Conversation with your elected officials: An example of how it looks to ask for a meeting and drafting what you’ll say
Dear SJ,
In a previous post I pointed out that after you figure out who’s working for you (the people elected to govern), you’ll want to see what exactly they’ve been doing.
Shortly after that I ended up finding some very old emails and documents from when I was doing the work I advised you to do. In the spirit of last week’s post, centering conversation in these letters, I wanted to share these examples with you.
Context
In the mid 2010s, I did some lobbying on behalf of a medical center to remove restrictions on access to weight loss medication for people using public health insurance. As you can imagine, this was a hindrance for running a clinic that treated obesity.
Our logic was that if the state removed their restriction, then private insurance companies couldn’t use this as a reason to deny medication coverage for people with private plans. Therefore, they would be more likely to cover the medication as well. All this meant better service for patients, which in turn was good for the clinic — a type of business when it’s privately owned.
Prepare
After you find out who your elected officials are and how they tend to vote, you need to then draft your talking points. Write down what you want and why. Then think about how you can argue for what you want depending on what you know about the elected official. Also, I would definitely argue differently in 2024 than I did in 2013.
Here’s how I did this talking point preparation knowing that many elected officials might not think it was a priority issue [linking to a separate post because it was a long-ish Word doc outline originally].
Approach
Once you have your talking points, it’s time to make the approach to get your meeting. As elected officials, these are public servants who work for you. Don’t forget this.
But also, you can’t go straight to the top. You will probably deal with an assistant, constituent coordinator, or some variation on these job titles. Be very nice to these people. Appreciate them. Even though you’re entitled to a meeting, they control if you get seen tomorrow or in three months.
I sent the following email (screenshot below) after I met with a state Representative, and she recommended I speak to a Senator she was working with.
💭 Think about it: What do you see in this email? To what extent would you say this reflects my side of a conversation if I was speaking to the coordinator verbally?
How important do you think this is when you’re communicating in writing?
