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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
When industry flacks need to learn how to spin not-so-eco-friendly election issues, they go to an environmental conference.
Jan 22, 2004 | This morning, some 50 people powwowed in the chandeliered Ticonderoga conference room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill for a conference titled "Environmental Issues 2004: How to Get Results in an Election Year." There weren't more than a handful of environmentalists in attendance -- perhaps because the conference was hosted by the National Association of Manufacturers, known to be one of the most anti-environment industry groups in the country. The great attraction of the affair (which cost up to $150 a head) was its keynote speaker -- not an industry kingpin, not a bigwig GOP pollster like Frank Luntz, but U.S. EPA administrator Mike Leavitt.
Leavitt's headliner status was peculiar given the focus of the conference: how to craft pro-industry environmental messages to influence the 2004 elections. And this was only Leavitt's second speaking engagement outside the EPA since he took the agency's helm. The first was his address two weeks ago to another industry group, the Edison Electric Institute, which all reporters but one were barred from attending. "Leavitt's NAM appearance reaffirms, if nothing else, that his heart is with industry -- the corporate folks are the ones he's making time for," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust.
Conference organizers unabashedly described the event as a tutorial to help industry representatives bone up on their public messaging skills as they prepare to face off against environmentalists in the cutthroat media circus of an election year. "Many of our members run businesses in arenas to which media is not, shall we say, sympathetic," said NAM spokesperson Darren McKinney just before the event. "In general terms, we are hoping to provide our members with an education about how environmental stories are created and reported, and how the creation has an effect on the political process in an election year."
McKinney insisted that NAM is just trying to play the same game as the "Sierra Club, sky-is-falling crowd." As he explained it, "We're all part of the same ballgame, we have the same goals -- to get our message out through the media, make our case as best we can, and convince voters to get the type of policymakers in office who will see things our way."
Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council and one of the most oft-quoted industry apologists in the media, spoke on a conference panel titled "Crafting Environmental Messages." Before the event, he told Muckraker that "industry is never going to have an advantage over the enviros in the media -- the enviros are always going to be able to say 'you are killing children' or they'll play the asthma card. They'll make these highly emotionally charged claims -- claims that will get more melodramatic in an election year."
When Muckraker pressed Maisano to outline his strategy for crafting messages, he described a three-pronged approach: 1) distill the regulatory reform in question to its simplest terms and give some easy analogies; 2) explain why the reform is needed and how it will streamline the system, create jobs, balance economic concerns and so forth; and 3) explain that it will actually improve the environment. "You can take a lot of the issues and use this approach," he said. "Whether it's ANWR or MTBE or efficient air conditioners or whatever, you can replace the parts. Simplicity has to come through. The messages can't be complex." Maisano conceded that he cannot in all situations argue that there is an environmental advantage to the reforms he advocates, but insisted that in most cases he can.
Another conference participant was Greg Casey, CEO of BIPAC, a political action committee with a mission to elect business-friendly politicians to public office. "Obviously I come from a slightly biased point of view," he told Muckraker. "I represent the political interests of the American business community. My message is: Now is the time for our message and our messaging mechanisms [for reaching voters] to mature."
Casey advised executives not to simply direct their messages to the media -- which he believes to be a losing battle -- but to direct them closer to home: "My suggestion to the business community is you have a natural, affinity-driven relationship with those folks who are your employees, your stockholders, your customers, your suppliers, and your investors. Messages on the environment -- and the impact of environmental regulations on industry -- should be directed through personal e-mails and newsletters to these folks who really want to believe their business leaders, and who have a stake in those issues."
So what did Leavitt have to say on these matters? Well, nothing. He delivered a stump speech that was totally detached from the focus of the conference. In an upbeat tone, he assured manufacturers that environmental quality in the United States has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past 30 years and that it's time to move beyond command-and-control regulations. "We need to do [environmental policy] in a better way that doesn't compromise our economic competitiveness," he declared.
One of the few enviros at the conference, Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council, found it troubling that audience members -- executives and flaks from companies such as Halliburton and Bristol-Myers Squibb -- seemed oblivious to the implications of the policy changes they want to spin. "Over and over people said, 'We keep hearing that this is the worst administration in history, so how do we sell our message? How do we snooker people? How do we fight back in the messaging wars?'" said Perks. "It was as if it totally didn't register in their minds that a regulatory crisis was occurring at all. The sole concern was putting a good mask on it."
