What do we do now? | by Ruth Peterson The legislative session is over. There were a lot of bad bills that passed, but with your efforts and the efforts of our Republican legislators, many bad bills were stopped. Thank you all for the part you played! Now, is there anything we can do before the session begins next year in January? The answer is a resounding yes!
There are two parts to Influencing Olympia. Your letters and phone calls to legislators and getting information to your friends and relatives was the first part. But now we need to focus on the second part – Influencing Olympia by letting people know the difference between the priorities of Republicans and Democrats. We need a majority of voters to choose Republicans this November to flip seats in both the House and the Senate.
Too often, we just spend a lot of time broadcasting vague rhetoric. We might talk about terrible Democrat policies or we offer statements like this; “Things are terrible! Vote Republican.” That isn’t enough to win seats for Republicans – we must be able to clearly explain why Democrat policies are damaging and why Republican policy goals are better. Let people choose for themselves. If you can lay out a clear argument, most people will choose Republican policies every single time.
I’ve recently spoken to lifelong Democrats who are horrified when I explain about the new legislation that was passed this session. We must learn how to speak to the differences clearly, politely, and with information that everyone can relate to. We also need to focus on speaking to those who are not politically involved or who are in the center. If we are going to flip seats, we need more votes than the Republican base can supply, and if we are going to more effectively Influence Olympia in the future, flipping seats is a must.
We have given you a bit of a break after the intense activity of the legislative session. But now we will switch gears and provide a few emails each week that will focus on a particular subject. The emails will point out the difference between Republican and Democrat policies. We will try to keep the emails short, so the information will be easy to convey to others. Feel free to forward them or post the information on Facebook or other social media. The more eyes on these comparisons, the better Republicans will fare in November. We only have a few months, so please do what you can to spread the word far and wide.
2022 Bill Info Spreadsheet > Nancy’s Bills
I went through the Bill List today to see what the governor has signed… surprise! Only one bill on my list has gotten signed so far.
While I was looking I had an idea… something you could help me with.
We all know that the D team will NEVER give up on an idea. Those bad bills that we defeated this year will likely come back again like zombies in 2023.
And one of the problems we struggled with for most of session was in reviewing bills and writing arguments PRO/CON.
Why reinvent the wheel? I know that some of you wrote brilliant arguments against many of these bills!
Please check the list, and send me any bill analysis/ arguments that you did this year ~ especially for bad bills but also for any good bills that didn’t get a hearing.
I’ll create google docs and link to them in the spreadsheet as an archive of the session. That way, when we see a bad idea being recycled, we’ve got a little jump on developing the arguments. It won’t be a 100% fit, but it should be a handy short-cut and memory jog next session.
I’m looking forward to seeing your work at info@influincingolympia.com
~ Nancy