Selling the Message

Four of the voices behind the largest advocacy campaign in history…Kerri Houston Tolozco       Tom McMahon                  Phil Kerpen                      Lauren Weiner Conservatives for               Americans United             Americans for                  Americans United
Patients’ Rights                   for Change                       Prosperity                        for ChangeFor this month’s Shop Talk, Politics asked representatives from some of the major healthcare advocacy groups to explain how they were moving public opinion. While there were disagreements, no one was shouted down during our lunch. This is an edited transcript of the conversation…Politics: Given the rate at which this ad campaign is going so far, can your groups raise enough money to keep it up? Phil Kerpen: It’s a big challenge. I think that our fundraising has slowed a bit, but it comes in waves. I think we’ll get another wave soon. One of the big things for us is that we’ve received basically zero corporate money on this project. We’ve gotten one small in-kind gift, but we’ve got no cash in the door from corporations. It’s all been ideologically committed individual donors. Our rich guys have been writing checks, but they have a limited capacity to do so. I think the biggest money in this debate is the insurance companies.
They aren’t really on either of our sides right now. They’re in it for themselves. I’m hopeful—perhaps naively—that at some point some industry players will see that they should try to just defeat this and we’ll get some corporate funding at that time. Kerri Houston Toloczko: We’re the same way. Our president, Rick Scott, has put up his own money for this. He is one of the most ideologically committed people I have ever met in my entire life. He really is committed to this. It’s not a business issue for him; it’s a principle issue. Some friends of the movement have given us money, but most of the money is coming in five, 10, 20 dollar dribs and drabs. We wouldn’t take insurance money if they offered it to us.Kerpen: Oh I would. (laughter) If it came on offer, I mean. I wouldn’t take their money and then go advocate for them. But if they wanted to support what we were doing, then I’d say absolutely. Tom McMahon: I think all of the corporations and where they’re staking their claims has everything to do with their own interests. I don’t think that PhRMA has suddenly seen the light. I think PhRMA is saying, “OK, this is an economics decision.”Toloczko: Just like the AMA.Kerpen: They don’t return my calls anymore, and they used to be a supporter of ours.Politics: How do you plan an issue advocacy campaign when you don’t know how long it’s going to last?Kerpen: I think we’ve got a pretty good sense that it will be the rest of this calendar year.McMahon: They were saying they would have something for the president by Thanksgiving.Kerpen: So that probably means Christmas.Politics: Has it been difficult trying to find a narrative that the media will follow?McMahon: I think the media’s tendency is to follow the shiny object. You can set up a story line and that whole bit, and all of a sudden there’s a shiny object off in the distance and there they go. You’re always surprised at what it can be. But it’s amazing how quickly they go to process, rather than cover the substance. Look, it’s a complicated issue, and it’s probably a boring issue for a lot of readers. But I think it’s an important one for a lot of people, which is why there are passions at a lot of the townhalls and people are getting really engaged and learning about the issue on the Internet. It kind of surprises me sometimes that they’re not giving it the due coverage that they should.Toloczko: I think people are tending to get more information from the guests on shows than from the print coverage. They’re just not covering the substance of the debate.Politics: The ad market is so saturated right now, what are ways that you’ve tried to stand out?Toloczko: Since all this video has come out and what’s gone on at the townhall meetings, there are all these members of Congress who have already chickened out and closed their townhall meetings. I would not be surprised to see some groups start using that footage, especially when there’s some aggression from the other side toward people who are protesting government healthcare.Kerpen: I think you’re probably going to be surprised, but I have a different perspective. I think the testimonials are key in this debate. I absolutely agree that hearing an ordinary citizen or an ordinary business owner talk about these issues is most effective. I’m not sure trumpeting the disruptions of the townhalls is effective because you’re not talking about the substance. I think the most effective ad that I’ve seen—and I would exclude ours from that because I think ours are fabulous—but the most effective one out there is the one airing in Nebraska against Ben Nelson. There’s a group that uses a business owner doing a testimonial, and it’s just one of those that seems to cut straight to the chase. The reason I think it’s really effective is because Sen. Nelson actually ended up calling the business owner.Toloczko: I think Tom’s exactly right, and that’s one place where I would like to see a series of ads from everybody on our side where the first line is “We are absolutely pro-reform.” So for us, it’s kind of a three-step process. One, you explain to people that you’re against this, number two you explain to people that you are for reform and number three you start articulating exactly what that reform is.Kerpen: Our polling shows that the single most effective talking point on either side is that the insurance companies are too profit driven and that’s a very difficult one for our side to exploit. One of the things that I think we need to do is show people that the big insurance companies have really bought into the reform discussion, and they’re going to tilt the plans to benefit them. It’s going to be something that’s very much written by Blue Cross Blue Shield and the other big insurance companies.McMahon: How do you really feel bad for an industry that’s treated its customers so badly that they want the government to come in and take it over? Lauren Weiner: There’s a strong argument to be made that if the insurance industry wants reform, they can do it. There’s no government law saying you can’t cut costs. Just do it. And I think that notion is lost a little bit in the idea that they want reform. There’s nothing stopping them.McMahon: The centerpiece of the reform they want is an individual mandate that requires everyone by law to buy their product. (laughter)Politics: The Cigna ad was sort of the first overt shot at the insurance people. Are there going to be more?McMahon: Yeah, it’s a pretty good villain. There are going to be plenty of villains but that is certainly one that has been most effective and we’ve been surprised at the response that we’ve gotten both in online fundraising and media exposure. And Cigna responded. They came out and said, “Hey, we believe in reform.” But I was just surprised that they didn’t just let it go by.Toloczko: They didn’t read P.R. rule number one: Never repeat the charge. I don’t see the right using the insurance companies as the villain. We’re more interested in reform than that. Politically you couldn’t. That’s the liberal side. You’re not about to see some member of Congress—a Republican—coming out and saying, “I agree with Nancy Pelosi, it’s those bloody insurance companies.”Kerpen: I don’t know if it would necessarily show up in our TV advertising, but I do think that at some point we have to strongly emphasize the message that the potential Senate deal is going to be an alliance between the big insurance people and the big government people.Politics: This seems to be one of the first advocacy campaigns where web videos have gotten a lot of attention. What goes into a good web video?Kerpen: I think humor is the most powerful thing. The funny ones are the ones that people forward on Twitter and Facebook. And ridicule of the other side if you want to fire up your people.Weiner: I think that’s what web ads do best. Most of these people are forwarding them to friends who you know will be entertained by this. And you’ll say stuff in web ads you would probably never put on TV. And that’s ok. It’s a different audience; and you know that and respect that. When we do web ads, it’s a lot of the blogs that we work with that are the biggest help in getting these ads out there. A lot of popular blogs have been a huge help in getting the traffic and driving it. At least on our end, that’s been the best way of making them viral.Politics: Americans for Prosperity has a “Sharp Dressed Man” video right now. Did you hire somebody to do that?Kerpen: No actually, I got an e-mail from a former coworker who said I’m taking this great footage, do you want to buy this video. And I said how much? It sounds like a good idea. I think it was pretty cheap and was number one in the activism category. It got over 20,000 views.McMahon: I always love good ads, even ones that hit us.Kerpen: We have footage from the Obama-Creigh Deeds healthcare townhall—which was styled as a townhall, but I think was really more of a fundraiser—so we took video of like three dozen guys walking around in suits and then we play “Sharp Dressed Man” while we are looking at them. Then we show all the cars in the parking lot—the expensive, foreign luxury cars—and then we show our people, our grassroots people and they are all dressed down. And at the beginning we show Chris Matthews and Barbara Boxer saying, “These aren’t real activists—they are too well dressed, Brooks Brothers…”Politics: The campaigns we’ve been talking about have been aimed at folks back home in the districts, but they don’t really have a say, do they? It is six senators and maybe 30 House members…Kerpen: They have a say to the extent that they have to represent their constituents or they could lose their jobs. That’s sort of the way that our system works and everything we are doing is premised on the idea that pressure from back home can affect the voting behavior of these key members.Toloczko: And more pressure on the House than the Senate guys.Kerpen: Even so, we’re pressuring Senate guys—don’t do something like the House bill—basically from our side. And we’re trying to sort of wall off a Massachusetts-style plan as the compromise. We think that would be bad for a variety of reasons. But we don’t really know what they are going to do. And it becomes, if [Sen. Charles] Grassley and [Sen. Mike] Enzi sign off on a deal, Enzi especially, I think, will be a sort of litmus test for a lot of Republicans. You can see Grassley and [Sen. Olympia] Snowe doing something where they are the only two.Toloczko: Oh yeah, we expect the chicks from Maine to go off the reservation on everything.Kerpen: If all three of the Republican negotiators, including Enzi, say this is the deal, they could get 15 Republicans. Then this whole thing is kind of, it didn’t really matter very much everything that went on back home.McMahon: The key is, regardless of what side you’re on, is that you want to make the vote very uncomfortable for the member so that they think there is something at stake here, which is their reelection. And that’s the public pressure.Politics: The Massachusetts plan, in a purely political sense, how does that affect Mitt Romney three years from now?Toloczko: Not good. Mitt Romney took a plan from the Heritage Foundation that nobody was very happy about on the conservative, free market and individual liberty side. He took it, and they messed it up. So, do I think it’s a huge problem for him? Yes. Do I think he would be a very good candidate without it? Yes. I don’t know how he survives.Politics: On that topic, is healthcare going to be the issue of the 2010 House races?Kerpen: Cap and trade, too. It’s both.McMahon: I think cap and trade might be bigger. Has the potential to be bigger.Kerpen: Cap and trade, I think, is easier to dramatize the impact for people because you can put dollar signs on it. We’re going to be heavily focused on it, and we are still doing cap and trade events during the recess. We’re trying to split our focus.Toloczko: I kind of disagree with my conservative colleague. Healthcare is different than any other policy issue. If you get taxed, you’re not going to die. If you pay more tax at the pump to lower the temperature of the world by .00009 percent, you’re not going to die. Healthcare is an emotional policy issue. And I think that people know that if healthcare doesn’t go well for them, they are going to be sick, their kids are going to be sick, grandma is going to be sick. I think emotionally, because it is so emotionally charged, it is going to lead the debate in November.McMahon: 2010 will be about jobs and the economy. And, going to Phil’s point, cap and trade is easier to tie to that than healthcare. What we’re talking about with healthcare is so big and so vast, it would be hard to probably have negative stories or even positive stories in such a short amount of time. It is just going to take longer. Cap and trade, same thing, but the reality is you can start creating straw men arguments about how you’re feeling it today even if you aren’t.Politics: There is a lot of information out there. Like you said the number one rule of P.R. is don’t repeat an attack. When is it worth debunking information that you don’t think is accurate?Kerpen: I think it is really important for our side that we push back against our apparent allies who are saying things about the bill that aren’t true. I think it undermines everything that we’re doing when you have someone say, “This is a Nazi bill” or whatever crazy over-the-top stuff. It hurts the credibility of what everyone in this fight is doing. We need to push back against that. There are enough objectionable provisions in the bill to focus on what’s really in there without overstating the case.McMahon: I completely agree with what Phil is saying here, which is the reason why Bush was so effective in his first term was that he had credibility. People believed what he was saying, and he was the most credible person that would go out and sell a program. I think we have an enormous advantage with President Obama. People still trust him and believe what he has to say. Now, the other side has to %uFB01nd some credible voices not to be pushing propaganda that plays to the base but play to these two or three themes that they just hit every day on a consistent basis.Kerpen: The most important audience is centrist Democrats in both the House and Senate. And so, does it speak to them when you get the conservative grassroots really %uFB01 red up and sort of going nuts? I don’t think that’s necessarily the most effective way to get through to them. And I think that President Obama is certainly a very powerful weapon for reaching those people. And then I think the challenge for us is to connect the push for healthcare with the far left and to undermine its credibility with centrists the same way that they have tried to do with some of our messaging.Politics: Should the president have spoken up a little more forcefully instead of letting Congress negotiate its own bill?McMahon: No. I think they learned a lot of lessons from the Clinton White House. And I think you don’t want to get into the sausage making because, as we’ve seen, Democrats are really hung up on what is going to happen in the Senate finance committee, even though that is going to change in whatever form that comes out. So I think the reality is that the White House is putting the political pressure on now, which is why they are starting to ramp up their efforts.Kerpen: I would disagree. I think that in 1993 you had a White House that was to the left of Congress, and I think that right now you have a White House that is to the right of Congress. And I think that by leaving it to Congress, you get a much more sort of far left, out of the mainstream bill that’s harder for people to defend than if the White House had exercised more leadership up front.Toloczko: I think Tom’s right in that Obama is the best carrier of the message. Because I think that Nancy Pelosi has become a caricature of herself. She is perceived as a shrill, kind of fruit-loopy San Francisco liberal. And I think that Obama would be much better and—again I don’t want to give the Democrats great advice—I think that if Obama were carrying the media message on this, I think the Democrats would be doing much better.