By Josh Prest
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – What is advocacy and what does it mean to you? That is the first question I ask anyone who asks me about lobbying and government relations, because before you start down the path of either one of those, or both, you have to know what advocacy means to you or your organization.
It is also important to know how to relay that message and understand the time it will take to advocate for a specific issue or policy. If there is one thing I always tell my clients, whether it be when we first meet to discuss their advocacy needs, before a meeting with a legislator or after a big policy or funding win, advocacy is a long game. What does that mean?
Just like any sort of relationship you have in your life, whether it is with a friend, a spouse or a work colleague, those relationships were not built overnight. It takes years of meetings, dinners, trips, nights out or however you spend your time with friends and family. Well, the same rings true for legislators, administration executives and staff from both.
Contrary to what most people believe, elected officials are human beings just like ourselves. They eat in the same restaurants as we do, shop in the same stores as we do and spend time with their friends and families in the same communities that we do. The thing that separates going up to your local state representative or congressperson in the store to inquire about a vote they took, (hopefully not aggressively) and a lobbyist doing this in the Statehouse or halls of the U.S. Capitol is the relationship built with that individual.
One thing that my clients always ask me is, “How do you just go up to these people and talk to them?” Well, most of these individuals I have known for five to 10 years or even longer, and I always check in with them – not just for things I might need or want to advocate on for my clients, but asking them about their life outside elected office. You have to build trust in a relationship, and if you come off as needing something all the time, most people will not want to talk to you. The same goes for advocacy with elected officials and their staff.
One of the biggest misunderstandings in the field of lobbying and advocacy is that you can walk right into things and get what you want quickly. Now, that can happen, but rarely, at least in my experience.
Building relationships and well-rounded policy requests takes months and years to build with someone in elected office.
One example I can use is the advocacy done to bring eight new C-130J airplanes to our local airbase, the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, home of the 910th Airlift Wing. Over the course of the past 15 years, we have gone from potentially closing the base to bringing new construction projects there to now having solidified eight new airplanes to the base, representing an over $800 million dollar investment to the Mahoning Valley.
This process took well over 12 years working with multiple members of Congress and three U.S. senators from Ohio. It also took years of “long-game” advocacy from both the legislative side where our local congressional and Senate delegations fought year after year with the then Department of Defense to push Youngstown as the new home for these planes. And it involved working with out of state federal legislators to include policy in every National Defense Authorization Act to push these planes to Youngstown and making calls with friendly executives in the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations (all relationships built over several decades, mind you) to push this initiative over the finish line in 2022.
I say all this to say one thing – this was not done over the course of one year. It took over 12 years to get this major initiative done, and it took years of relationships built over decades from hundreds of people. This was a long game, and we were successful in the end. It does not always end like this, but I can guarantee you one thing – if you start building relationships now with elected officials and their staff, you will get much further with your policy issue than you would if you have not spent the time and investment getting coffee or dinner with them, meeting with them in their offices in Columbus and Washington, D.C., or hosting them for a tour at your company or organization. Book that meeting today, not next month!
Josh Prest is the Founder and Principal of Prest Public Strategies, a full service government relations and lobbying firm based in Cleveland and Youngstown, founded in 2023. Before starting the firm, Josh spent eight years working for now retired U.S. Sen. Rob Portman in northeastern Ohio.
