Encouraging Her to Run – Locally

By  Elizabeth Schneider, Manager Local Government Services 

It started on a residential street in St. Louis, Missouri with a busted manhole cover and a frustrated mother. After the noise from the cars banging against the damaged cover had disturbed her children’s naps one too many times the mom contacted City Hall, but was rebuffed.

So she started a petition drive and successfully got the street closed to through traffic.

And that was the beginning of Harriet Woods’s career in politics. She went from signature gatherer to City Councilwoman to State Senator to become the first woman to be elected and serve as Missouri’s Lieutenant Governor.

She was the inspiration behind the creation of Emily’s List which as a PAC and political organization has served as a powerhouse for pro-choice women seeking office at the state and federal level.  However, this month, officials over at Emily’s List made a noted shift by endorsing four female mayoral candidates running in four of the largest cities in the U.S.

But Emily’s List is not the only group out there encouraging women to strike out for local office. Numerous political organizations including PACs, partisan and non-partisan groups and leadership training programs see an advantage to putting their resources, as well as their money, behind such women.

Whether it is a numbers game – women make up 51% of the U.S. population and hold less than 20% of elected offices in the U.S. and as of January 2012, of the 1,248 mayors of U.S. cities with populations of more than 30,000, there were 217, or 17.4% women in charge – or simply a strategy to see women move up from local positions of power to say, the White House, the momentum is there.

Non-Partisan PACs who support female candidates with a focus on the local level include the Women’s TAP Fund (Taking Action in Politics), the Southeastern Institute for Women in Politics and the Pennsylvania’s Women’s Campaign Fund.

Ruth’s List recruits and supports pro-choice democratic women with a focus on city council and county commissions as does the Democratic Women’s PAC of Maryland , Colorado’s Blue Flower Fund  and the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy PAC.

There seems to be no republican equivalent to what democrats are doing on the local level. PACs committed to electing conservative and republican women tend to focus on candidates for State and Federal office, such as the Susan B. Anthony List, SHE-PAC (Support Honor Elect) and VIEW PAC (Value in Electing Women).

Leadership training programs which prepare women to run for political office have also been growing.

One group, Emerge America, which started out in 2002 with one office in the Bay area now has offices in 12 states. Emerge provides a training program including workshops on fundraising, messaging and technology for democratic women.

The Sue Shear Institute, based in St. Louis, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL), is a non-partisan issue-neutral leadership training program to educate women on the need for leadership in public policy. Ready to Run, created by The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, is a national training and candidate recruitment program with the goal of electing more women to public office.

The National Federation of Republican Women runs a campaign management school to train republican women on how to effectively win elections through workshops dedicated to everything from fundraising to get out the vote activities.

She Should Run serves as a non-partisan clearinghouse of research and resources as well as an online tool with a mission to “dramatically increase the number of women in leadership positions.”

On the worldwide stage, the U.S. ranks 93rd out of 139 countries in the number of women in our national legislature and this year there are 1,781, or  24.1%, of the 7,383 U.S. state legislators that are women. Perhaps state and local have eclipsed national as the new focus.

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Elizabeth Schneider is the Manager of Local Government Services at Stateside Associates. In this role, Ms. Schneider oversees Stateside’s Local Government Monitoring services and stays ahead of issue management trends as they emerge at the local level.

Selling City Hall

By  Heather Williams, Vice President 

What has billions of dollars to spend on goods and services and a purchasing power greater than the federal government?

The more than 89,000 units of local government, a group that includes counties, cities, townships and special districts.

Realizing this, local governments are leveraging their buying power more now than ever. By entering into purchasing cooperatives, these local governments are able to take advantage of economies of scale, to effectively increase their access to goods and services and reach a larger vendor market. While these types of purchasing cooperatives have been around for some time, local government participation has grown tremendously over the last decade.

All 50 states have authorized their local governments to enter into purchasing cooperatives. Compare that to only 30 states having the same authority in 1998. The units of local government that could be considered for inclusion in a particular purchasing cooperative include counties, cities, towns, districts, boroughs, plantations, villages and school districts. Each purchasing cooperative sets its own parameters for the types of local government participation, the process to enter into the cooperative and the supplier selection process.

These purchasing cooperatives are similar to the federal GSA schedule, only specifically focused on the needs of localities. With a market this large and growing, the trend is to see smaller, more specific, purchasing cooperatives being created. These smaller organizations often include a smaller regional subset of states, but can be comprised of any combination of public agencies and/or states. While these smaller purchasing cooperatives are entering the market, twelve of the largest purchasing cooperatives already comprise approximately $10 billion in market share.

One of those cooperatives, U.S. Communities Government Purchasing Alliance represents approximately 25% of the market share, making it the largest of the local government purchasing cooperatives. Founded and owned by National Association of Counties (NACo), National League of Cities (NLC), The Association of School Business Officials, International (ASBO), The National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIPG) and U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), it represents more than 55,000 public agencies and has 28 suppliers with 23 contracts for goods and services amounting to annual sales of approximately $1.5 billion.

Why is this so important?

By combining their purchasing power, localities have shifted the balance of power from the seller to the buyer. By making a single contract at the local level the basis for a larger multi-jurisdiction cooperative contract, local governments can leverage the opportunity and capitalize on concessions from companies.

Likewise, companies that still rely on selling to local jurisdictions on an individual basis and that don’t capitalize on the benefit these local government purchasing cooperatives provide are missing out on business opportunities.

How does a company make sure they are best positioned to win local business?

The relationship between local government Groups and local public sector sales is apparent beyond the fact that NACo, NLC and USCM founded and own a local government purchasing cooperative. Tapping into both universes, that of local Groups and local government purchasing cooperatives, will provide the greatest foundation for your public sector sales divisions to capitalize on opportunities within local governments.

Winning a contract to become a supplier to U.S. Communities, or any other of the numerous purchasing cooperatives, is not dependent on participation in local government Groups. But it does help.

For example, a Stateside client joined a local officials Group as part of an overall local government affairs strategy. With a large local government purchasing cooperative opportunity on the horizon, our client is able to use their work with the Group as one component of a much larger strategic plan to best position the company to win the contract.

With the increasing role state government affairs programs are playing in the local government arena, finding strategic engagement opportunities is essential. Working with the appropriate Groups provides opportunities to build brand awareness and create positive relationships with their staffs and local government officials themselves. These strategic opportunities can add value and help navigate through a complex and ever-evolving world of local government public sector sales and can help ensure a state government affairs program is providing the support and value an organization’s sales team needs.

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Heather Williams works at Stateside Associates to help clients manage state and local government issues. As Vice President at the company she also manages client relationships with key Groups, including her “alma mater,” the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), where she served as National Finance Director.

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A Public Affairs Council (PAC) webinar on the same subject, Lobbying at the Local Level, featuring Stateside Associates President and CEO, Constance Campanella, is available now as a podcast.

Montana Corporate Contributions Ruling: A Boon to Democrats?

By Steve Arthur, Vice President

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Montana state law that banned corporate political expenditures. In a 5-4 decision, the court reaffirmed its Citizens United decision in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock. Rather than hearing the case, though, the majority simply reversed a Montana Supreme Court ruling that had held the state law constitutional.

It was clear that the majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices did not find Montana’s case convincing at all. The entire decision overturning the law was less than one page in length. The key argument was articulated in just three sentences: “The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law. There can be no serious doubt that it does. See U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. Montana’s arguments in support of the judgment below either were already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that case.”

So what does this mean for state races this November?

The ruling does clarify that unions and corporations can run independent expenditure ads for or against state and local candidates. This could have some significant impacts that I will discuss below, but first I wanted to address several areas where there will not be much of a change.

The ruling is likely to make it slightly easier for the national groups to engage in races around the country. DGA, RGA, RAGA, DAGA, DLCC and the RSLC have all been active in state races for years. But in cases where those groups are running independent expenditure advertisements, there should be less internal bookkeeping issues to make sure they were tracking where they were spending personal versus union/corporate dollars.

There also will not be much change for the SuperPACs and other independent expenditure groups that have relied on individuals for financing. If George Soros, the Koch brothers and other wealthy individuals wanted to run advertising, the First Amendment had protected that right prior to last month’s ruling.

“Issue advocacy” ads have been running for years as thinly-veiled campaign ads, except that they did not directly urge viewers/listeners/readers to vote for or against a candidate. Because of that distinction, these ads were often funded by corporate or union dollars, and the groups that funded them will now be able to say “Vote for Candidate X,” or more directly criticize a candidate in a negative ad.

Finally, this ruling is unlikely to have a major impact on the spending levels in the 28 states that still allow corporate and union contributions directly to campaigns. States like California and Illinois have fairly high limits, and some (like Virginia) have no limits on individual, corporate or union contributions directly to campaigns. Most contributions will continue to flow to those campaigns or to the campaign committees listed above that have already been involved in these states.

So, where will we likely see potential impacts on the ground?

I believe the biggest changes will be in state legislative races and local government elections. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, in nine states the average amount of money spent by winning candidates in state House elections fell short of $25,000. The lower dollar races provide opportunities for union/corporate money to have a big impact. Public sector unions could flood a few targeted districts with campaign commercials just before an election to promote candidates who will support their agenda and corporations could do the same for candidates they back.

This effect could be even more pronounced at the city and county level. Many city and county races outside major cities can be very low budget affairs and a few thousand dollars of union or corporate money could dominate those campaigns. Democrats could be the long term beneficiaries of this change.

As we have seen over the last few years, Democratic activists appear to have decided that urging boycotts against corporations contributing to Republican campaigns will discourage corporations from giving. There is no similar threat that will keep public sector unions from continuing to give. A boycott threat against a local hamburger chain may be enough to keep a franchisee from using company money to oppose a candidate that wants to ban all quick serve restaurants in a city. At the same time, a local teachers union would have no compunction against running ads for that candidate if he or she wants to raise property taxes to give teachers a pay raise.

While many activists on the left have been bemoaning the Citizens United and American Tradition Partnership decisions, unless businesses are willing to begin fighting back against these boycott and shareholder threats, the private sector is likely to be the big loser.

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Steve Arthur is Vice President at Stateside Associates directing the Retail Industry practice and co-leading the Attorneys General practice. He is a hands-on state government relations professional with expertise in strategic planning, issue management, direct lobbying and lobbyist management.