Last night, the phone rang and a recorded voice invited me to participate in a telephone call with Randy Kuhl. After pressing a button, I was entered into a teleconference where Kuhl answered questions from constituents.
Kuhl calls these calls "Telephone Town Meetings". During the call, he takes questions from constituents who choose to ask them by pressing a key sequence on their phones. It sounded like the call lasted for about an hour (I wasn't able to listen to the whole thing), and that the callers where all from the same part of the 29th (southeast Monroe County).
The questions in the call were varied. One caller asked about Iraq. His question concerned why the resolutions being debated didn't talk about victory there. Saying that he didn't want to be partisan during the phone conference, Kuhl gave a pretty balanced answer. He rattled off the text of the current resolution, then noted that he wished that his party's resolution, which would have mentioned victory, could also be debated. Kuhl didn't say how he was going to vote today.
The rest of the questions concerned domestic policy and constituent service issues. One caller, a teacher, asked about "no child left behind" and lamented the lack of parental involvement in city schools. Kuhl drew on his background as a state legislator to explain the limits of federal involvement in education.
Another caller, a health-care analyst, got in a long, involved discussion with Kuhl over the fine points of the issues facing private insurers. Like most of the callers, this one was a bit nervous, and I couldn't quite understand the point he was trying to make.
One caller had a question about disability benefits available from the state, and Kuhl directed her to her local legislators. I'll bet he gets a lot of questions like that, since the phone call comes out of the blue and people might not catch exactly who's calling.
These telephone conferences are an effort to involve people in the process who normally wouldn't attend a town meeting. They occur during times when working people are home, and they don't require a big commitment of time or effort from the participants. They also play to Kuhl's strengths: He has a gentle, reasonable manner, and a broad knowledge of the nitty-gritty details of issues like education and health care.
Kuhl's good at constituent interaction, and it's not surprising that he's using technology to do more of it. The new five-day workweek in the House will make it more difficult for him to meet with residents of the 29th, and teleconferences allow him bridge the distance between DC and the district. I don't know if these calls are directly related to today's vote, but they're certainly part of his re-election strategy.
Comments
Thanks for taking part in the "meeting" and telling us about it. I probably wouldn't have accepted the invitation, feeling unprepared, "on the spot" and somewhat intimidated by the technology. This is an unbelievably powerful tool for an incumbant. Just receiving the call sends the message that your input is valuable, as opposed to the typical pitch from a volunteer, or even worse, a robo pitch.
I'd love to see the software that he uses. Are the calls random, or does every voter get one? Is it possible to tag participants, non-particpants for future calls? Can participants be tagged according to their questions and comments for future contacts, placed in an interest group (farmer, small-business owner, unemployed,...) dropped from the contact list or even placed on an enemies list?
How would an opponent counter this kind of perpetual campaigning? Will Randy's opponent in '08 have access to something as potent?
I'm just sorry I couldn't listen to the whole call and ask a question.
You make some good points. First, I think the "surprise" aspect of the call increases the nervousness of the caller and also keeps some people from participating. But I don't know how to avoid that - if Kuhl just scheduled these things and invited everyone to call in, it would probably be unmanageable.
As for who's called, I imagine the calling is random based on registered voter lists. I also assume that the calls are paid by Kuhl's congressional office budget, not the campaign budget, and therefore the campaign use of the data would be somewhat limited.
Since the amount of money a member can spend on constituent outreach is finite, it's interesting to compare Kuhl's approach to others in the area. I'd bet that Kuhl spends more of his budget on one-on-one contact than the average member. Compared to, say Louise Slaughter, Kuhl's mailings are few and far between, but they have higher production values (glossy, color, etc).
You're right that it is a powerful tool for incumbency. However, someone like Massa has another advantage: he can more easily do door-to-door canvassing, or appear at a Rotary lunch, since he lives in the district. Kuhl's time is more limited now that Congress is going to be in longer sessions.
I got one of these calls back in August. It sounded totally scripted to me then. None of the inquisitors really challenged Randy with deep questions, and no one coughed or stuttered. Randy was prepared with answers and the only followup thanked him for his time/concern/interest. I got connected midway into the meeting and while I kept hearing about the number of questions and participants, there did not seem to be a way of getting into the queue to ask anything. I pressed every button and combo that I could imagine and only got connected to an operator for the service, who could not or would not tell me anything. I'm curious who gets to who gets called and how it's moderated. After the last two 'live' townhall meetings I attended, where he faced very irate crowds, I can understand why he's choosing to phone it in.
This did not seem scripted at all - in fact, it was the opposite. I thought that one of the callers should have been screened because her question had nothing to do with what a Member of Congress could do for her.
Say what you will---they will be effective with the general public. Congressman One-Percent knows he has to start working hard to broaden that oh-so-thin majority! Keep up your great reporting.
I think I was invied to participate in the same call but thought it was a prerecorded message that I was being asked to listen to. I'm sorry I didn't stay on the line. The technology of targeted conference calls to voter seems lke a powerful tool.