Marketing, Martin Luther King, Uncategorized

Recall

Throwing Them Out Isn’t Easy

The guy in the photo is Lynn J. Frazier. He was the first public official in the country removed from office by recall. It happened in 1921 in North Dakota.

Frazier had been elected governor three different times on the Non-Partisan League ticket, but his radical brand of progressive politics eventually got him crosswise with the state’s voters. Ironically, he advocated that the recall provision be added to the state constitution and almost immediately it was used against him.

The recall of a governor has happened only one other time. Gray Davis suffered Lynn Frazier’s fate in California in 2003. All this by way of saying, recalling an elected official, as has now been proposed in Idaho (and in Wisconsin), isn’t easy.

The Idahoans who say they want to recall State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna have a big hill to climb. First, they need to collect just north of 158,000 valid signatures (meaning they probably need to gather thousands more) and have only two and a half months to get the job done. That is a lot of standing around in Walmart parking lots and PTA meetings and it will require hundreds if not thousands of volunteers. Such efforts normally dictate paid signature gathering, but if this effort is, as it seems to be, truly grassroots, then the money won’t be readily available to finance the signature production.

Still, the group has a Facebook page up with (as of late yesterday) more than 4,000 friends and they has generated a good deal of media attention. Meanwhile, the Idaho State Journal reports that an American Falls high school senior has launched a “Stand with Luna” website to support the state superintendent.

Other than a handful of local election officials, Idahoans have been reluctant to resort to the recall. Two Idaho Falls state legislators were recalled in 1971. Efforts to recall two Boise legislators are also underway, resembling in some respects the widespread legislative recall efforts underway in Wisconsin.

A fellow often referred to at the time as “a St. Maries dog catcher” mounted a recall effort against Sen. Frank Church in 1967 until it dawned on everyone that there is no provision in the U.S. Constitution to recall federal officials. The dog catcher – he had some links to the John Birch Society – and his recall quickly faded away.

Nationally only 13 legislators, including the two in Idaho, have been recalled since 1913. Seven of the 13 recalls took place in Oregon and California.

The most obvious thing about these numbers, as Milwaukee Journal Sentinel political writer Craig Gilbert points out, “is how seldom the recall has been used successfully. Only 18 states give their citizens the power to remove their state legislators by recall, and in only five has it actually happened.  No one knows how many recalls have been attempted, but only 20 have succeeded in gathering enough valid signatures to force a recall election, and only 13 have succeeded in removing a legislator from office.”

Like I said, it’s a big hill to climb and it should be. As a general rule we have elections to get rid of politicians who fall out of favor. Still, as Gilbert notes, recalls tend to form around a not particularly partisan issue and tend to draw energy from the right of the political spectrum. Of the 13 recalled state legislators, 9 have been Republicans and some of them were recalled because they fell out of favor with their own party.

Essentially that’s what happened to Davis in California in 2003. Davis became enormously unpopular due to the state’s terrible fiscal condition and an energy crisis. The long-time Democrat, governor of an  overwhelmingly blue state, saw his approval numbers go deeply in the ditch with constituents across the board, including Democrats. Enter the Governator.

Successful recalls seem to require a cause and passion, or perhaps anger. Interestingly the very conservative Americans for Limited Government is touting expansion of the recall as a way to get at politicians who aren’t tough enough on spending, an issue that increasingly cuts across all political demographics.

Considering that Luna won re-election last November with just over 60% of the vote – more than 268,000 total votes – the cause he represents – his package of education reform bills – will have to be extremely unpopular for the recall to get real legs. To date, I know of no public polling on how Luna’s education policies are playing with Idaho voters, but  public comments in the media, on newspaper websites and in legislative hearings seem to trend pretty strongly against. Across the state local school boards are scrambling to implement changes, consider more layoffs and four day school weeks and deal with another year of declining budgets.

But it’s an open question as to whether this all adds up to the type of cause that typically drives a recall and whether the passion is deep enough to propel a grassroots signature campaign that results in an election. Having said that, education has often been a mobilizing issue in Idaho. Many voters may not care much about the big policy debates in Boise during a long legislative session, but they do care about the local schoolhouse and they have opinions about whether the students they most care about are getting the right kind of education.

Bottom line: the Luna recall will have to catch fire very fast and burn very hot to have a chance to succeed.

As a curious footnote to recall history, North Dakota’s booted Gov. Lynn Frazier wasn’t out of office for long. About a year after being recalled, Frazier ran for the U.S. Senate and won. He served in the Senate for 18 years until losing a Republican primary in 1940. Further proof, perhaps, that recalls are fueled by the passions of the moment and passion can cool quickly.

Marketing, Uncategorized

Pass/Fail

Tough Session Draws Tough Reviews

Idaho Democrats have called the just completed legislative session “the worst in memory.” Republicans, who overwhelmingly dominate in Idaho, say just a minute, it wasn’t all that bad.

Idaho’s editorial pages are weighing in with generally very tough judgements about a session that stripped collective bargaining rights for teachers, “reformed” education to move policy strongly in the direction of more on-line learning, fewer classroom teachers, “pay for performance” and less money.

The Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa gave letter grades ranging from three A’s to two F’s and one D. Grading on the curve, the IPT comes down with an overall “B,” while praising lawmakers for meeting their Constitutional obligation to balance the budget and for cutting education spending by only $50 million.

The Twin Falls Times-News compares this year’s session to Gov. Len Jordan’s first session in 1951 when the newly elected Jordan called for, among other things, the closure of state colleges in Lewiston and Albion. The paper says that ’51 session has long been viewed as one of the worst with long-standing consequences, but then suggests the just ended session may have been worse.

“The first session of the 61st Legislature adjourned Thursday with a state bitterly divided over Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s education reform proposal,” the paper’s Sunday editorial said. “Lawmakers slashed state support for Medicaid by $35 million, public school funding by $47 million and higher education dollars by $8 million.

“Legislators passed a bill restricting abortion that’s probably unconstitutional, changed the Republican primary so that only party faithful may be able to vote, authorized the governor to declare a “wolf emergency,” made dairies’ nutrient management plans trade secrets, and rewrote Idaho’s Right to Farm law so broadly that it might limit counties’ ability to regulate the expansion of slaughterhouses, potato-processing operations and cheese factories.”

The Idaho Statesman’s Sunday edit was headlined “Difficult and Damaging” and concludes that history may not judge the 88 day session very kindly.

“A session to be proud of? Not even close,” the Statesman said.

Marty Trillhaase, writing on the Lewiston Tribune’s editorial page Sunday, said: “The men and women who sat out the winter under the Capitol dome have delivered a government that is radically different: Lawmakers become lawgivers — Time was, if lawmakers wanted to pass a sales tax or shift schools from local to state support, they asked you. They coaxed you. They won your support. And they took their time.

“Today’s lawgivers descend from Mount Heyburn and inform the rest of us how life is going to be.”

Meanwhile, a referendum effort has been launched to take State School Superintendent Tom Luna’s reforms to the voters and backers of a recall Luna campaign say they are ready to gather signatures.

A couple of weeks, as astute political observers say, is a life-time in politics. The heartburn over this session my fade fast, as fast as these newspaper editorials hit the recycle bin or line the bird cage. But, then again, if those who felt they got the short end of a long stick from this year’s legislature can keep the image alive that has been almost universally depicted by the editorial writers then this session may have lasting political, as well as policy implications.

Stay tuned.

Basques. Books, Borglum, Bow Ties, Guest Post, Marketing, Public Relations

P.R. vs. Marketing

SydneyA Guest Blog – P.R. and Marketing

My Gallatin Public Affairs colleague Sydney Sallabanks has a guest post today. She offers thoughts on public relations and marketing – flips sides of the same coin really – and stresses that effective advocacy in a cluttered marketplace still requires the basics: clarity and honesty.

 

“‘Public Relations vs. Marketing’? Isn’t that a bit like ‘patriotism vs. love of country’?” questioned a friend of mine about the presentation that David Cook and I gave last week at the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Yes — that’s the point that Cook, creative director of Boise agency Stoltz Marketing Group, and I hope we made to the audience of about 30 small business owners, non-profit executives and entrepreneurs assembled for the workshop, aptly titled “Public Relations vs. Marketing.”

After working on a few projects with Cook, not only did I learn that his “awkward phase” spans from 1969 to the present, I also discovered that we share similar notions of our respective fields. Public relations and marketing are flip sides of the same coin — Advocacy. When well planned and implemented, they serve to reinforce one another. With some savvy, small businesses have the power to market their goods and services, control their exposure and customize it to mirror their corporate climate.

This may be accomplished with a happy, if not blissful marriage of marketing and public relations. The point is to send the right message to the right audience using the right mode of delivery. We help our clients tell their story and start the conversation.

A principal nuance, however, is that public relations can be harder to control than marketing, “You can never guarantee full control of what is being said about you or your company with PR, unlike marketing, including paid advertising,” said Cook.

While social media is often a valuable piece of the marketing and PR mix, starting with the customer experience is critical, according to Cook. “Isn’t Facebook scheduled to replace television next week?” he joked, advising the audience against abandoning traditional marketing and PR altogether in favor of social media tactics. “These new tools are not a replacement for traditional media; they are an addition to it.” Cook advises to strike a nerve and keep the message simple to cut through the clutter, whatever the delivery.

I advise a similar practice on the PR front. There is no substitute for clear and honest communication. Our firm specializes in developing campaigns for complex issues, often involving multi-member partnerships between the public and private sectors — which means clarity and candor is key.

And like all worthwhile things in life, relationships do matter. In my experience, they are the most rewarding part of the job.

As the Public Relations Society of America notes:

Public relations is much more than endorsements and what many of the media, bloggers and the public have defined as ‘spin.’ The practice of public relations has and will always be the art and science of building relationships, connecting people and measuring how these relationships with various publics lead to long-term value for on entity or organization (whether it’s in regard to government, investor, analyst, media, community or employee relations).”

Any worthwhile relationship requires time and attention, including the working relationship between public relations professional and the media. As newsrooms continue to shrink, journalists are being pushed harder. But there are ways to make life easier on both sides: Do your homework, be accessible and respect the deadline driven nature of a reporter’s world.

Think truth and action, avoid jargon and spin. The Onion recently profiled a fictional, laid-off PR exec and quoted him: “I wasn’t fired so much as my job was one of the positions phased out through the outsourcing of certain activities and the restructured insourcing of others.”

A good rule of thumb: If your campaign or marketing initiative can’t pass a simple “straight face test,” including a basic question -“is what I’m doing serving a broad public interest?” – then you might consider going back to the drawing board, or risk getting ink in The Onion.