Senate 101: How to Make Your Message Pay Off

I’ve come up with the “Message Index” or MI. It’s based on 100 points. It’s the way I measure messages I write to elected officials. You may want to use it to assess your own messages when you’re writing to Senators about issues.

• Ideally, before you write a letter, you have established a relationship with somebody in the Senator’s office. If so, you may refer to that person right up front in your letter to the Senator or you may write write directly to that individual. In addition, in the first paragraph, say (1) where you’re from, (2) what you do and/or whom you know, and (3) what you want. Why? If you are a constituent from the state someone will answer your letter. If you provide information that suggests you are connected to important state players and/or a network of people, that will translate to – this person is important, let’s keep his/her contact information so we can get to it quickly when we want to disseminate something to the state. And, if the initial reader of your letter knows what you are concerned about, your letter will more quickly get to the person who can act on it. (15 points)

Then your letter should –

• Provide background on the issue. Describe what’s working and not working. Provide statistics. Tell a story about a person from the state who has been adversely impacted by the status quo or would be adversely affected if the status quo were altered. (15 points)
• Describe how to address the problem. Say something about who should be involved, how to resolve the issue, and when to take action. (30 points)
• Describe the beneficial impact if the problem is fixed. Here too you could provide statistics – how many people, the projected cost benefit, and the impact on other things such as systems, communities, families, or the local economy. (10 points)
•  Describe what you are prepared to do to help the Senator and his/her staff learn more/do more, such as - research, talking points, draft memos, contacting others, or a floor statement. (15 points)
• End in one page. (5 points)
• Use links to resources to save space. (5 points)
•  Include all your contact information. (5 points)

You may ask a friend to rate your draft based on the Message Index. If you get a response from your Senator's office – a letter requesting more information, a call, and an opportunity to meet – you have hit a home run! You will be well on your way to becoming someone to whom the Senator will turn  and on whom the Senator will increasingly rely going forward on this issue. And, I guarantee, your letter will not be thrown away or ignored.

Good luck.

Common Grounder

Senate 101: Step One, Introduce Yourself to Your Senators

After an election, at least for a year, a Senator will focus primarily on two things -- constituents and his or her status related to a few issues. Fundraising is an activity a Senator always must devote time to, but after an election there's a window of opportunity for constituents to take up more political space. 

In terms of standing (status) on issues there are three types of Senators -- (1) A new Senator discovering "who's in charge of particular issues" and deciding how to enter the issues arena. (2) A seasoned Senator, who has secured recognized expertise on issues that are important to him or her. This has probably come about because of the Senator's position on a committee. Even so, the Senator must protect his or her territory or status relative to an issue. (3) A Senator, who is planning to retire at the end of 2016, exploring legacy issues -- his or her standing on issues from the perspective of historians.

The first question you should ask yourself is - in what category do my senators likely fit? If one of your Senators falls into the first category your chances of getting to know him or her and making your issue a priority for the Senator is higher. Moreover, new Senators have fewer gatekeepers. So your chances of direct access are higher as well.

For those of you who have a senator who is a seasoned member of the Senate, perhaps a chairman or ranking member or someone with senior status within a committee, your ability to influence the Senator's issue preferences or to have direct access to the Senator are more constrained.

If your Senator is in his or her late 70s or 80s, viewing retirement, you have a good chance of helping him or her embrace one of your issues.

Regardless of the category in which one of your Senators falls, now is the time to proceed to introduce yourself to them, not six months from now. How do you do that? You have many options. Your chances of standing out and getting access or attention will be higher if you offer to do something for the Senator first, rather than asking the Senator for something. Here are three.

(1) Consider inviting the Senator to see your program, interviewing the Senator for a newsletter, and/or offering to arrange a photo op. These simple steps will give you the opportunity to begin a dialogue with the Senator and really reflect what you care about.

(2) Perhaps you want to try something less direct, like sending a letter. Here too it's smart to offer what you would be willing to do for the Senator -- do research, collect good news stories about constituents around a theme, set up a feedback loop among your colleagues and friends on key issues, or prepare fact sheets. A letter would obviously include information on your background, which would reflect your expertise.

(3) You could attend a town hall meeting, raise questions, and introduce yourself to the Senator and staff. As in the other examples I've given, you would want to offer what you can do for the Senator rather than ask the Senator to do something for you.

The underlying premise and objective overtime is you want the Senator and his or her staff to connect you to an issue and see you as a resource to which they can turn to over and over with confidence. Introduction is but the First Step in building a long term relationship.

We all have the same 24 hour period in which to function. Senators and their staff face many demands that consume their time. If they can find people from their home state on which they can rely, they are likely to include the issues of those people among the Senator's priorities and use the facts and perspectives provided by those constituents when speaking and writing legislation on those issues of mutual interest.

So please get started. There is no time to waste.

Thank you.

Common Grounder

A Little Advice on Governing

If there ever was a reason to get our act together and get to know the Republican Congress this is -- The Coming Congressional War over Social Security Disability" by Howard Gleckman in a post for Forbes. Here's the link: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2015/01/07/the-coming-congressional-war-over-social-security-disability/.

Gleckman is not the only one writing about this. The Social Security Task Force of the Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities has compiled links to background and other opinion pieces.

Text of H. Res. 5 (Social Security provision is Sec. 3(q) on pages 30-31 of the PDF file):

HTML -- https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/hres5/BILLS-114hres5eh.xml

PDF -- https://www.congress.gov/114/bills/hres5/BILLS-114hres5eh.pdf

Vote results:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll006.xml

Explainer from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities:

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/house-rule-could-hurt-vulnerable-disability-beneficiaries/

The unprecedented inclusion of this harmful Social Security provision in the House rules has garnered extensive media coverage; highlights include:

Washington Post, Wonkblog:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/social-security-disability-payments-would-be-cut-by-a-fifth-without-new-action/

Reuters, Mark Miller:

http://reut.rs/1DCuZ7P

Michael Hiltzik, LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-on-day-onel-new-congress-launches-attack-on-social-security-20150106-column.html 

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-do-republicans-misunderstand-social-security-20150107-column.html

AP, Stephen Ohlemacher:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/house-rule-sets-election-year-battle-social-security-28048810 

NYT, Teresa Trichou:

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/uh-oh-republicans-are-trying-to-protect-social-security-again/?_r=0

The House leadership has elected to hold everyone's feet to the fire by adding a rule to House rules that would prevent the House from voting on any legislation that would allow transfer of funding from one Social Security program (older persons and survivors program) to the SSDI program (people with disabilities who have worked). SSDI takes a financial nose dive in 2016 unless it gets more money. If nothing is done, then everyone who gets SSDI will see a 20% drop in their monthly payments from SSDI.

Who knows what the Senate has planned on this.

I am opposed to governing by threat, inaction, deception, and default. If the Social Security Programs need a scrubbing, then Democrats and Republicans should sit down and discuss how it should be done like grown ups, come up with some options, and share them with us. The next election is less than two years away and includes the election of a new president. Many people are affected by/benefit from Social Security payments. They want Republicans and Democrats to act responsibly. Procedural surprises are not the way to go. Hearings, bipartisan drafting of amendments, transparency, and consideration of the impact on people, as well as fiscal concerns should shape what comes about. Some have said that there is room for Republicans and Democrats to talk and come together on tax reform and trade policy. Well, why not Social Security reform as well, where the emphasis is placed on helping people be as independent as possible without fear of losing their health insurance? Remember the ABLE Act?

Thank you.

Common Grounder

Foundation for Building Meaningful Relationships with Senators

First, happy new year. 

In real estate the top three factors are location, location, and location. 

In political transactions the top three factors are relationships, relationships, and relationships. If we want to get the attention of Senators and have them address issues that are important to us in 2015 and beyond, we must develop meaningful relationships with them. Developing meaningful relationships with anyone takes time, but developing relationships with senators is even more of a challenge. Senators have many gatekeepers. In effect, unless you are a big donor, a big company from the state, a powerful constituent from the state, head of a political action committee, a relative, or a longtime family friend, your chances of meeting directly with a senator one-on-one is probably one in 10,000. You need to earn such an opportunity.

Let's consider some of the initial steps we could take.

1.  Focus on the chairman and ranking Democrat on committees dealing with health, education, employment, housing, transportation, human rights, and benefits. If you are from one of these states from which these senators come you have a leg up. Constituents are not ignored. But even so, you need to develop a reason for such Senators to interact with you on a ongoing basis.

2.  Visit the Senator's website, read newspaper articles, checkout what the Senator is sharing on Facebook and Twitter. What are you looking for? 

The Senator's priorities

The Senator's concerns

The Senator's past record on issues

Legislation that the Senator has sponsored

Legislation that the Senator has cosponsored

What do you do with this information? Look for connections to issues that are important to you or consider how you can CREATE a connection to issues that are important to you. Here is one example. Most Senators support initiatives that benefit disabled veterans. How can you use that fact to broaden a Senator's interest/support for initiatives that benefit more people with disabilities?

Here's one piece of data to get you started:  http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/227175-senate-gop-announces-new-committee-assignments

I am very excited about 2015. Let's work together to make sure in political terms it pays off for people with disabilities.

Thank you.

Common Grounder

On Your Mark, Get Ready....

With the beginning of the new Congress in January 2015, controlled by the Republicans, there is no clear champion of disability rights. If we are smart, we need to see this as an opportunity rather than a deficit. We should build bipartisan pairs of champions on every committee that affects people with disabilities. This window of opportunity will not last long and we must be prepared to offer potential candidates of these bipartisan pairs support for and concrete ideas that improve lives of people with disabilities and strengthen our position as a strong, aggressive advocate for disability rights internationally.

In the Wall Street Journal today Kim Strassel has written an interesting opinion piece, "A GOP Strategy Begins to Emerge" (http://online.wsj.com/articles/kim-strassel-a-gop-strategy-begins-to-emerge-1418946270). Strassel gives several examples of what the GOP has learned over the last six years, broadly speaking, what works and what doesn't work. One interesting tidbit was that Democrats joined Republicans this year "to expand access to charter schools, expedite natural gas exports, and ban taxes on the Internet." Another tidbit is that many Democrats, like Republicans, oppose the medical device tax. And a final one, Republicans realize they have a greater chance of getting substantive changes they want, by sticking such things in spending bills.

One of the GOP's big motivators over the next two years is/will be to show us it knows how to get things done. In such a climate, the GOP will be interested in bipartisan collaboration, meaningful, and yes, clever, negotiation, and new coalition building. We should spend the holiday season reading, thinking, and deciding how to put ourselves on the agenda early before all the "opportunity space" is taken in the new Congress.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. When available, learn who the Republican chairmen and Democrat ranking members on committees in the House of Representatives and Senate are.

2.  Discuss and select issues on which you would send them a message.

3.  Be informed about what is coming up on the calendars in the House and Senate.

4.  Share your interests/messages with others to build coalitions around priorities.

Have a great holiday season, and rest up for 2015. It is going to be an exciting year for us!

Thank you.

Common Grounder

An open letter to Senator Harkin

Dear Senator Harkin:

As you are about to start the next chapter in your life, I would like to give you  something to think about and work on. How about that? Not a thank you letter. Not a-you-will-be-missed-letter, but a to-do letter! I can do that because I am 70, retired, am president of United States International Council on Disabilities, and have a sense of urgency. I started my congressional staff career working for Democrat Congressman Paul Simon of Illinois in the summer of 1980. After the fall election, Austin Murphy, Paul Simon's replacement for the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Education, let me go. I was hired by his Republican counterpart and worked for Republicans thereafter. In 1980 I met Bobby Silverstein and our paths have been intertwined ever since. I was Bill Frist's staff director when you relinquished the chairmanship of the Senate Subcommittee on Disability Policy to him in 1995.

In the past there has always been a great deal of bi-partisanship on disability legislation. It must be restored. You could help make that happen. You are being heralded as the last great champion on disability rights. We need more champions, many champions in Congress. You could help make that happen. Each chairman/woman and each ranking member of each congressional committee that touches the lives of persons with disabilities should be our champion. You could help make that happen. The Senate and the House should not continue to assume that it is appropriate or effective to let one person do all the heavy lifting on disability matters. So many took a walk on ratification of the CRPD. 

People with disabilities, their families and friends belong to more than one political party. They vote. They work for candidates. They contribute to campaigns. They represent a substantial component of the population.  Their issues are everyone's issues -- jobs, health care, education, housing, economic prosperity. You could help them get organized, form a PAC and strengthen their voice.

We are the senior generation. We have an obligation to speak candidly with each other and to others, and do the things necessary to help the next generations have a bright future.

Thank you.

Patricia Morrissey

The Future from Here

My brain is a very active thing. Sometimes it chooses to do thinking, when I prefer to chill. Last night was special. The U.S. International Council on Disabilities (USICD) held its inaugural fund raising gala at the Institute of Peace. Although I may be biased, being USICD's new president, I'd say it was a smashing success.  Most ticket holders showed up (200+) in spite of the weather; we had a harp and a bag pipe, great food and beverage, hors d'ouvres, and a turkey buffet. The best part was when we gave Professor Gerard Quinn of Ireland and Senator Tom Harkin awards for their tireless efforts on behalf of disability rights. 

Today Senator Harkin talked to many advocates by phone urging that we ask all potential presidential candidates in 2016 where they stand on ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). That is a great suggestion and one to put in our hip pockets.

I have decided that the focus of my blog for awhile will be the Senate. We need to get to know the new Senate -- the new chairmen on committees that are important to us, the new members that need to shape their priority list, and the ones who may be retiring in 2016. We should each adopt a Senator for the next two years. We should learn as much as we can about him or her and offer to help this Senator on things that are important to him or her. Gradually, we can introduce them to disability issues, advocates, and challenges, through conversations, talking points, and visits to special places where great things are happening and places where things need to happen.

If we each adopt a Senator and do the things I've suggested here as well as other actions, over the next two years the bipartisan interest and support for disability rights will be refreshed, restored, and expanded. It would be beyond amazing if, by 2016 we have 100 Senators who understand the power of inclusion, accessibility, and opportunity from the perspective of us with disabilities and our allies.

Please decide to adopt a Senator and see how you can change the climate in Washington,D.C.

Thank you.

Common Grounder

Please checkout my Kindle book --  A Moral Imperative:  U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Book link: http://t.co/Vigyant7aM.  Take 2 will be out in February 2015.