Political Action Plans: Timing

Welcome back to a series focused on helping you shape your political action plans. If you need to knock off some cobwebs at the start of the new year, here’s the first post in this series.

Originally, I was going to post this last week, but the events that occurred on the Capitol grounds prompted a last minute replacement post. But, it’s time for us to jump back in!

With the new year, comes a new legislative calendar, new budget debates in the states and Congress, and a whole host of new decision makers you’ll have to engage. In previous posts we’ve talked about identifying your targets and some of the tactics you can use to approach them. But today, let’s talk about when.

Here’s a quick re-fresher on this, the third of the 4Ts:

Of the 4Ts, I’m inclined to say that Timing is the hardest to master. Figuring out the timing of your agenda faces too many variables, too much impatience from our activists, and often much too little understanding of the broader political picture.

Seemingly, our national discourse drags on, and on, and on and on, leaving so many of us wondering what in the world elected officials do with all that time, and why they are always in a rush to the finish line at the end of session. A fellow lobbyist once described it best: the public policy process moves insufferably slow, until it doesn’t.

The whiplash effect of 24 hour news cycles, coupled with growing tribalism in our body politic has only intensified the challenges of finding the right time to proceed on the various phases of your political action plan. It’s not a science, it’s a fine art.

But, just like music and art, there are foundational principles (not quite rules) that, when observed, can help you improvise. They make order-ish out of chaos.

Rule 1: There’s no right time for a bill, but there are wrong times

Your legislative agenda will be in flux. Debates and priorities change, disasters happen and your team has to adjust on the fly. That’s why there’s no perfect, or absolutely right, time to introduce a legislative measure. But there are absolutely times your team should avoid.

One is obvious – in the middle of an emergency, avoid introducing your measure unless it helps solve the most salient problems facing your community. It doesn’t matter how good your political action plan looked in January, a natural disaster in May is not a good time to go talk about anything other than how your organization can help serve those impacted.

Another is fairly straightforward – don’t announce an agenda item right before a major recess in an election year. You instantly cut your own legs out from under you because you won’t have the attention of those you need. They’re out advocating for their own jobs, and you’ve missed your window.

Rule 2: As you can, educate often and introduce early

Let’s start with the latter – for the same reason you shouldn’t wait until the last quarter of a session introduce a piece of legislation, you should endeavor to introduce your “known” measures as early in the cycle as possible. The “known” measures are the ones you’ve already developed in your policy prioritization efforts within the organization.

If you’ve got a willing representative ready to go, work to provide them everything they need to get a bill drafted and in the process within the first 3 months of a new session. Quit letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; get ink on paper.

But whether you have a known measure or not; in fact whether you have a BILL or not, educate often. This is going to sound strange, because many would likely think that you wouldn’t want to waste a member’s, or their staff’s, time without a firm ask.

Trust me, with a lot of staff time under my belt I can assure you, you’re better poised to begin educating those staffers on a concept long before you’ve got a firm piece of legislation for them to consider. By developing those staff in a way that they understand the particular problems you’re trying to solve, and serving as a resource with them early, you are laying the groundwork to win them to your cause sooner rather than later.

Rule 3: Read the room

A dirty little secret about politics? Both major parties have mechanisms in place to help their members navigate the communications realm and the issues calendar. Caucus leadership knows their members cannot be subject matter experts on every issue, so they provide significant help. Listen to feedback from your advocates. Are you hearing the same talking points on a loop? It’s time to re-evaluate your timeline with those legislators. They may not be ready for your ask, you need to go back to educating them on the problem and helping them take ownership of it.

Rule three is honestly the hardest to internalize. Next week, we’re going to talk about testing your plan because rule three is so hard to learn. But if you go back to one of my earliest posts, Activism vs. Advocacy, you’ll be reminded of a simple reality: successful advocates “develop a plan for engagement that is non-partisan, and respects decision makers for what they are first – human beings.”

Timing is incredibly challenging because humans are too varied, and too susceptive to the whims of a moment for us to ever have a perfect plan. As you’re building your plan, keep the rules in mind and when in doubt, offer educational events and opportunities to put those elected officials in front of their constituents. You can never go wrong with helping an official learn your industry and earn new votes.