Lobbying - Preparations

There are a lot of things that need to be done to lobby at General Conference.

First and foremost were getting my petitions in on time and in proper form so they would be printed for all to see in the publications for delegates.

There were the logistics of a place to stay, a place to park the car, meals to get, and connecting to the internet.

Then there was connecting with key delegates and church agency staff, considering which delegates may be sympathetic to my petitions and what legislative committees they were on, which of my friends was going to be there and what they intended to do, and what help I could be to all of them.

Then there was the task of studying the board and agency petitions related to what mine address, tracking my petitions and those of friends, and reading up on the major proposals the delegates would face during the plenary.

Finally, where would I be when? When lobbying, one has to be available and yet be where the most critical actions were taking place. From my experience at previous quadrennial meetings like this, I had some ideas that were a little unconventional.

And as one retired bishop reminded me before we went to Tampa, we have to know where the bathrooms are!

Let me post a brief review of each of these responsibilities. Then you can grade me on how I did and see what you as a lobbyist should not do.

Lobbying - Petitions

The primary task of a lobbyist is to provide grist for the legislative mill so that there are specific opportunities for an idea to be processed by the General Conference. I’ve been doing petitions (additions or corrections to passages in the current Book of Discipline) since 1976.

Last fall, I turned in something like 68 petitions ranging from finessing some paragraphs of the Discipline to complete rewrites to satirical ones to recommendations on theology.

I did not try to send any through Annual Conference because the committee that reviewed them and recommended them invariably recommended non-concurrence. No one on those committees had ever been through a personnel process against them to realize what was actually going on. Discussion on the floor of my petitions invariably was either done when everyone was tired or was not done at all.

I also was very aware that the General Conference rarely had time to consider any petitions but the ones from the boards and agencies of the denomination and those from the Council of Bishops. Even petitions from annual conferences seldom got consideration.

Rather than waste our annual conference’s time, I just sent in petitions on every paragraph I believe needed to be changed, based on my years of experience as an advocate. My hope was that someone would actually read them when they were printed in the Advanced Daily Christian Advocate. And maybe something would stick with someone. And maybe someday someone would include it in a board or agency petition as their idea.

Having gone to most of the General Conferences since 1984, I have seen that happen. So I once again cast my bread upon the waters.

Lobbying - Logistics

I have a friend who lives in Tampa and he was kind enough to invite me to sleep at his house and commute downtown from there. He provided bus routes and times. And he suggested the best restaurant within walking distance of the convention center. He’s been a computer geek so I would be able to use his wifi to connect with the internet.

By searching the internet, I found a lot of places to eat. I also found a handy location of a Florida grocery chain, Publix, that we like down here. There was an oriental grocery listed as a few blocks further up the street that might be good for those on diets and those from overseas.

In February, there was a pre-conference event for church and secular press at the Tampa Convention Center so I drove from my friend’s house downtown and realized that if it weren’t for my GPS, I would have been driving in circles. Tampa was laid out by the same surveyors who laid out my home town of Waukesha, WI. Tampa is on a large bay so most of its streets are not lined up north-south-east-west but on diagonals and curves. Even my GPS was confused when I left my friend’s house and it circled me back to the house during the first five minutes of my drive downtown!

I found a good parking garage downtown next to the convention center and decided I’d drive back and forth from his house instead of trying to work the bus system.

The basics were in place.

Lobbying - Connecting with Key People

For some of my previous lobbying efforts, I developed lists of 250 delegates to whom I sent by mail general suggestions about how things went and essays on the direction of the church as well as encouragement to vote for my petitions. Most I did not know, though many I did or had been recommended to me by AIA colleagues.

I discovered to my chagrin that even those I knew the best were unable to help my petitions because of the rules of General Conference, especially that once a petition related to a paragraph of the Discipline was passed by a legislative committee, all other petitions related to that same paragraph could be voted non-concurrence without any consideration even if they could have added a different idea. (Rule 31 [2]). And some sat on their hands at crucial points in discussions, leaving my petitions without support.

I figured that for this time, I would let my petitions stand on their own merit and not push any of a dozen or so delegates about any of my petitions. What I did was pick people who knew me pretty well and try to help them with things like the Publix store, how to reach me, how to preserve a petition that didn’t get forwarded to the floor, and any other helpful thing I could do for them. I sent the same materials to staff, reporters, and some friends I knew were coming to Tampa. I copied the notes to the AIA board.

My working list ended up being too short. But word somehow got around and I found a lot of folks in Tampa who somehow got that same information without my help.

I kept them posted of changes and some other things through “Brief notes” by e-mail during the two weeks of General Conference. And I got to see most of them, if only for a few moments.

Of all I sent to them, the one thing that had the most impact was letting them know about the Publix grocery store. It did a booming business while we were there.

Thanks to a $7 purchase at WalMart of a bright red jacket, I could be seen from anywhere in the plenary. That became important when delegates wanted to talk with me or when I sent notes to delegates and had the page point out me in my red coat.

One person with whom I connected is the editor of United Methodist Insight, an on-line publication project providing a wide variety of articles and views of General Conference. She invited me to be one of her contributors and encouraged me to write about what was happening the first week because she was not going to be able to come until the second week.

A friend from Wisconsin who taught at Africa University asked me to make contact with two of its graduates who were coming as delegates. I wasn’t going to do traditional lobbying anyway. So I added that to my agenda and, without my realizing it, it changed what I ended up doing at General Conference.

Lobbying - Studying the Materials for General Conference

Good lobbying requires reading everything one can before attending the conference. Because I was invited to write for the special project called United Methodist Insight (http://um-insight.net), I read most of those essays over the weeks just prior to Tampa.

There were a lot of things to study: key issues, where my petitions were referred, who was on which committees of the General Conference, the rules of the General Conference, the schedule, and who all were delegates.

I could have done that on-line because all the pre-conference materials were posted there (www.UMC.org/2012General Conference). I was able to skim through the lists of delegates and who were on the legislative committees.

But to work through the legislation, I found that too difficult to do on-line (my dufferishness came out). So I postponed all that, deciding to see if I could purchase the hard copies at Cokesbury in Tampa when I got there. They would all be up-to-date where some of the on-line lists were incomplete.

All I looked at from then on were articles in UM-Insight, UMNS Daily reports, and the UMC.org website.

Let me say that after years of mostly seeing fluff and PR materials among the traditional UM news outlets, I was seeing some articles that were very critical and journalistically more sound. That was a refreshing experience. I know several of the news staff and found them to have come through those years with their integrity intact. This was a good year for them.

I confess I spent more time writing than reading. After reading several articles, I submitted comments that were accepted.

One such piece was divided in two by the UM-Insight editor, with the two sections being filled out with more background and data. They were published there and I put them in this blog (see below April 5 – “Where Do We Find God’s Spirit in Our System” and April 11 – “What Are They Ignoring?”) I resurrected an article from 2008 that went into UM-Insight and this blog on April 13 (see “Priorities for General Conference” of that date below). One of my comments on an article in UM-Insight also made this blog as well on April 21 (“No Large Southern Church Left Behind”)

This seemed to me to be an odd way for a lobbyist to prepare for General Conference.

Lobbying - Plan B, C, and . . .

Being set does not take into account things that could happen. I needed no Plan B for myself until a couple days before General Conference. My friend called to say that something came up and he could not let me stay at his house.

Plan B? Cheapest motel would still have been over $80 a night. Friends who live in Clermont, FL, have invited us to use their house in case of emergency. But that was 80 miles away. My home was only a 100 miles and that made as much sense and in many ways would be a whole lot handier.

And then there was the weather…

And then came the problem of meeting the two African delegates. One had a roommate who only spoke Portuguese and a page told me I couldn’t send a message to the other because I was not a delegate!

And then Google bought Blogspot and changed the protocols so that I couldn’t format or copy and paste as I had been able to do just days before conference started.

Lobbying can strain one’s resources and creativity!

April 25 - Actual Lobbying

Lobbying is to be available to those who will be looking at your petitions so I picked the legislative committee with the largest number of mine, Judicial Administration. An experience I’d had helping with the appeal of a church trial showed me the many gaping flaws in our trial system and I tried to repair them with my petitions. I knew that several of the committee members had also been involved in one way or another with that effort and had seen my arguments.

What was frustrating on Wednesday morning was that the presider took so long to get into the flow of action. To her, “diddly” stuff seemed to be terribly important and needed to be given time. Many of those elected to such crucial positions in the working committees are inexperienced.

The chairperson elected to the Committee on Reference wasted no time. She was also in the Judicial Administration group and would have been just as peeved about the inefficiency. But at that time, the committee she chaired was busy elsewhere.

April 26 - Lobbying

I spent Thursday morning observing the Judicial Administration Legislative Committee. They slogged along parliamentarily. Then they broke up into sub-committees. I tagged along with one and watched one of my colleagues operate very effectively.

Lobbying is done in different ways. His technique included no petitions, providing a supper for legislative committee members at which he explained what actually happens in the judicial and administrative processes, and hanging around with the members of the sub-committee where his own concerns lay.

At the lunch break, I followed him to the Tabernacle, a big tent where Methodists for Social Action met and provided low cost meals. He was there to report on the legislative committee he was observing. He took his seat at the front from where he and others would report, leaving me in the audience area.

I stood there in the midst of “my people.” I’m a progressive, pro-choice, and pro LGBT, though unlike everyone else, I had no rainbow stole. Maybe it was my red coat and my travel case I was rolling along behind me. Sometimes I unintentionally put people off.

No one spoke to me. So I went to Publix, got a salad, and ate it in my “office.”

I tried to access my blog’s dashboard. I had written a number of things and I was ready to begin blogging. But Google had taken over Blogspot and changed things. I couldn’t figure out how to insert text and post.

One of my friends made some suggestions that started me in the right direction but I made too little progress to post anything.

The afternoon was not lost. Some people sat at my table and engaged me in conversation. One was lobbying for associate members and local pastors. He is one of the few concerned about local churches and pastors that I met in Tampa. He impressed me in several ways, what he does as a pastor being one of them. More on that below. He was the one who knew my old friend Richard Wright and he promised to take my greetings to him when they met at annual conference.

I left around suppertime. I missed the special service at which my autonomous bishop acquaintance from Sunday was among those honored. I was sorry about that.