and generating code for embedding a YouTube video.

The suite includes some interesting tools that haven’t really surfaced on the web in such customizable fashion, even if the data behind the tools have become available over the past couple of years through other projects like, for example, OpenSecrets.org. The list includes (with examples given for my representative in the U.S. House, Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN 5th):

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All Online Politics is Personalized, Or May Soon Be (Tech President)
With companies like RapLeaf, campaigns can target real names and addresses from what can be gleaned about users from the web.

Facebook Lacks Friends in D.C. (Politico)
Facebook has one of the smallest policy and lobbying shops in the Capitol.

First published on Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

This August, just prior to a Tea Party march in Washington, DC, a blogger who claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party published the DC home addresses of some Members of Congress.  The posting was part of a “Visitors Guide” to Washington.  Last summer it was people bringing firearms to congressional town hall meetings.  This summer it’s an open invitation to conduct a demonstration at elected officials’ homes.  “Feel free to protest,” the blogger added.

The last few years have seen an explosion in interest in advocacy, and that is generally a good thing.  A Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) survey of citizens found that 44% of adult Americans had contacted Congress within the last five years.  While this increased interest in exercising constitutional rights has value, one must keep in mind there is such a thing as “bad advocacy.”

CMF firmly believes that good advocacy results in good public policy.  Citizen advocates who can passionately and thoughtfully articulate how a pending policy will affect them as individuals or a group has a constructive effect on legislative outcomes.  One House Democrat said it to me this way: “The most effective way to influence a lawmaker is for a constituent to talk to a legislator about how the policy will affect the person or a particular group.”

For years, some groups and individuals have relished the act of interfering with the process of government or otherwise offending elected officials.  Shutting down the Senate phone system and protesting at the congressman’s home were viewed by the groups who used these tactics as victories in advocacy.  But what did they really accomplish?  Shouting at a Representative’s kids does little to curry favor or influence the legislator to support the group’s issue.  In fact, it is more likely to result in the legislator’s long-lived disdain for the group which organized the protest.

CMF strongly supports the right of citizens to “petition their government for a redress of grievances.”  That is why we created the Partnership for a More Perfect Union, which seeks to enrich relationships between Congress and citizens.  The right to “petition” Congress has very few limits (a Colorado court recently ruled that it is a constitutional right for a citizen to leave a pile of doggie doo with a letter to a Member of Congress).  But that doesn’t mean extreme measures are effective or wise.

Civility in advocacy is more effective than annoyance.  Public officials respect those who respect them and the process they represent.  We encourage groups who seek to influence legislative outcomes to employ reasonable and proven methods; encourage advocates to politely and persistently persuade legislators; and refrain from tactics that appear malicious or violent.

President John F. Kennedy said, “So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.”  That advice is not just about politeness, it’s more likely to yield results.

Last week The Economist’s Lexington column profiled a community organizer in Seattle who faced a $10,000 fine for not reporting her grassroots efforts to oppose government takeover of private property.

She ran into a second little-known state law. If she prints some fliers, calls some meetings and urges her neighbours to write to their state representative demanding change, she has to register as a “grassroots lobbyist”. This rule applies to any group that spends more than $500 in any given month trying to influence the legislature. That sum includes not only cash but also anything else of value, including voluntary labour, the use of office space and so forth. In other words, it could cover nearly any grassroots group.

In response, she filed a lawsuit to have the law repealed arguing that it would have a chilling effect on free speech.

What do you think? Should every act of grassroots organizing warrant disclosure? At what point does grassroots activity cross a threshold that should trigger registration and transparency regulations?

I recently gave a lecture at American University’s Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute on how to use social media and other online strategies for advocacy. You can watch it here.

Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Communication Center hosted a panel discussion on calculating your ROI for social media campaigns. I was fortunate to join three terrific panelists presenting at the event including Adam Conner from Facebook, Laura Howe from the American Red Cross, and Paul Argenti, a Professor from Dartmouth. (more…)

While I enjoy many of the topics people tweet about—Redskin updates, fashion reviews, restaurant suggestions, and a recent dinner conversation between M.C. Hammer and Robbie Van Winkle (A.K.A. Vanilla Ice)—my favorite tweets come from policy makers. However, while some have learned the art of brevity by using 140 characters or less, others take three tweets to get their point across—the technological equivalent of a filibuster.

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After the first House bailout vote went down in flames, I posted a K Street Cafe entry suggesting that it was ideology – not the flood of emails and phone calls to congressional offices – that determined the outcome. I noted that it was not fear of voter backlash that motivated legislators, as 77% of the “no” votes came from House members who had nothing to fear since they won their last election with more than 55% of the vote. In today’s Washington Post Outlook Section, writer Eve Fairbanks offers more data to support this theory by pointing out that none of the freshman House Republicans, who are closely aligned with the conservative Republican Study Committee, voted “yes” on the first bailout vote. She suggests it was conservative ideology that dominated their decision-making process.

So what turned it around the second time? Certainly the tax sweeteners and higher FDIC protection limits motivated some, but there was more evidence in the weekend papers that our K Street Café colleague, Colin Delany, said it perfectly with his blog entry last week: it’s all about relationships. Those people who built a relationship with a member of Congress and communicated their interest in the legislation influenced the outcome. This is a crucial lesson in grassroots advocacy: there is a significant difference in legislators’ minds between those people with an opinion and those with an interest. (more…)

Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com.

My colleague Brad Fitch writes in the K Street Café about the bailout plan, “What’s Driving Citizen Outrage?”.  Fitch takes a smart look at the factors underlying the passion, and recognizes a true “grassroots” advocacy campaign when he sees one.  In fact, the bailout may be one of those seminal – and rare – political events where the citizenry is truly engaged in an uncoordinated explosion, and Fitch cites the 2006 immigration debate, the 1998 Starr Report and the 1989 Congressional pay raise as the only seriously comparable recent examples.

Wired magazine makes an analogous point in its coverage of the case, in “Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers’ Inboxes”.  It seems that the major advocacy groups organizing massive email, letter-writing and telephone campaigns are being eclipsed – at least this time around – by the virality of individual journalists and bloggers and websites launching often comical but all-too-effective pitched battles.  As just one example, Wired mentions BuyMyShitPile.com, a parody site organizing collections of junk for submission to the government to also be redeemed in the junk mortgage bailout.  (As of this writing, BuyMyShitePile claims stated value of its “junk” assets at $801,501,210,139.11.) (more…)

“The Hill” reports today that the bailout vote in the House this week was a “Crushing Failure for Lobbyists.” Hill offices are reporting a huge surge in constituent communications.    Even earlier this week, I posted a blog that showed an increase in constituent communications as a result of free media coverage of the story.  However, a quick analysis of the voting patterns for this week’s House votes suggests it was not grassroots pressure, lobbyists’ arm twisting, or even fear losing election that drove members.  It was good-old-fashioned “conscience.”  These folks just did what they thought was right.

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