Understanding and Moving Policymakers
Reading the Political Landscape
While local government is primarily governed by elected officials, civil servants and appointed officials wield significant power too. To be effective, it’s critical to understand that each type of decision-maker has their own set of motivations, incentives, and constraints. What works to move a City Councilmember is not something that will change a civil servant’s recommendation. Elected officials are theoretically the most susceptible to input and pressure from the public, so this guide focuses principally on them. There are opportunities to influence appointed officials and civil servants and we plan to cover those more in depth in future updates to the website.
Elected officials, as a general rule, prioritize getting reelected as their main goal. They want to look good to constituents, donors, and powerbrokers and avoid looking bad as much as possible. Some lean more progressive and others more conservative. Some are known for their courage and others for taking the path of least resistance. For that reason, it helps to get to know them each as individuals, to learn about what they care about personally and politically, the people and organizations that are most influential in their decision-making, and so on.
In Los Angeles, we basically have a one-party system – nearly every elected official is a Democrat and unlike national politics, there is not rigid polarization that encompasses all issues. When garnering support from a public officials it’s important for you to obtain firm, specific commitments and ideally to get them made in public, whether in front of the media, large assemblies of people, or in the legislative debates. Praise them when they do the right thing and critique their actions when they go astray. Before going full out attacking officials, evaluate whether or not you’ll ultimately need their vote to win your policy. If you act publicly as if they’re irredeemable, they’re not going to see the point in even trying to get on your good side.
The most powerful tactics in the world won’t be effective unless they’re part of a coherent strategy. More on that later.
Contacting Elected Officials
When you’re thinking of contacting elected officials, keep in mind two general rules.
1. Focus on contacting the elected officials who directly represent you — your City Councilmember, your county supervisor, and any Citywide or countywide officials.
If you don’t live in their district (or otherwise have a stake through a job, school, or property ownership), your opinion doesn’t matter nearly as much to them. Don’t live in a key Councilmember’s district? Work on getting someone you know there to make a call. The exceptions are the leaders of committees that have authority over an whole issue area. Like Paul Krekorian for LA City Council’s Budget Committee and Gil Cedillo for LA City Council’s Housing Committee.
2. Both the quality and quantity of your outreach matters.
Generating a huge number of digital petition signatures is great, but generally speaking, the more effort an action takes, the more weight an elected official will give to it.
Petitions and generic form emails can make a difference at the local level (unlike at the national level where they are increasingly ineffectual) but a phone call is even more powerful.
A letter from one organization is great. Letters with sign-ons from dozens of organizations are even more powerful.
A small group face-to-face visit (even via Zoom) is more powerful than a phone call, but having the elected official join your community group for a forum where you get them on record in front of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people is even more powerful.
And an uprising like we saw in June 2020, which is rare and difficult to generate, is stronger than all the rest combined, in its power to completely shift the landscape of debate.
Whenever possible take the next step beyond a form email, and follow up with a phone call. There are staffers in each elected official’s office whose job it is to tally the number of phone calls and other communications for every side of an issue. (For more information on how to contact and catch the attention of an elected official, check out our page on “How to Participate”.)
Next up — understanding the policymaking process.