Who is Mike Panetta?

Mike Panetta was recently elected to the position of U.S. Representative in the November 7th election in the District of Columbia. The position is often referred to as the "Shadow Representative" and should not be confused with the office of Delegate to Congress, which is currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Mike has run several high-profile campaigns for DC representation including starting an Olympic team for the District and leading efforts to rebrand RFK Stadium as "Taxation Without Representation Field" Mike pledges to make the DC voting rights issue a national one that is embraced by progressive activists across the country.

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This article has been tagged as: DC, District of Columbia, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Davis Bill, Shadow Representative, mike panetta, dc statehood, statehood, House of Reprensentatives, DC Vote, DC Voting Rights Bill, free dc, Utah, dc voting rights, Republicans, U.S. Senate, Lieberman

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Yea! We Passed the House. Now What Do We Do?

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 11:08am

The high of the DC Voting Rights Act passing in the House has worn off and the reality of the uphill battle looming in the Senate has sunk in amongst the supporters of DC Voting Rights. And the fact that Joe Lieberman may not be in charge of the bill in the Senate is another reason some are nervous about the future.

What do we do now? Simple. We step up our game.

This fight reminds me when I was working on a campaign to stop nuclear waste from being dumped at Yucca Mountain in 2002. Running the standard playbook, we targeted the usual suspects with “the world is going to end” environmental messaging. The results were so-so. However, when we reached out to conservative/right-leaning lists with a “states rights” message (instead of the environment) the action rate was several times higher.

If this bill is going to pass the Senate, we’re going to need to reach out beyond the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” liberal civil-rights crowd that has carried the water on this bill to date, and also reach out to the conservative media and interest groups and dangle the prospects of another Republican House seat (and, yes, electoral vote) for Utah in front of them.

It’s a basic segmentation of audience and message . . . not rocket science.

We are also going to need to:

  • Put grassroots and grasstops pressure on Bennett and Hatch from Utah citizens
  • Recruit, educate, and mobilize citizens in the states of the Senators whose committee(s) have jurisdiction over the bill
  • Figure out which Senators are on the fence and what will move them

Yes, it’s going to be fight. But I do think it’s one we can win.

Do you have ideas? Please comment using the links below, I’d love to hear from you.

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