What could a motorcyclists’ advocacy group possibly have in common with the Illinois Arts Council? Members of ABATE (A Brotherhood Aimed Toward Education) champions the right to ride without helmets, while the arts council wants more money for music, art, and poetry. But both organizations know their way around the Capitol dome and, more importantly, into lawmakers’ offices. Each has mastered the fine art of lobbying.
Like other savvy groups, they hold annual rallies in the rotunda, where they set up information tables and hand out buttons and brochures. They bring in members from all over the state to deliver a clear, polished message to the pols. They know how to get what they want.
For advocacy groups not yet so polished, there’s a new book that tells you everything you need to know about lobbying. Called–appropriately enough–Lobbying Illinois: How you Can Make a Difference in Public Policy, this oversized paperback spells out in specific detail how to get lawmakers to listen to you. The authors, Christopher Z. Mooney and Barbara Van Dyke-Brown, are director and assistant director, respectively, of the Institute for Legislative Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Van Dyke-Brown also edited the Almanac of Illinois Politics 2002.
With organizational efficiency and graphics that mimic a beautifully rendered Web site, this book should have been bound in leather with gilt-edged pages and a little satin ribbon bookmark, because it will become a bible for any group that needs legislative support. The authors took the decades-old Manual of Public Interest Lobbying and Lobbying for Public Schools as a starting point, and they brought all that advice and more into the age of e-mail, computer databases, and the Internet.
Cynics may say it’s just a matter of moolah; what else do you need to know? But Mooney says money is neither a necessity nor a guarantee.
“I believe democracy works best when people get involved. A lot of people are put off by what they see as the complication of the lobbying process, or they think there’s something magical about it or some kind of money situation that keeps the average person out. In fact, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Mooney says. “When regular people don’t get involved, there’s nobody else there” to balance the big contributors.
And even big contributors still have to know how to get the biggest bang for their buck.
“Money by itself–they don’t know what to do with it,” Mooney says. “[Legislators] just say, ‘Great! Thanks very much.’ The only thing money buys is the ability to get a phone call answered.”
The book teaches lobbyists how to speak the language of lawmakers by demystifying the legislative labyrinth–where to find the status of any bill circulating through the General Assembly, for example–and explaining terminology like “amendatory veto” and “Certificate of No Objection.” It offers practical, no-nonsense advice (don’t address a letter to one legislator and then send it to another) as well as more creative suggestions for getting politicians to pay attention to your group (give out an award–preferably something that will make an impressive display in a lawmaker’s office–and present it at a banquet). It tells a would-be lobbyist everything he or she needs to know except how to apply just the right amount of cologne and which brand of breath mint works best.
Lobbying Illinois: How You Can Make a Difference in Public Policy is
available at UIS Public Affairs Center 466 or on-line at http://ilsc.uis.edu.
This article appears in May 8-14, 2003.
