Meet a Political Strategist

This interview takes the listener through the career journey of a political strategist. The discussion covers misconceptions about lobbying and political strategy, the roles and influence of staffers in government, the importance and challenges of unions in today's workforce, and issues surrounding undocumented workers and immigration policy. Our guest shares personal reflections on maintaining integrity in politics, balancing family life with professional ambitions, and the value of community involvement. The interview concludes with anecdotes about the wildest moments witnessed in the field and advice for those interested in entering politics.

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Transcript

First Jobs And Early Motivation

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What was your first job? Just start from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

But my first job professionally was working for a local congress member's campaign. Uh, after I interned in college for a year, uh I worked on a campaign and I was a like part-time field representative for that congress member. Um that was super interesting and I thought fascinating. Right. So I wanted to help people. Uh, and I really thought that politics, even though not everybody agreed um or liked maybe the the solutions, that it touched everybody. And so you could there was a there was a way to help everyone in politics. I later found that that wasn't necessarily always exactly the way that I wanted to help people. Um, and I found out a lot about myself.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

How did you go from being that part-time field representative to where you've ended up today?

Climbing The Political Ladder

Launching A Consulting Practice

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Uh, I mean, I I think politics is like any industry, right? So it's a lot about the people that you know and the relationships that you build over time. Um I just kept climbing the ladder, right? You went from working as a local field rep to working, uh, I got a job as a as a scheduler policy person in DC uh two years later, and I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, the idea that I would actually organize a congressperson's schedule um or anything for anybody else, I mean, couldn't put myself together and ended up coming home and running a U.S. senator's office, um, and then went on to run another local congress member's office, uh, and then uh decided to run my for my for office myself, which didn't work out really great the first time, uh, but led to something else where uh I ended up winning an election for a local school board. And now I did that for six years. Uh, and then as I was doing that, I was opening up my own my own consulting firm. Again, not really knowing what I was doing, uh, trying to figure it out. I I had found that over you know 20 years that I was really good at selling somebody else, just not as good at selling myself. And so that grew into a business, I eventually grew into a business. I'm still not great at it uh about selling myself, but I became better at doing the business.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

And what is the business? Yeah.

What Lobbying Really Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Uh the business is really like consulting for different clients. I do a lot of union clients, um, I do um law enforcement clients, uh business clients. And so that is usually representing them at the local level, sometimes at the state and federal level as well, but mainly local, whether it's um helping them uh pass or stop ordinances at the local level, or helping them get candidates elected uh that support their views, educating candidates, uh, and then helping them run their campaigns to support or oppose measures or candidates.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Do you consider yourself a lobbyist now?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Or is there I guess uh I mean it it it depends, right? Like uh mine the business that I that I have is is a specific niche uh that not a lot of people have. It's you it's working for a lot of unions. Um and so I do do lobbying, but a lot of it is I I would call it for some of the clients, it's more like almost being the chief of staff to those those organizations. So yes, there is lobbying involved, uh, but it also has to do with campaigns and strategy. Uh it's contracts. So it's not just it's not just lobbying, uh, it's a lot of different work and it's a lot of strategy and advice giving to uh to those um to those organizations.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Um what are some of the myths about or misconceptions about working in lobbying or in political strategy that you wish people knew were not true?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

You're not going in there like you're convincing people based on arguments, um uh on sound arguments. Elected officials aren't convinced just because just because I walk in there that somehow that's gonna convince elected officials to support something. Like you have to make sound arguments uh based on like on those elected officials, like what those elected officials are looking for. And as a former elected official, uh, they had taken donations from people, like you're not a very good elected official if you can't say no to your donors. The number the the people that you're trying to satisfy are the voters and your constituents. Uh, those are the people that got you elected. It wasn't the people that gave you money.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

And what was the most surprising thing about this line of work that you have uncovered over the past years?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Uh I mean, there's a lot of the a lot of pieces of this that I don't like. Um and there's a lot of people, just like any industry or business, that aren't there for the same reasons. Right? They're there for whatever reasons that is, whether it's power or money or for whatever reason, people are in it. Um, and so when you meet some of those folks and it's very clear as to why other people are here, uh, and it's very different than why I'm here, uh, it makes it difficult.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

So give us the rundown. What's the best part of the job? What's the worst part of the job?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

The best part of being my own um, I think is having watched, and I think I got out of running for office because um I wanted to watch my kids grow up. Being a good politician and being a good dad require the same exact thing, time. And so I couldn't be really good at one without hurting the other. And so I think there was a point where I had to make a decision whether I continue with down this um down this line of being an elected official, but I knew what the cost was going to be. I also love like being able to watch watch all my kids' races, uh, watch all their competitions or soccer or running, whatever they were doing at the time. Um and then now that they've grown up, uh, I get to do more of that and do coaching, uh, which I just love.

Ethics, Policy, And Broken Systems

SPEAKER_01 6:33

If you could wage wave a magic wand, what was one thing that you would change about your current industry?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I mean, it's hard to pick out one particular thing. We just want people to do the right thing for their community. I've heard this phrase a couple of times over the last couple of years is that they knew it was bad policy, but they had to vote for it because of who was pushing them to do it. Because that would impact their cur their career or their career trajectory. Um, and that to me was it's it's so wrong on so many different levels. Like you support things because um they're the right thing for the community, and you oppose things even when your friends are pushing you, even if it means that your career trajectory might not be the same. I I don't think people realize that like by standing up to your friends and foes alike, that the community is even more likely to support you. Stand up for stand up for your community, stand up for what you believe in. Uh, things will be okay. And if that means you're not there for very for more than two years or four years or six years, like that's okay too. So I think I think I would, I don't know. I I think I would pass more ethics laws. I want to stop making sure that like have a better healthcare system. Uh I it's incredibly frustrating to watch um what I see sometimes as some level of corruption uh amongst one of the it's not necessarily just elected officials, um, it's everywhere. Um, and try to be honest and follow the rules that the law and the laws that are here. Uh, and when people don't do that and uh are not getting in trouble for it, that kind of can drive me nuts.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

How much influence do staffers have? Just think of all the bills that are introduced, like hundreds, if not thousands, of bills um that are introduced. They don't read all of those. Uh at least not all of them do. Um there are some there are some Congress members that do really dig in and want to read everything, but mainly they have to rely on a bunch of 20 and 30-year-old kids to read all that stuff, interpret it, um, meet with the different industries, meet with the different members of Congress and staffs, uh, meet with the committee staff, um, your meeting with constituents and taking all of that in and then interpreting that to the Congress members. And I don't think that people realize how much um the staff really does. Whether it's a problem with veteran benefits uh in casework, or maybe it's a uh a Tijuana sewage problem that's gonna have been going on for 40, 50 years and no one has resolved. Um, these are local problems, and there's federal solutions to these or funding that's required to do that. It's up to the elected officials to lead the way and create policy to solve those local sol those local problems.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

What do you see as the role of unions in today's workforce? And why do you think unions get such a bad rap sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Uh I look, I I think unions represent working people. So I don't think that there's a um the role of that is to you're representing thousands of workers. Um most of which are done, most of the union leaders are working people themselves. Um, fighting for like in in this in these cases, sometimes fighting for better wages, uh, better benefits, um, recruitment or retention. If you don't create the environment for for workers to want to stay, then they leave and they just go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

And that's where unions come in.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And that's what unions do. So and and I think I think the misconception there is that somehow um they get let off, or because of the union does this or that. Uh, all the union does is make sure that the cities are following the rules that they've set up. So if a if an officer or someone a union worker gets in trouble, uh they're there to make sure that the city follows the rules that they've set up in their in their mous.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

MOU is memorandum of understanding? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

So unions represent their workers, and I think that they when you like these this is a good this is a good thing to have when you don't have that, um, whether it's a city or someone else tends to take advantage.

Immigration, Employers, And Reform

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Um I wonder what you what you think about the role of employers in preventing undocumented folks from working here.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

The reason why workers come over here is because there's jobs that are available to them. Uh, if those jobs weren't available to them, there'd be nobody coming over to cross the border. Um so I think if you did put a CEO in jail for continuing to recruit over and over again uh workers, that that would that would stop the flow pretty quickly. Because that's who's profiting the most from this. Right.

unknown 11:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

First, you got to resolve and and create like a revamped immigration system. Um and I think that's what Congress seemingly has avoided doing. They want to use it more of a scapegoating issue on both sides of the aisle, uh, rather than actually solving uh and revamping immigration. I think right now is a great opportunity to do that. Like there's there's one party that has both has the House, the presidency, and the Senate. Uh and you want to talk about immigration? It was like, well, there's an opportunity right now for them to revamp immigration and the processes. Um, and they haven't done that. The immigration system is absolutely broken. So, yeah, I believe in unions because unions give workers um not only a good wage and good benefits to be able to live in the community, um, and provide health care to them to themselves and their families, um, but it gives them the right to stand up uh when things are wrong.

The Wild Airport Incident

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Um in the true uh Don and Elsa fashion, we want to get to the juicy part. And so the reason we're here today is we want to know what is the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've actually witnessed at work.

Staying Grounded In Public Service

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Um and so the treatment of staff sometime was not very good. Um I remember one particular time that the uh the um I had to work with this person after they had a I had to deal with a national two national well I didn't have to deal with one of them, but like one national moment where he this person assaulted uh an airline employee, um, and it was just out of the blue. Like suddenly we're just having a normal day. Um usually when the when the car when the elected official is not there, it makes for you can get a lot of work done. Uh this elected official was supposed to be gone for a few weeks, and it was gonna be a very nice period of time for us to be able to get a lot of work done. Um on the way to in the airport, he assaulted a an airline employee. Uh, and so we had to deal, we had the it was the first day for the communications director. Uh, and it was just this very young woman um that we had just placed into the position. And so having to deal with it, I think she must have gotten over 150 or 200 um media calls that day. And that was uh that was a wild moment, wild week of dealing with that, and there's the way at that point in time you could still deal with um news like that because we still we didn't have really social media, wasn't where it's at today, and so you could really his strategy was to just go away and just disappear. He just happened to be going at the time on the way, he was on his way to Iraq, I believe. And so he was on some sort of mission or tour, and um it was fascinating that like the media just kept following him, even when they were in Iraq, and he just ignored it, um, and almost ignored the news and the and the controversy for over a week. Um, and he successfully did. He he kind of skirted the whole thing um and ignored it and had a very small press conference after, uh like a week or two later, and didn't say very much and survived politically.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

Uh, was it a sexual assault or an like a fight?

Paths Into Politics For Anyone

SPEAKER_00 15:43

It was like a physical. I I think what had happened, the way at least it was explained to me was that the he was he was upset about the luggage not coming out. Um and so he wanted to talk to somebody and he really just brushed by someone into the back rooms of the of the airline um to try and get to apparently someone that could that was more important than the person he was talking to. Um and so he he physically moved someone um and to get into like I I think it probably turned out to be like a closet. Um, but the per he was trying to get through someone and physically touch them.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

So he manhandled someone to get out his suitcase. Is that the short version?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Well, I I I think he just thought like he was questioning why the the like luggage wasn't coming faster and was clearly impatient and had to assault someone to try and talk to somebody that was more important than their airline employee. I I I do think that sometimes um elected officials can lose themselves and and uh really think they're that important to um to do something like that. I think you lose your you lose your way, your path, and he clearly did.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Was it foreshadowing of of additional issues to come with him?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Sure. I mean, I I think now you look back to it, um I think I I remember hearing people say that it was that something had been was wrong with him. Um and I I always believed in that it wasn't uh anything that was wrong with him. It the the disease that he caught was 20 years in Congress. Anybody in our community that decides to run for office, um, you're not special. Um anybody can do this job, and they do, and they will, now or in the future. Um, and so when you start thinking you're special like that, you could just do anything you want, you've really lost your way, your like the reason why you were there, and that's for your constituents.

Motivation, Stress, And Balance

SPEAKER_01 17:55

But for any of our listeners who are interested in getting into quote unquote politics, and I say that in quotes because it's so broad, is there a specialized degree that somebody needs?

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Oh, it can it can be anyone can be involved in politics. I mean, I I would always I always recommend um people go get your degrees, um, go to school, become a professional. Um, anyone can be involved in politics. Um, whether you're a leader in your community and you're a lawyer or a doctor, uh, or if it doesn't matter what you do uh as a career, you can be involved in politics. Um I always encourage people to um do internships, uh, sign up for a campaign and go walk um and volunteer on those campaigns. Uh find the pat find the issues that you're passionate about uh and go go get involved. But you can do the same thing if you're a professional. Um and whether it's donating or being involved in campaigns and have just as much influence uh in the from the community side, like whether it's community groups that you're involved in, um or the local, if you want to, if you're a business person, you want to get involved in the local chamber of commerce, uh be involved, pay attention to what people are doing at the local level. There are super influential people that are community-based, um, that have a lot of influence on these elected officials and how they do things or how they vote. If you are a if you're a local community leader uh and you lead a community group, like you can have massive impact.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

What keeps you going when work gets tough?

Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 19:39

I I think that in the end, like you always like have some belief in um that you're what you're doing is the right thing. I think tough can come like in personal stuff. Um the job itself is not necessarily like I think because you're dealing with relationships that sometimes it it becomes it can get more personal, but it really isn't. This is a bit this is still a business that there's there's lots of ways to deal with like stress. Um, and I I would call it my release, and that's um working out, training. Like sometimes my my volunteer stuff can be much more stressful. I think coaching sometimes can be much more stressful than my work.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Thank you for sharing your story with us. Uh it's been very uh informative, very entertaining. Thank you for all the great stories. But we do want to say that you've officially joined the ranks of the brave and of the bold. So thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. And um we're signing off.