The Roosevelt Institution

Legislative Strategy

Memorandum

Date: 09/28/07
From: Kevin J. Powers, Legislative Director-Western Region
RE: Roosevelt Legislative Strategy & Goals


Introduction

At UC Davis, the Roosevelt Institution has the unique opportunity to have a legislative impact at the municipal, regional, and state level. Because of the nature of the Roosevelt Institution’s non-profit status, our legislative outreach must cater to both policy-makers and interest groups. While this initially presents the problem of complicated outreach, building strong bonds with both legislators and lobbying interests gives us the opportunity of pursuing action from multiple angles.

Strategy

UC Davis’ proximity to the Sacramento area provides us with an outstanding opportunity to take Roosevelt ideas to the state legislature. Frankly, working in the State Capitol needs to be our primary area of outreach.

Now this certainly presents it’s own set of problems and legitimacy is perhaps chief among them. We must be willing to exploit our connections, especially working with our strong alumni base. The majority of the alumni working in Sacramento are former ASUCD officials or people involved in the various student interest groups like CalPRIG, and thus we must endeavor to establish good connections with these organizations.

Of course, having strong relationships with the groups on campus provides the benefit of both recruitment and access to their respective resources. Our chapter will benefit legislatively at the state level by having good partnerships with campus groups. These groups also tend to be active, at least reciprocally, in the City of Davis. Options may very well arise in the city through our relationship with these groups.

So, by focusing on building strong relationships at the State Capitol, we must concurrently establish partnerships with various political and social groups on campus. Our involvement on campus will present opportunities that would be otherwise unavailable to us by working strictly on legislative outreach.

Goals

While it is difficult, strictly speaking, to quantify success legislatively given the ever-changing nature of politics, there are certain sets of criteria by which we can measure. The most important of these criteria is access as a measure of legitimacy. By the end of the year, we should feel comfortable taking meetings with the staff of any legislator or interest group we deem necessary. Being able to establish which groups and individuals are “necessary” is another criteria that we can use to measure success.

We should strive to have Roosevelt ideas adopted as legislation. This is not a reliable measure of progress, but rather an excellent way to both promote the Roosevelt Institution and support future legislative efforts. We should not be afraid of our ideas failing, because the political climate may or may not be one that is particularly friendly to our brand of progressive policy. We should, however, be willing to pursue all options that would lead to a Roosevelt idea being adopted as legislation, save options which would compromise the integrity or legitimacy of the Roosevelt Institution as an organization.

Ultimately, our success cannot be measured by the amount of legislation we pass, but rather by amount of influence and respect we gain from our efforts.