What is Truth?

• Outside Lobbying Strategies

• Inside Lobbying Strategies

• Ambiguities of “Truth.”
 Whom will you Lobby?
• Friends

• Persuadables

• Opponents

• Leadership
“The Ten Commandments of
Lobbying”

How to Win In Washington:

Very Practical Advice about
Lobbying, the Grassroots and the
Media
Ernest Wittenberg & Elisabeth Wittenberg
Basil Blackwell, 1990 edition, p.16.
IT IS ONE THING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE
YOU ARE SMART. IT IS ANOTHER TO
CONVINCE PEOPLE YOU ARE RIGHT.

• Here at the K-School, you are judged on whether

you are bright. As a lobbyist, you are judged on
whether people think you are right.
• Consider yourself a salesperson. You are selling
your client’s interest. Your audience is Congress or
the Administration.
ENABLE THOSE YOU WISH TO
CONVINCE TO TAKE THE PATH OF
LEAST RESISTANCE
• Begin with the proposition that
people are overworked
• When you read a letter that a
Member has written to another
member or an editorial they have
written for the paper, or you hear a speech
they have given, 90% of the time, they
didn’t write it.
• If you want a member to
propose legislation, draft it

• If you want a member to write

a letter or give a speech on
your behalf, draft it

• Give press releases

to reporters______
UNDERSTAND YOUR OPPONENTS’
ARGUMENTS AND REFUTE
THEM.
• Tell the person you are trying to convince up
front what the opponents arguments are
going to be. Then refute them.
o For example, if your opposition has a
strong base in Mississippi, you had better
explain what Senator Lott’s position is on
the matter.
IV. Help thy friends win reelection;

but [in victory], dwelleth not on

the power of the PAC.
• Updated commandment;
Never dwell on the power of
the PAC.

• $ gives you access – not

answers.
V. Thou shalt know thy issue and
believe in it, but be ready to
compromise; half of the loaf will

feed some of thy people.

• System of Checks and Balances

• “I’m just a bill on Capitol Hill…”

• Know your bottom line, but don’t start with it.

VI. Runneth not out of patience.

If thou can not harvest this

year, the next session may be
bountiful.
VII. Love they neighbor; thou
wilst need him for a
coalition.
• “As always, victory finds a hundred fathers; but
defeat is an orphan.”
Count Galeazzo Ciano, 1939-1943
Ciano Diaries
BUILD UPON YOUR CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
How does one build one’s rolodex?
• Contact your friends in the area;

• If someone has assisted you, follow up:

o Send a thank-you note;
o Invite them to appropriate
functions;
o Take them to lunch;
o Send holiday cards.
• Call someone you normally wouldn’t
once a week, just to keep in touch.

• Unless you want to be known as a

partisan, don’t neglect those that are in
the minority.
VIII. Study arithmetic, that
thou may count noses.
• House: Suspension of the Calendar.

• Senate: Unanimous Consent.

• Any one member can kill your

initiative.
IX. Honor the hard-working staff,
for they prepare the position
papers for the members.

• Staff often carries a big

stick.

• Staff is almost always overworked and

underpaid.

• A little kindness goes a long way.

 X. Be humble in victory, for thy
bill may yet be vetoed.
• “The pendulum will swing back.”
House speaker Joseph Cannon at his
retirement in 1923.
• “The most practical kind of politics is the
politics of decency.”
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt,
remarks to Harvard Undergraduates 1901.
 Mudflaps
• What do you recommend?