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Good question. Depends on your financial circumstances and the value you place on your professional reputation, loyalty and your principles—assuming you have them. Let’s go one at a time: 1) Do you need the money badly? Is your practice struggling? Do you have a family to support? Start at 0 and add 1 point for each “yes.” 2) How important to you is the respect of your peers? “Very” = subtract 2 “Somewhat” = subtract 1 “Not very important” = 0 3) Do you think loyalty is an extremely important trait, a somewhat important trait or a not very important trait in a lobbyist? “Very” = subtract 2 “Somewhat” = subtract 1 “Not very important” = 0 4) Do you think it’s very important, somewhat important or unimportant to agree with your clients’ view? “Very” = subtract 2 “Somewhat” = subtract 1 “Unimportant” = Do Not Pass Go: Proceed directly to “Free Parking” in the office of your new client. Tally your points. If you have a positive number, take the new client and drop the old one. If you have a negative number, stand pat. If you’re at 0, flip a coin. While we’re on the subject, a Missouri lobbyist named Brian Grace just issued a challenge to his corridor colleagues: Take on one nonprofit group pro bono as a client. Should you decide to switch teams, I recommend that as a way to ease your conscience. Q: Okay, I know you usually do questions from politicians, but how about politicians’ spouses? Here’s my question: My husband just got elected to the state Legislature. I’ve heard it’s a cesspool up there. And I’ve already caught him checking out one of his interns as she was walking away from him. Let me be honest: I love him, but he’s not a great-looking guy and so I probably shouldn’t worry. Or should I? Yes, you should worry. He’s got three strikes against him already: 1) He’s got enough of an ego to seek office, which suggests that he probably enjoys attention; 2) You caught him ogling his intern; and 3) He’s not very good-looking. You’ve misinterpreted No. 3. You think that because of his homeliness, he won’t be able to attract women up there? I can promise you, it won’t matter. Handsome pols/athletes/movie stars are probably less likely to cheat—they’ve had a lifetime of opportunities for romance. For those who are less attractive, the initial brush with fame may be their first chance for significant romantic opportunities, and thus more difficult to resist. Kissinger noted that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. He was referring to the presidency, not the power of a minority party freshman rep in the Wyoming Legislature. But to a 20-year-old sophomore at Casper College, that could be a distinction without a difference. Remember, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Whoops, sorry, bad pun. Read the rest of… From the St. Louis Beacon:
Click here for the full piece.
First, I will try to answer your question. Years ago there was a guy in Missouri who was the leading candidate to run the state Democratic Party. He was an unadulterated piece of sh–. Consequently, along with a few others who had worked with him, I decided to sh–can him. But then I realized that the powerful Carnahan family, who disliked me after my campaign against family scion Russ, would influence the selection. So I “let slip” to a close ally of the Carnahans that I strongly supported the candidate, because I suspected he’d go back and tell the Carnahans that the candidate was a “Jeff Smith guy.” A week later we found out that the guy’s candidacy had been scuttled. And second, I will quote Nelson Mandela, who said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping that it kills your enemies.” In other words, let it go. If he’s really that big of a douche bag, people will soon catch on. Since it’s Washington, I guess that means he’ll soon be someone’s chief of staff.
Two-part answer here. The first is simple: Raise money, and raise it big and early. Few do it, and if you’re young and do it well, you can write your ticket. It’s the best way to stand out and distinguish yourself early in the party and to the campaign. If your candidate loses in the primary, you’re sought after by the nominee, which can’t be said of most campaign staff. They’re usually left out in the cold. The second is a different approach: Learn how to do something important that only a few people in politics understand. Two possible areas come to mind where candidates are going to want people with cutting-edge expertise. The first is hardcore quantitative analysis similar to that which powered the Obama re-election campaign. The second is knowledge about state delegate laws, which helped Obama make a series of savvy (and rather counterintuitive) targeting decisions in 2008, allocating resources to small states, some of which held caucuses which advantaged Obama’s zealous supporters. Since the media is currently focused on the former area, I’d probably choose the latter, and get to work memorizing the complex patchwork of state delegate selection laws. Read the rest of…
For three generations, Bush men have occupied towering positions in the party pantheon, and the party’s demographic and ideological shifts can be traced through the branches of the Bush family tree: from Prescott, the blue-blooded Eisenhower Republican, and George H.W. Bush, the transitional figure who tried and failed to emulate the approach of the New Right, to George W. Bush, who embodied the new breed of tax-cutting, evangelical conservatism. Indeed, the Bushes’ metamorphosis from genial centrism to deep-fried conservatism has both anticipated and reflected the party’s trajectory. But now, Jeb Bush, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, seems to be bucking the trend. He is seeking to return the party to its ideological moorings — toward the centrism of his grandfather. Even before the GOP’s ignominious defeat in November, Jeb was offering tough love to his party, suggesting that Republicans stand up to Grover Norquist and craft a bipartisan compromise to reduce the deficit significantly. But will Republicans listen? There are many reasons to believe they won’t. Prescott was a Manhattan investment banker who called himself a “moderate progressive.” In the 1952 primary between conservative presidential candidate Sen. Robert Taft and moderate Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Prescott chose Eisenhower — and became the president’s favorite golf partner. Prescott rode Eisenhower’s coattails into the Senate, where he focused on urban renewal, spearheading the 1954 Housing Act. An early proponent of the line-item veto, he received national recognition as an advocate of fiscal responsibility.
Recognizing that his 1964 primary campaign would need to be more Goldwater than Rockefeller, he ignored the social problems Prescott had addressed. “Only unbridled free enterprise can cure unemployment,” H.W. asserted, contending that government bore no responsibility for alleviating poverty. Though he lost, he began the transition to Sunbelt conservatism that would make him (barely) acceptable to Ronald Reagan as a running mate. But he never fully evolved: He famously reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge. His son George W. would complete the transition. George W.’s first major legislative accomplishment as president was the enactment of a massive $1.6 trillion tax cut. He rode roughshod over the green-eyeshade types to pass a massive tax cut. When it produced runaway deficits, he accepted Dick Cheney’s argument: “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.” In adopting Sun Belt conservatism — sometimes clumsily — George H.W. and George W. anticipated the Republican Party’s ideological shift. Hence, in evaluating Jeb’s prescriptions for fiscal responsibility, today’s Republicans should recall the Bushes’ past political palm reading. Read the rest of…
In his letter of resignation from Congress, Jackson eschewed the defiance of Rod Blagojevich, suggesting a guilty plea is likely. Jackson also said he is cooperating with investigators. But cooperation has a legal meaning far stronger than its common meaning; a defendant can be “cooperative” without cooperating in the legal sense. That is, a defendant may promptly fulfill most of a prosecutor’s specific pre-indictment requests — detailing his crime(s), resigning from office, declining interviews, etc — but that won’t be enough to receive an elusive 5K-1 letter, the government’s reward for defendants who help them make cases against others. A 5K-1 letter is the best way to persuade a judge to depart downward from federal sentencing guidelines.
Therein lies Jackson’s problem/opportunity. He is surrounded by possible high-value targets: his dad, the famed civil-rights leader who runs Operation PUSH; his wife, Sandi, a prominent Chicago alderwoman; his brothers Jonathan and Yusef, businessmen/activists who own a lucrative beer distributorship purchased after their father had organized a boycott of the brewery’s products; dozens of high-level public officials with whom he mingles. Sun-Times columnist Mike Sneed reported Friday that Jackson is, in fact, “singing with the voice of an anxious canary” and that the feds are interested in all he knows about a “powerful dem femme” who is not an alderman. Read the rest of… Newt says that he is not ruling out another presidential run. Smart move. By dangling the prospect of a 2016 candidacy, Newt can charge higher fees as an…historian. [Naples News] (This link is not an Onion article.)
Q: I’m a first-time candidate. After guiding me to victory in my primary, one of my chief strategists asked me to hire his ne’er-do-well son. The son was a campaign volunteer and got along well with everyone, but I turned down the request. I didn’t want to start out my career like that. Did I make the right call, or did I make an enemy for life? Both. Q: Does direct mail still work? Is it a good use of money relative to other forms of communication, like TV, radio or knocking doors? Increasingly, no. There are some places it still works, though. Rural Missouri and St. Louis’ southern suburbs, for instance, are home to large concentrations of seniors, some of whom rarely leave the house, aren’t online except to use email, and for whom snail mail is a highlight of the day. Parts of the outer boroughs in particular also have high concentrations of elderly residents. Of course, in rural Missouri, television buys are cheap. And moving images (TV ads) are generally more effective/persuasive than mail. So TV is preferable to mail there. But in a legislative race in the outer boroughs, New York City media market TV buys aren’t feasible, so mail is a decent option. Radio is often a good option for negative ads, since listeners tend to forget the source of the attack and thus don’t hold the attacks against the candidates making them to the same degree they would with a television spot, for instance. But again, this is prohibitively expensive for legislative and City Council candidates in the New York City market. Upstate, it is much more feasible. Of course, having someone actually talk to voters is always preferable to mail, radio or TV. But some areas are remote and/or difficult to canvass because of the distance between homes. And even in areas that can be canvassed effectively, some campaigns lack volunteers. They may employ paid canvassers as a substitute, but that can be dicey: Those jobs typically pay approximately $10 an hour or even less, and sometimes paid canvassers have more legs than teeth. My chief opponent in a congressional primary used an oxymoronically named D.C. firm called Grassroots Solutions that hires paid canvassers. They were so stupid that they picked the only day of the entire election cycle when you know who is actually going to vote—Election Day—and spent the morning waving signs outside my office instead of at poll sites talking to voters. So be cautious about hiring anyone who claims they’ll help create “organic” grassroots support. In sum, yours is a question with which every campaign must grapple. Except in anomalous areas like senior-heavy sections of the outer boroughs, money that once went toward mail will largely be steered toward online advertising in the future. In addition to the Internet’s status as a place where people spend more time than the 15 seconds it takes them to go from the mailbox to the trash can, the Web provides ad buyers information about the number of people who actually see and click on an ad, which mail is unable to do. In a metrics-obsessed Moneyball world, tools that enable campaigns to gather information while assessing the effectiveness of their messaging are increasingly essential. Read the rest of…
1) Return to your fiscal conservative roots. Adhere to your rhetoric about not crippling the next generation with debt by supporting policies that would actually balance budgets, as opposed to Ryan-esque chimera and other supply-side delusions. You may recall how the economy fared in the 1990s after every Republican legislator voted against Clinton’s ’93 tax hike and asserted it would kill the economy. Did a Republican Congress that limited spending help satisfy bond traders, keeping interest rates low and powering growth? Sure. But the public associates that growth with Clinton. Your doomsday rhetoric about Clintonomics cost you credibility, and a decade of feeble growth following the Bush tax cuts didn’t restore it. 2) As true budget hawks, take the lead in two areas where the nation could save billions: military spending and prison reform. Want to win the votes of young people and minorities? Bingo. Young people have overwhelmingly opposed recent overseas conflicts, and in a time of fiscal austerity when college grads are moving back in with their parents, the fact that that we spend more than the next 10 highest spending nations combined should be sobering. Prison reform could be two-fold. First, train offenders in prison in entrepreneurship. Pilot programs in this area have reduced recidivism by as much as 80% – and 60% recidivism rates drive corrections spending. Second, focus on sentencing reform so that we don’t continue locking up non-violent offenders for decades as part of misguided “three-strikes” and “truth-in-sentencing” laws. Since minorities are disproportionately affected by the prison-industrial complex, they would appreciate a focus on sentencing reform.
4) Stop talking about gay people. As has been obvious from the generational divide in polling on the issue for the past decade that ship is sailing away from you, fast. Read the rest of… |
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Q: How do I prevent this total douche bag I hate, who I worked with on a campaign, from getting a sweet political appointment?
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