The One Essential Point In Any Public Affairs Campaign
As we continue our conversation on public affairs lessons from this year's elections, today we pull back the curtain on a California ballot measure that made major national news.
With votes still being counted, Proposition 36 passed in California with nearly 70% of the vote. This historic measure tackles California's homelessness and fentanyl crises, while strengthening laws on other hard drug and theft crimes.
To put this winning margin in context, Prop 36 passed with more votes than Prop 3, which guaranteed the Constitutional right to marriage, something quite popular in California.
Or to put it even more starkly, Prop 36 performed 10 points better than Vice President Harris did in her home state.
As the principal political strategist behind Prop 36, I would be remiss if I didn't share the key lesson from this campaign with you loyal readers.
This lesson goes beyond just digital topics, and it is this—in any issue campaign, distill your argument down into ONE essential point. Then work like hell to get that one point to sink in with your audience.
Here's how that strategy helped lead to Prop 36's historic winning margin.
🔱 The War Story
First let me say that the unsung leaders of Prop 36 were Jeff Reisig, District Attorney in Yolo County, and Vern Pierson, District Attorney in El Dorado County. They didn't seek the spotlight, and most of the media accounts of Prop 36's success have grossly misstated the history of the ballot measure by ignoring Jeff and Vern's roles. They are both born leaders, pragmatic actors, and heroes who don't jump in front of cameras.
My role was only possible because Jeff and Vern heard me out, and acted on my advice to reach across the political chasm that divides our politics. I don't share many of Jeff and Vern's political views. But I strongly agree with them on this issue. And this initial bridge among the three of us foreshadowed the bridge that nearly 10 million Californians later crossed when they voted for Prop 36.
Prop 36 has numerous provisions, and a full scope of each section is beyond the scope of this newsletter. But the essential background to know is this:
In 2014, California voters passed Prop 47, which made wholesale changes to the state's hard drug and theft laws.
Prior to Prop 47, California prosecutors had various tools to incentivize hard drug users to obtain drug treatment. Prop 47 removed those tools by reclassifying hard drug possession as a misdemeanor, which in practice has no consequences in California.
With no incentive to obtain drug treatment, California's addiction and mental health crisis spiraled out of control.
Which leads to the essential point . . .
🔱 The Essential Point Behind Prop 36
Normally I think the value of political endorsements is overstated. But with Prop 36, we needed to convince Democrats to support a law that inevitably would be mischaracterized as a return to the war on drugs. So I thought that having prominent Democratic endorsements would go a long way to assuring voters that they could vote for Prop 36, while not abandoning their political tribe.
I also believed that we had crafted Prop 36 in a way that could appeal to most Democrats, because everything about the measure creates a path to drug treatment, not punishment. Here's how the key drug provisions in Prop 36 work:
On the first arrest for hard drugs, possession remains a misdemeanor.
On the second arrest for hard drugs, possession continues to remain a misdemeanor.
On the third arrest for hard drugs, prosecutors may charge a new class of felony called a "treatment-mandated felony." Under this new felony, all the defendant has to do is obtain drug treatment. If they complete drug treatment, the charge is fully expunged. Only if they refuse treatment on this third conviction, can they serve jail time. And even if the defendant initially refuses treatment and begins serving jail time, she can change her mind at any time and re-enter the treatment path.
So every fork in the road in Prop 36 is about incentivizing treatment, not punishment. But now we needed to convince Democrats how the hard drug and mental health crises were the fuel behind California's homelessness crisis.
On an early call with two Stanford professors, one of them mentioned in passing something remarkable. He said: "Since Prop 47 passed, homelessness in California has gone up 51%, while in the rest of the country it has gone down 11%." I asked him to repeat what he had said. Then I asked for this data, which they provided me. It came from the Biden Administration, so it would be hard for Democrats to argue with. Here was the data and the initial slide we made with it:
Nothing else that happened during this time period could explain why California's homelessness crisis had spiraled out of control, while it went down in the rest of the country. Prop 47 was the link, because without drug treatment, fentanyl and other hard drug abuse spiraled out of control. And the sad reality is that the vast majority of the homeless population is addicted to hard drugs.
So we decided to first seek the support of municipal Democratic elected officials, because they are on the front lines of the homelessness crisis. Not every Democratic leader we spoke with accepted the link between Prop 47 and the homelessness crisis. In fact one prominent elected official yelled at me when I showed her this slide. Most prominently, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom himself led the opposition against Prop 36.
But we won the support of the Democratic mayors in 3 out of the 4 largest cities in California. They too acted with great courage, and deserve to be recognized:
Mayor Matt Mahan in San Jose
Mayor London Breed in San Francisco
Mayor Todd Gloria in San Diego
In each meeting with them, the above slide was the first thing I showed them. Mayor Mahan immediately grasped the link and later became the most prominent Democratic leader in the pro-Prop 36 campaign. Mayor Breed had studied the slide and our full deck prior to our meeting, and before I even needed to explain it to her, she said "sign me up."
This type of courage is all too rare in politics. But our argument was also grounded in the one essential point above. And try as they might, our opponents could not wish away, spin away, or explain away this point.
🔱 The Lesson For Your Campaigns
I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting voters are always rational, or that they even care about facts in many cases. To the contrary, the national results in the recent election strongly suggest otherwise. But the war story above is about how we convinced prominent elected officials to support something that on its surface might have seemed out of their political comfort zones. These endorsements eventually had a huge impact on the voter side of the equation. And in public affairs, this is exactly our job—convincing elected officials to do important things.
It's also true that not all elected officials are rational actors, and we certainly did not win every endorsement we sought—but we won enough of them, which is also our job when counting votes in a committee or a full legislative body.
And regardless of how smart, studied, and well-meaning the elected official or staffer might be, we live in an age of TikTok-length attention spans. So it is more critical than ever to distill your argument into the one essential point that you need the policy-maker to understand. This point can be different for different audiences, and often should be. The way we speak to a Republican elected official should almost always be different than how we speak to a Democrat. And even within parties, different points will connect better with different audiences. But once you settle on the right point for the right audience, you must resist the temptation to argue with the kitchen sink.
Digital tools are our passion at Neptune Ops. We've seen their ability to radically change outcomes time and again. But even the most precise delivery of your ad can't overcome a jumbled message. In most debates, we have the opportunity to drive home one point.
So let me conclude by asking you dear reader, what one antagonistic elected official asked me during one of my less glamorous, spectacularly failed presentations on Prop 36:
"What's your point?"
Three Ways To Operationalize This Email
🔱 Define your one essential point that you need each policy-maker to understand.
🔱 Build your creative content around this one essential point.
🔱 Repeat that one essential point over and over until it sinks in, both in the hallways and online.
Thank you for reading.
- Bryan Miller, President, Neptune Ops
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