To elevate PN-3 issues in this year’s gubernatorial election cycle, it is vital to ensure candidates are informed about your policy issues and prepared to discuss the related problems and opportunities. One strategy to achieve your goal is to demonstrate that you are an expert resource candidates can turn to for information, thereby allowing you to shape the narrative. A successful tactic to illustrate your expertise is offering all candidates a policy briefing on your issues, which allows you to demonstrate your expertise in real time and show, rather than tell, how you can be a resource to the next governor.
As a 501(c)(3) organization, if you choose to do candidate briefings, you must offer them to all candidates. Accordingly, depending on the number of candidates in your gubernatorial races, as well as your organizational capacity and relationships, you could choose to offer briefings before the primary or wait until after the primary.
Conduct Policy Research
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- Just as with any candidate meeting, your research will underpin how you approach the candidate engagement.
- Identify if candidates have a position on your issue, and if so, what? It is equally important to discover if they don’t have a public position. A lack of a stated position is not necessarily a negative sign; it can present an opportunity for education.
- You can find a worksheet with questions and talking points here to help you begin your policy research process and prepare to ask candidates smart questions.
Developing Candidate Briefings
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- Send materials to all candidates. Prepare a packet of materials on your issues (e.g., fact sheets, reports, polling memos) to send to all candidates, offering them the opportunity for an in-person briefing. That way, your organization can demonstrate legal compliance that all candidates had the same opportunity, and you’ll educate even those candidates who do not take the time to meet with you.
- Start from their baseline. When preparing a policy briefing for a candidate, tailor it to meet them where they are. Use your research on the candidates to assess how much background information they need and, if they have a position on your issues, how it fits into your policy priorities.
- Bottom line: what do they need to know to do what you are asking of them? If you are asking them to elevate the importance of PN-3 issues, they need sufficient baseline policy knowledge to be comfortable discussing this issue publicly and be prepared to answer questions about it. Specifically, they need to be able to articulate the problem and the solution.
- Clearly outline the problem. When educating candidates on policy issues, it is most effective to frame the impact in terms of voters (i.e., their potential constituents).
- How many people in the state are impacted?
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- Which of their potential voters are impacted?
- What are the current negative impacts on those affected?
- Clearly outline the solution. When proposing policy solutions to address the problems facing PN-3 issues that you’ve raised, it is essential to include what role the governor would play in those solutions.
- If the solution requires an executive action, communicate what that would be.
- If the solution requires legislative action, clearly communicate what role you hope the governor would play in supporting and/or signing that legislation.
- Explicitly describe the work your organization is doing to work toward policy solutions for families in your state to demonstrate your role and expertise.
- Make the ask. While your organization’s primary goal is the policy solution, you are engaging candidates as a 501(c)(3), so your ask is not to endorse a particular policy – instead, your role is to educate candidates. However, as a part of this briefing, you can and should ask the candidate to elevate the importance of PN-3 issues – an ask that supports your goal to ensure PN-3 issues are a part of the gubernatorial campaign narrative.
- Engage the candidate. Conducting a candidate briefing is an opportunity to build your relationship with the candidate and their staff. Be sure to engage them in active conversation, learn about their PN-3 interests, and any potential personal connections to PN-3 issues.
- Keep good notes about their questions and comments to learn more about how they view PN-3 issues.
- Learn if they have opinions about challenges facing PN-3 issues, ideas about PN-3 policy solutions, and/or if they have connections to the PN-3 space.
- Offer to be a continuing expert resource.
Conducting Candidate Briefings
- Who briefs candidates? Assess for both seniority and expertise when deciding who will brief the candidates.
- You want your messenger to communicate to the candidate that your organization is all-in on this issue (e.g., the head of your organization) and that you are issue experts capable of handling tough questions (e.g., your head of research or policy director).
- Setting up the briefing. Reach out to the campaign’s manager or policy director and offer to brief the candidate on your issues.
- Be clear about why this will benefit the candidate. (i.e., why should the candidate make time for this).
- It is most effective to communicate that voters care and want to hear about this issue.
- Do you have polling on this issue? If not, do you have other data about how many people this issue affects in the state?
- Be clear about who will attend, and how much time you need (no more than 1 hour).
- Be clear about why this will benefit the candidate. (i.e., why should the candidate make time for this).
- Follow up. After the briefing, send a thank-you email and include related policy materials.
- Continue to stay in touch with the candidate and staff who attended. Your goal is to build and maintain a strong relationship with whichever candidate becomes the next governor so that you are able to hit the ground running to move your policy issues forward.
