Voter’s Revenge was originally conceived as primarily an adversarial tool. Posses were expected to be either downright hostile; or else all business, where the reining in of elected officals – the posse targets – was the norm. It was expected that incumbents tend to be sell-outs, even if they made the right noises during their election runs, and the posses were there mostly to punish them if they strayed too far. The posses were to be public-facing, with communication to posse targets something like this: “Your next redline is 3 weeks from now. Our posse is now up to 82,000, which will vote you out of office in your next primary if you cross our redline (by not meeting the demand.) Well, we have a few hours left today to grow our posse by another 1,000 folks. So, ta ta, have a nice day.” In other words, in my initial conception of things, relationships were cursory, while potential political threats were primary. The posses were not about either supplications or shmoozing (relationship). Instead, their spirit was along the lines of Frederick Douglas’ famous quotes “Power conceded nothing without a demand” and “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
I’ve since realized that it’s advantageous to make the sentiments of the posses towards their targets explicit, and to broaden the expected sentiments allowed, especially for “supportive” posses. See https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=145 So much so that the expectation of the posse is to promote their target, acting like a sort of push poll, wherein the the redline demand is a softball, sure to be met. The “payback” of having the target respect the redline is also public-facing, but this time the “payback” is a favorable message, intended to educate the public of something done right, which (likely) should be rewarded during the target’s next primary or election. A supportive posse will typically reinforce an incumbent or candidate’s strength.
Now, cue this David Knight interview of Connor Boyack, who led the effort to successfully change over 100 laws in Utah “covering a wide range of areas such as privacy, government transparency, property rights, drug policy, education, personal freedom, and more.” Hey, that’s 100+ more laws that I have gotten changed in New Jersey. :-). Boyack’s efforts are focussed at the state level, and he relates the story of a principled friend, Mike Lee, who was elected to the US Senate, but has been “woefully unsuccessful”. Boyack’s methodology involved groups of citizens meeting with the state official on a friendly basis and nurturing a continuing relationship. He also recommends taking state legislators to lunch.
(15:26 – 17:30)
Number 2 – take a politician to lunch. Don’t do it during their busy season. So if the legislatures’s in session, then maybe wait a while Because everybody’s got to eat and you’ve got to think gthrough how can you create value for them.
So, if I was to do this, I would find my state representative on the website, see what bills he’s been running, you know what he’s been working on and I would email him or text him and say, “hey I really love this bill that you’re working on. Super important. I’ve been talking with some friends of mine, and some stakeholders. I’ve got some ideas for how you can actually improve this, or something else related you can do, or whatever. Could I take you to lunch?” And very often they will say “yes”. Now they will say yes even more if you are known as a connector. So if you do Step 1 and then Step 2, the cottage meeting and the networking and then you start making those requests, then you will be more successful. This doesn’t take a ton of time, hardly any time, but this all boils down to relationships. That is what drives this business. This is why lobbyists are so successful. You need to foster relationships. When you just show up to the capital, to city hall, when you raise your fist and say “AH AH AH AAAAH” you know, “I don’t like this” they all know that you’re just going to speak your mind and go back to sleep. And they don’t have to pay (any attention). You’re not going to be there every week, you’re not going to be watch-dogging them, whatever, right? But if you have relationship, then when I text a legislator “Hey, I have questions about that vote you just made” or “hey, are you going to work on that bill” they know that I’m out there not only watching them but talking to a ton of people because they know that I’m a connector, that I’m not going away, that I have a lot of relationships, that can be helpful to them, or harmful to them. So the average citizen, you want to get involved, you want to start developing some relationships, and these are just a few of the easy, low cost, low time ways that the average citizen could start to do it.
So, this contradicts my original vision of Voter’s Revenge, but it’s all to the best. Boyack’s scenario is how we would like elected officials to behave, and which I’d come to view as unrealistic. It apparently IS (generally) unrealistic, at the Federal level. Consider how Ralph Nader, who used to have many an open door to Congressional offices, came to have those doors shut, as the lobbyists took over Washington. I don’t want to go searching for whatever interview or talk of Nader’s told this story, but given that the book When Corporations Rule the World first came out in 1995, we can assume that the era of easy access by public citizen Ralph Nader was over by 1995.
Well, wherever it happens to be still possible to have such a non-financially driven (non-corrupt) relationship with an elected official, it should be facilitated, even if the very name Voter’s Revenge implies it can’t be.
It’s expected that SweetTalkers will be a small minority of any given posse, as politicians can’t be spending every lunch with a SweetTalker. They will function as ambassadors of a posse, and update their posse members with details of personal meetings with the posse target. It’s also expected that
- Adversarial posses won’t have any sweettalkers – only watchdog and supportive posses
- As per Boyack and Ralph Nader, while the new spec will call for sweettalkers at all levels of government, nobody should hold their breath for initial, great success of sweettalkers at the Federal level, only State Level and below. (Though we can imagine that, if Voter’s Revenge begins to get scalps at the Federal level, then Congressional lawmakers will become much more amenable to schmoozing with ordinary citizens, as compared to favoring well-heeled lobbyists.)
- As per my experience training for my ill-fated, 1/2 day stint as a telemarketer 40 years, ago, people in MidWest and Southern states are far more polite and patient than from other parts of the country. So much so, that they may not say “no”, even though they will never say “yes”. Boyack is from Utah, which I presume is much friendlier and patient than NJ. So, the effectiveness of sweetalkers will vary according to a number of factors, including culture, and the personalities involved. There are 350 million citizens in the US, so sweettalking should be at least tried at for all non-adversarial posse types, and levels of government. Hence, VR will enable this role for all non-adversarial posse types (i.e., pro and watchdog posses) and levels of government.
Connor Boyack personal website is: https://connorboyack.com/
His activist website is: https://libertas.org/