PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

One of my former associates in the lobbying business I helped to found called me the other day to set up an interview for a podcast on how lobbying has changed over the years.

She called because, I am old, and, thus, I am able to talk about the past and, at least to a degree, about the present.  Though for the present, I have been retired for nearly five years, so don’t have much first-hand experience.

Still, using the interview as a basis, I turned the process into this blog because, the more I thought about it, the more my notions struck me as important comparisons between the past and present of the lobbying game.

Here a few of the perceptions I provided to my interviewer:

• Lobbying in the past was not tinged as much as it is today by over-the-top emotion, anger and invective.

• Persons on opposite of issues – be they legislators or lobbyists – were accustomed to finding a way to work together in the past.  Today, it is far more difficult to find the smart middle ground because both sides want to advance their cause, not compromise.

• Today, the emphasis on the part of legislators appears, more than ever, to be to find fault with those who disagree with them.  Yelling and screaming, at least figuratively, if not literally,  has become an art form.  No longer is it possible as often to engage in politics as the “art of compromise.”  The fact is the ability to disagree agreeably is a lost art.

• The “personal touch” of lobbying appears also to have receded.  One reason, of course, is the pandemic, which has rendered the Legislature a “virtual” one.  But another reason is the emotionally tinged status of both political parties.  In the past, as a lobbyist in a regular session, I would have talked to each of the 90 members of the legislature to discuss the pros and cons of legislation and whether compromise was possible.   Today, that is far less likely to occur.

In my interview, I went beyond the “old and new” question to cite examples of two specific lobby cases in which I was involved where the result was good for my clients, as well as for Oregon as a whole. 

Could results like this occur today?  Not sure, if for no other reason than the examples include controversial environmental issues that would divide, not unite, current legislators.

• Port of Portland channel deepening
  
  

+  My client, the Port of Portland, made this an Oregon issue, not just one that would benefit Portland.

+  We emphasized local connections with a list of all private companies around the state that would benefit from deeper draft maritime commerce.

+  We found an innovative way to surmount the “one legislature cannot bind the next legislature issue,” a reality that makes sense, but is difficult if the cost of a project – deepening the channel in this case – is too large to be accommodated in one two-year budget period. 

+  We found a way to offset the complaints from “environment lobbyists” who feared “dredge spoils” would be dangerous.  Of course, what was dredged was clean sand which actually had a market once pulled out of the river.

+  We found a way to meld the interests of two states (Oregon and Washington) with the federal government, since all three would bear shares of the cost of the project.
 

• Field burning under power lines for Hewlett-Packard, which operates a facility in Corvallis

+  The problem was this:  When field burning produced clouds of smoke that enveloped major power lines, the effect often was that outages occurred.  And that wreaked havoc on H-P technology processes at the Corvallis plant.

+  So, to promote passage of a bill to cure the problem, H-P authorized me to join with environment lobbyists to advocate for passage of a field burning ban bill.  To put it bluntly, H-P did not often join with such lobbyists, though it made sense to do so this time.  And the result was success:  The burn ban bill passed, though it was not a total ban, but did include “not under power lines” clause.

With this as background, I told my interviewer I thought we were standing on the horizon of a major issue for everyone in Oregon and, for that matter, in the country as a whole.

It is this:  All of us better find a way to return to the challenge of working together in politics rather than just arguing with raw and antagonistic emotion.   That includes both legislators and lobbyists, as well as those who elect or hire them.

If we don’t, democracy as we know it may be a form of government of the past.

That is not an exaggeration.  The January 6 insurrection at the Nation’s Capitol is only an indication of what could come, especially if certain persons continue to foment destruction as an intentional method to get their way.

As President Joe Biden has advocated, working together makes far more sense than stoking division and dissension.