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This is my third time coaching SNA members to advocate for better school nutrition. Equipping others to accomplish worthy goals is the greatest privilege of my professional life! (Check my client list for a sample of organizations that have taken my training.) **** Advocating for Your Programs at the State and Federal Level 1:00 pm—4:00 …

School Nutrition Association Advocacy Skills Training Read More »

“Why would that (lawmaker, special interest, staff) (trade/exchange/barter) his or her (vote, endorsement, join our coalition) for what I am advocating?” Answering this question is fundamental to the planning and implementation of a successful advocacy campaign. Without the right answer, you are unlikely to get the vote, endorsement, coalition member, etc. So how do you …

Lobby School Minneapolis December 8-9, 2022 Read More »

If all my past, present, and future clients took your training it would make me a more effective lobbyist and make my job 100x’s simpler. David R. Custin, President David R. Custin & Associates, Inc. Miami, Florida Our six lobbying practice manuals, 15 topical videos, and three skills development workshops derive from universalities required by the US …

Can Lobbyists and Clients Achieve More Together? Read More »

State Government Affairs professionals, as we all do in our professional and personal lives, make many momentary acquaintances of mutual convenience. Among many acquaintances, we also make a few real friends. Paul Hallman, principal (today retired), MultiState Associates, started professionally as an acquaintance of convenience – a consultant – but over the years proved himself …

“Ethics is its own reward.”* Paul Hallman Read More »

Nonprofit Advocacy with Lawmakers – Download PowerPoint presentation (9 slides, July 13, 2022)

The 2021-22 US Supreme Court term will result in more citizen participation in setting public policy and thereby more work for lobbyists – federal, state, local, legislative and executive. Four rulings illustrate the court’s constitutional redirection vis-à-vis promoting lobbying[2]: Constitutional lineage[3],[4] shall prevail over judicial vogue.[5] Longevity of judicial vogue hallows not constitutionally bad Supreme …

US Supreme Court 2021-22 Term Invites More Lobbying Read More »

“How many of your employers evaluate you for job performance?,” I ask every Lobby School class. All hands raise. This question is followed by, “How many of your organizations evaluate your contract lobbyist for job performance?” Perhaps, 10 hands raised in the last 22 years. Generally, having 0-5 years of experience, most Lobby School students …

Managing Contract Lobbying: Arlington, Virginia May 24, 2022 Read More »

Accuracy and precision are foundational to products able to withstand assault whether from nature, opposing counsel, or agency PhDs. As an engineer, lawyer, and lobbyist I’ve seen trust turn to suspicion upon the proffer of incorrect information. Mistakes are taken as lies. And as all Lobby School students learn, scrupulous honesty is the sine qua …

An Author’s Praise of Ballotpedia Read More »

Bringing Up a New Generation of Better Lobbyists. Thesis: conveying knowledge to better society realizes a basic public responsibility. Illustration: state constitutional obligations for free public education at taxpayer expense. Likewise, senior lobbyists passing our knowledge to the next generation of advocates will better novices’ professional lives, the process and quality of state lawmaking, and …

Senior Lobbyists Training New Lobbyists Read More »

Lobby School workshops are bootcamp-style, applied-skills State Government Affairs professional training. Each session (3@4-8 hrs) is supported by 1 or more Insiders Talk operations manual(s) (5@100-488 pgs) and class workbooks (3@50-100 pgs). Written materials provide participants with greater and deeper practice details than can be presented in the classroom. Novices “jump-start” their careers.  Veterans fill …

Three Skills Development State Lobbying Workshops, May 24-26 Arlington, VA Read More »

Part of a lobbyist’s job is to mitigate political damage from impetuous, undisciplined principals acting independently of Government Affairs (GA). Below are examples of: 1) injuries to a lobbying campaign, 2) the principal’s behavior that caused the injury, and 3) lobbyist mitigation of the injury. In all cases, meaningful GA-C-suite communication could have avoided these …

Lobbyist Reconcile Conflicting Interdependent Worlds Read More »

About one-third of my students’ employers hire contract lobbyists. Students occasionally comment, “We pay our [expletive deleted] contract lobbyists too much [expletive deleted] money for the [expletive deleted] service we get.” When I was a novice in-house lobbyist I felt the same. But the root of our problem is simple: most of us were just …

How Good a Client Are You? A Job Performance Evaluation Instrument for In-house Lobbyists Read More »

Agencies compete in the legislature with other special interests, state and private, for money and authority. In most, but not all, cases agencies work though their own in-house lobbyists called legislative liaisons. The legislative liaison’s role can be an observer, analyst, or advocate as determined by his or her personality and expectations of management. Observers by …

Get to Know the Executive Agency Legislative Liaisons Read More »

Lobbyists advocate. That’s what we do. Seldom do professional advocates pick and choose their advocacy topics. The C-suite assigns issues to in-house lobbyists. Clients, especially long-term ones, assign issues to their contract lobbyists. In this blog I consider how lobbyists can maintain their sense of personal decency while promoting issues: 1) in which they do …

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  … our DC lobbyist advised regarding our industry association’s effort to get Congress to “occupy the field” in the regulation of our products. We wanted one federal program to preempt an expanding “patchwork” of inconsistent, conflicting, and difficult to meet state laws. Federal preemption was indispensable to our problem-solving. As chair, at the time …

“Lobbying is a dance of seduction…” Read More »

State Government Affairs (SGA) is a great field. Whether it’s one step on your path to upper management or it’s to be your career, SGA gives you the opportunity to prove to yourself and to your employers that you can learn to handle the arbitrary, wise, petty, noble, and the occasionally irrational, as power at …

Be the Best You Can Be on Your First Day in the Capitol Read More »

(Updated from December 6, 2021) Technical facts and data, indispensable to executive agencies, are often discounted in legislative policymaking. “Political Responses to Technical Facts” (v2) guides technical experts to become more aware of the political process. The legislative process is procedurally logical but often fact-based irrational. A lawmaker knowingly discounting my technical advice said, “In …

Political Responses to Technical Facts (updated) Read More »

Lobbying can be analogized as driving on a 3 pm urban Interstate. Drivers are traveling the legislative road because they expect it can change laws faster and cheaper than navigating the roads run by the executive and judicial branches. The legislature focuses on policy, is less constrained by technical facts (which agencies take care of), …

Interstate Driving – A Lobbying Analogy Read More »

National state government affairs (SGA) lobbying initiatives can succeed at least 70 percent of the time when designed, implemented, and managed around the concept that lobbying is legislative sales. I say this even amidst the swelling and profound politico-cultural differences among red and blue states. There remains too much national commonality and consensus as to …

Why and How National SGA Efforts Succeed Read More »

“Most of the people in the state of Illinois, and I think this is true across the country, are much more affected in their daily lives by operation of the administrative and executive part of government than they are by 90 percent of the bills [of] the General Assembly.” Former Illinois Governor Dan Walker [1] …

A Statute Is the Starting Gun, Not the Checkered Flag in Phase II of Capital Lobbying Read More »

Ron Phillips[1], Republic Consultants, LLC, Washington, D.C., says the top 5 complaints he hears from new clients about why they dismissed their former lobbyists are the fired lobbyists’: 1)    LACK OF A LOBBYING PLAN – seemingly no organized approach to winning their issue 2)    LACK OF COMMUNICATION – between the client and lobbyist 3)  …

Clients’ Top 5 Complaints with Their Lobbyists Read More »

A lawmaker on whose election I worked copped[1] a plea to “knowingly accepting gifts from a lobbyist with a value of more than $100.” He claimed friendship, not votes, led the lobbyist to give him hotel rooms and a strip club visit. His, perhaps sincere but pitifully incorrect, legal theory resulted in a $4,000 fine …

“Trust but Verify.” Making Sure You Start Out Legal Read More »

If you don’t know what you are going to do before you run into a compromising situation, then you’ll probably make a bad decision. A long-term lobbying career is built upon reputation. Having worked for governments, corporations, and universities, I have found that legislatively enforced ethical expectations for honesty, accuracy, and credibility somewhat shield a …

Advice for New Lobbyists: Are You Resolved to Protect Your Integrity? Read More »

Despite legislatures adopting sexual harassment policies and mandatory annual training, lobbyists should not presume sexual harassment will cease. Experience to date suggests sexual harassment training does little to change lawmaker behavior. In part this may be because the drivers for the behavior remain, a few of which include: legislatures remain overwhelmingly male; acquired situational narcissism; …

Dogs and Rattlesnakes – Lawmakers and Lobbyists Read More »

A dog trainer contacted me about “activists” trying to put him out of work by banning the use of rattlesnakes in his business. He teaches dogs in the western part of the US how to avoid getting killed by rattlesnakes. To teach the dogs to avoid rattlesnakes he needs rattlesnakes. However, using rattlesnakes is considered …

Dogs and Rattlesnakes Read More »

I spoke at an animal welfare conference. Several speakers gave interesting presentations. A researcher said that among millenials twice as many women as men research animal welfare on the web; among baby-boomers – four times as many women as men. A defense attorney said USDA wins in 100 percent of enforcement actions because they charge …

Animal Lovers Read More »

A passionate, educated, intelligent, and attractive mature woman attended a recent Lobby School to learn to lobby to stop pony rides. She says she can look at the ponies and see they aren’t happy so children must be denied pony rides. There is no convincing anyone driven by deep emotions of anything. I’ve “Lobby Schooled” …

Some Issues Are Impossible to Resolve Read More »

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D NY) and Conor Lamb (D PA) both rejected PAC political contributions. Publix supermarkets announced it will make no more political contributions. Toyota will stop giving election objectors political donations. None of the corporations and associations for which I worked regularly made political campaign contributions. “And only about a third of the thousands of …

How Much Do Donors Get for Their $? Read More »

An American lawyer living in Asia last week described to me the ubiquitousness of bribes for most interactions with Asian governments. For example, to get the court clerk in the national capital to forward paperwork to a provincial court he had to bribe the judge, clerk, and provincial court clerk @$100 US each. Prof. Frank Cavico …

Are Political Donations Bribes? Read More »

Sen. Sasse describes the why and results thereof of elected lawmakers defaulting to the courts and executive agencies. This surrender occurs in Washington, D.C. and state capitols. Insiders Talk: Winning with Lobbyists Professional edition and abbreviated in the Readers edition discusses this trend in great detail and how we lobbyists can work effectively within the current constitutionally distorted system. …

Sen. Sasse Describes the Why and Results Thereof of Elected Lawmakers Read More »

A Peruvian lobbyist and I spoke about the similarities of lobbying in our respective countries. There are differences. Peru is unicameral while 49/50 US state legislatures are bicameral, Nebraska being unicameral. Political corruption there is rampant, as it is in almost all 3rd world countries. Legislative procedures vary. And international NGOs are attempting to force values upon …

¿Cabildero o Lobista – Hay Diferencia? Read More »

Trust is the foundation of effective lobbying. Lawmakers and staff listen to those whom they trust and dismiss the untrustworthy. The elements of trust are scrupulous honesty, accuracy, and credibility. Scrupulous honesty means the whole truth, unshaded, without nuance. Arkansas state Senator Uvaldi Lindsey once told me he doesn’t trust lobbyists who are “technically accurate …

Scrupulous Honesty in Lobbying and the Seminar Business Read More »

Over supper recently, a private sector union lobbyist and I discussed union workers in the US illegally. When I asked him if by representing laborers regardless of immigration status his union wasn’t undermining American workers, his corporate response was that employers, not unions, are responsible for ensuring immigration status. This smacks of Sen. Uvalde Lindsey’s …

Scrupulous Honesty in Lobbying… – Part 2 Read More »

A new board of directors called to ask my opinion about their executive director sleeping with their contract lobbyist. They feared this all too cozy relationship was not in the best interests of the association. In fact, their lobbyist was doing a poor job but the executive director lover took no correction. After our extended …

All Too Cozy – Association Staff and Contract Lobbyists Read More »

Last month a major-league lobbyist shared with me the top 5 complaints he hears from clients when they hire him after firing their contractors. In the next several blogs I’ll offer suggestions to clients on how to avoid these complaints from arising. While I have a client-centric bias, I hope both clients and contractors will find these suggestions …

For a Successful Client – Lobbyist Relationship – Create A Lobbying Plan Read More »

A big reason clients give as an explanation for firing their lobbyists is the lack of communication. Lack of communication can occur at either the lobbyist’s or the client’s initiative. I say initiative because non-communication is a conscious choice. Sometimes a lobbyist doesn’t want to “waste” time communicating with clients, especially bad ones. Or some clients may be …

For a Successful Client – Lobbyist Relationship – Communicate Read More »