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.

I’ve been beating up on some House Republicans the last few days after the delay in passing the DC Voting Rights Act in the House. I would like to take this opportunity to point out for the record that not all members the GOP are plotting to deny DC the vote, and in fact some are actively fighting for us.

The first good-guy is Jack Kemp. This former Congressman, cabinet secretary, and vice-presidential candidate has been a steadfast supporter of DC voting rights. He recently published an article on TownHall.com entitled “Shortsighted House GOP would deny D.C. residents the vote“. In this article he states:

The Republicans in the House, as well as advisers to the president - by threatening a veto - are in danger not only of indifference to district citizens, but in fact they’re showing disdain for a city predominantly governed and populated by people of color. This can be interpreted as racially insensitive at best and racially prejudiced at worst. Either way, it’s really dumb politics because the party of Lincoln, Douglass, Grant, Eisenhower and Bush 41, among others, is sacrificing its civil rights soul for a mess of political pottage.

Jack Kemp is a respected leader in the conservative movement, so I hope these words will change some minds.

I also wanted to point out the the DC Republican Party has been out front on this bill and is working the issue with members of their own party in Congress. Here is a section of a press release they recently put out:

“We are going to fight for voting rights, because we are the party of Abraham Lincoln,” said Robert Kabel, Chairman of the D.C. Republican Party. “This is a bill written by a Republican Congressman, and it is the bi-partisan solution to a historic injustice. The American citizens of the District of Columbia pay their taxes, fight for their country and deserve equal rights.”

You can read the full press release here.

And lastly, I have to once again give a shout-out to Indiana Congressman Mike Pence for supporting this bill in committee. He didn’t have to that, there was really nothing in it for him, and it took guts to break ranks with his party to cast that vote.

If only there were more Republicans who embraced the whole “party of Lincoln” idea as more than a talking point…