The DeMarco Factor: Transforming Public Will into Political Power

Part IV. Lessons in Strategies and Leadership

Part IV Lessons in Strategies and Leadership Vincent DeMarco is no revolutionary; he’s not even a radical.He does not pretend to have the key to long-term fundamental systemic change,such as a Canadian-style single-payer health-care system that every disinterested,sober expert agrees would be vastly superior to what we have now; or the nationalization of the tobacco industry,which David Kessler as FDA commissioner argued is the only way to tame the tobacco demon.Nor can DeMarco help much in confronting those issues that deeply and evenly divide us: immigration ,gay marriage,abortion,or the redistribution of wealth through more progressive taxation. DeMarco’s skills and strategies come into play where there exists broad,generalized popular voter support for policy change that the power of threatened interests has thwarted.Under such conditions, DeMarco goes about mobilizing and focusing that public sentiment into a political force capable of counteracting the power of the lobbies .While DeMarco may not be a political radical,he undertakes these campaigns in ways radically different from those that most progressive issue advocates have grown accustomed to,whether or not they have proved effective. The DeMarco Way DeMarco has done most of his work in Maryland,a comparatively wealthy state,predominantly Democratic in its politics.The state has a relatively strong labor movement.It has a large urban culture. It has diverse communities of faith,some of which have been his- 164 torically active in policy advocacy,individually and collaboratively. It has had progressive newspapers both covering and weighing in editorially on the campaigns DeMarco has waged. Thus,it’s fair to ask whether the strategies DeMarco developed in Maryland have much to teach advocates in other states,or in countries with greatly differing social and political structures and traditions.We have only part of the answer to this question when we looked at the success of his strategies in other states and in Congress through his work with TFK.After all,it would be harder (though DeMarco thinks not at all impossible) to get the Southern Baptists who were indispensable in much of the tobacco control wars to join the ranks of other progressive social justice campaigns such as health-care reform.Yet the short answer to how much these strategies have to teach advocates in other places is: a lot.Especially useful are the comprehensive advocacy campaign planning,the boundarystretching organizing,the integrated and relentless media advocacy, and the focus of campaign energies on elections before lobbying. The Nine Questions As I suggested in the introduction,one way to gauge the general applicability of the DeMarco techniques is to compare them to a proven method of strategic planning for policy advocacy campaigns, the Nine Questions developed by Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center.The questions continue to evolve,with variations,over time. With Shultz’s permission,I describe the Nine Questions here,taking some liberties but essentially naming them as he conceived them. Questions 1 through 5 look outward at the political and media environment within which the policy campaign must be waged. Questions 6 through 9 look inward at the development of a political force strong enough to overcome the external barriers it is likely to encounter. Looking Outward Question 1. Objectives: What do we want now? If an advocacy campaign is to achieve anything significant,the question“what do we want now?”often turns out to be the single most important, time-consuming—and difficult to answer—of the Nine Questions. This is not a question about what we want ultimately—however important a grand,long-term vision is—but what we want right now 165 (although still bearing in mind what we want next, and what we want ultimately).Is this near-term objective significant enough,yet realistically achievable in the short term,to fully engage the energies of supporters? Question 2. The target audience: Who has the power to give us what we want? Who has the power to make what we want happen,and who has the power to stop it from happening? This means those who have constitutional power (for example,governors,legislators, and,at election time,voters).It also includes those who have real power—formal,if not constitutional—such as the elected majority leadership of each legislative body,committee chairs,and indeed,all legislators. Question 3. The messages: What do they—the holders of power—need to hear? Moving...