Hi. My name is Hugh Fike. I’m the current director of government relations at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and I worked in the office of management and budget and the executive office office of the president doing legislative affairs, on the House side. And I’m joined by my friend and former colleague, James Braid. Hi.

I’m James. I’ve I’ve worked in various, senior roles on Capitol Hill. I worked with Hugh in the administration and legislative affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, specifically handling appropriations. Currently, I I serve as the legislative director for senator JD Vance. And we’re here to talk about congressional relations with the administration.

Essentially, it’s gonna be a legislative affairs 101. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4 year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive, and will prosper.

Whether we go forward together with courage or turn back to policies that weakened our economy, diminished our leadership in the world, America’s future will be in your hands. Let’s kinda get into it. I’ll just sort of, surface kind of the top top line understanding of how I think about the Hill from a theoretical perspective. The Hill is a mechanism for information processing. So we have all these preferences, all these different issues, all these different, policies that are happening in the United States, and, how do we make them into a coherent legal document that actually can can maybe do some, good for the people of the United States?

Well, we have this huge machinery, called Capitol Hill, which is, you know, includes the procedure. Right? You might think of that as the software by which the computer runs. You might think of, members of Congress as the individual decision making nodes. What we do in the executive branch in legislative affairs is serve as the surface area between the decision makers in the executive branch and the decision makers in Congress in hopes of pushing information and persuasive policies out there so that we can influence the operation of that machine.

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, some of the basic strategies that we need to pursue in order to ensure that the president’s agenda, is considered as favorably as humanly possible on Capitol Hill. Yeah. I think about it if you get into a legislative affairs job that you basically 3 marching orders. 1, you gotta have staff relationships. 2, you gotta have good principal relationships.

And 3, you ultimately need to know what the issues that the members care about. So speaking specifically to staff relationships, if you’re on the Beachhead team, you know, I didn’t serve on the Beachhead team, but everybody that did say you’re if you’re changing administrations, if you’re basically switching from a, you know, from a conservative to a liberal administration, you’re not gonna be left with the tools or you’re not gonna have the lists of things that you’re gonna need absolutely need. So one of your first priorities, is to obviously work with, you know, the administration to figure out what the priorities of the, agency or the part of the administration you’re in, but then start developing lists of members, that include staff members for the equities or the things that are, are necessarily gonna be important to your day to day job. And so what you wanna do is immediately start creating lists of the committees on Capitol Hill, both on the house and the senate that, that are gonna be important for, direct legislative jurisdiction over over your agency’s areas. Then you need to start doing individual meetings with them, putting a face to a name.

That’s really important. And then you need to have, make sure you have the right contact information. These are in sometimes very quick, moving, decisions, and they are quick moving and that you need to be able to directly communicate with those people, not just via email, but be able to pick up the phone and call people because things move very quickly. And in the administration, I found that you don’t always have the most amount of time to be able to prep or give, members or their staff heads up, but you need to do that right after the thing is announced. So that staff relationships, talk to me a little bit about what it means to have, good principal member, relationships and that you you are directly engaging with the, members that are either on the committee or important to your principal.

One of the things I would say that is a little bit, of a of a of a surprise, I think, to people who encounter Congress for the first time is that each individual hill office is a small business unto itself. They have different cultures. They have different relationships between staff, and they have different decision making structures. And those structures are entirely idiosyncratic. You can probably take a guess that the chief of staff is gonna be an important decision maker.

But often, you know, a legislative assistant might be the key decision making person in the area that you’re looking to work on. Right? And so I think to your point about we come in and we don’t have the infrastructure built and we’re not gonna get the infrastructure. We have to build the infrastructure on the fly. I think the absolute core aspect of that that infrastructure is segmentation.

You’ve gotta come in and understand relationships that are important and vital to form immediately. And those those categories of people are gonna be the authorizing committee for your agency, the appropriating subcommittee for your agency, and then the full committee on appropriations, as well as any other authorizing committees. Because often jurisdiction is spread, throughout, different committees. But you’ve gotta really have those relationships locked down. Now, in many cases, when you’re a legislative affairs person, you might actually have a direct relationship with the principal, but your principal, your cabinet secretary, your under secretary is also a really big gun.

And those are the kind of people that members wanna get to know. Members wanna have, that relationship. And I I think you hit on such a great point about these relationships. First of all, like, I think we overestimate and we think of, lobbying as this kind of super complicated thing where you have to be chummy and and have drinks with people and and and, like, be best friends with congressional staff in order to achieve stuff. Actually, in order to get most of the benefit out of a relationship, you just need to know that person.

You just need to have that introductory meeting. You need to have an introductory meeting without an ask. So it’s just like, hey. I’m James. I’m Hugh.

I you know, this is what we do if I’m ever messing your stuff up. And then get that cell phone number. I think what the point you made is so important. A lot of times, we’re dealing with a huge aperture policy. We don’t have time to monitor every piece of political development throughout that that that legislative process.

So sometimes you end up jammed. And that’s when your cell phone number and your introductory meeting pay dividends because you can have that frictionless conversation with the decision maker that you need. And so that’s really, really key. It’s just segment and then get yourself in the door face to face with these guys. Make sure they have your cell and you have you have their cell.

Absolutely critical. And and, you know, really, that’s a lot of it. Once you’re there, that’s when you can think about strategy. That’s when you can think about all these different things. But that basic introduction is really the foundation of, how we approach things.

Then I would also maintain your record keeping. Right? I think it’s really important to come in with a robust understanding of what we what we’re trying to do, what you have done for a particular decision maker, and what you wanna do, as well as different interactions, different asks that they have. Like, that that record keeping is really gonna stand you in good stead because what it serves as is the basis of strategy. Right?

You know what? We we do the basics. We get we get in the door. We talk to these people, whatever, Then we build a strategy. Right?

And so you wanna talk a little bit about how you think about so we talked a little bit about staff relationships. Maybe how you think about once we have kind of the basic relational sort of architecture of our particular position, it could be the Commerce Department, the EPA. How do we proceed then in the generation of kind of a legislative strategy based on those relationships? Yeah. No matter what agency or or subagency or what part of the administration is, if you have an adversarial congress, you can almost assure that your boss at some point is gonna get brought before the committee.

So you wanna be able to delineate what members, your boss need to meet with, ahead of those committee hearings or ahead of those questions, so that you’re able to, 1, make sure that favorable questions are asked, and 2, potentially, you know, head off any questions that might be, you know, hard for your boss to answer or for the administration to navigate. And I think having that, member to member or principal to principal relationship is gonna be really important to make sure that they know that it’s not just the administration’s, you know, goals to to help advance what’s going on in the Hill, but it’s also the members in members’ direct interest that there are a lot of things in their district or in their state that are really important in that agency. And so being able to help them advance their priorities, is something that they want, And they wanna have a closeness with the with the administration in a way that, shows that they’re doing work, that they’re able to accomplish things, but ultimately that they’re able to tackle some of the things that might be important for their for their district or state.

Well, since you brought it up, let’s talk let’s talk hearing preparation just a little bit briefly. I think that’s a core aspect of of some of like, you know, some agencies have a pretty heavy hearing tempo, others don’t. What are some of the key elements? You know, you’ve you’ve done this with a number of different administration officials, murder boards, the rhythm of a hearing. How do you think about maybe setting that up?

Yeah. So you’ll wanna make sure that, you have a bead on, who the who your opponents in congress might be. So those are gonna be people probably, you know, who don’t share the administration’s values or your boss’s values, and and get a sense for what they’ve asked in the past of these types of hearings because a lot of these hearings happen, you know, administration to administration year to year. So you get a pretty good sense of what they might ask. So you do a little opposition research.

And but then you wanna set up, you know, murder boards. So basically, make sure that your, principal is as prepared for the hearing or prepared for an interview as possible. So you’re creating basically a list, of charges and responses based off of those, off your opposition research. So then you wanna work with, your allies on the committee or allies, in the congress on saying these are the things that we are likely to be asked. These might be good follow-up questions to ask.

But also, if I get jammed on a question, you know, give me some time, rehabilitate the witness, give me some time to respond that isn’t directly gonna suck up, a question from you. And then, ultimately, it looks like maybe doing meetings beforehand. So bringing people into the room, saying here’s where we’re at, and getting actual answers to their questions about what they may have so they’re able to better understand the subject matter. And I think that’s a really important point, the rhythm of the hearing. Right?

I mean, I haven’t testified in front of congress. I don’t I don’t know if you have. I don’t I don’t think you have. But, like, you know, there’s a a fundamental difference between getting beat down for 5 minutes and then, getting a break for 5 minutes versus getting hit continuously with hostile questioning. And so, you know, getting to that rhythm and and and getting members there.

Right? Like, a lot of, you know, we we we were talking about the subcommittee level or or or otherwise, you know, members aren’t, you know, your your members might not wanna come to a hearing that’s deliberately crafted by the, opponents of the the presidential administration. Like, that, you know, they don’t they don’t particularly focus on on the issue set that that that this is this is set up to beat you down with. It’s not something that’s very favorable to the administration. But if the if the members of congress who defend you aren’t gonna be in the room, you’re gonna have a long, long morning.

Yeah. That’s a that’s an extremely important point because of the way that, you alternate between one side and the other and asking questions. If there aren’t, a stream or there aren’t members, there to defend you, then you’re gonna be just inundated with hostile questions. And so being able to get that break and answer questions about the subject matter from friendly, members is really important. No.

So kind of progressing the third point, knowing the members, that are aligned with your administration’s issues, how do you go about knowing those? How would you go about researching them? Obviously, there’s a a congressional track record if they’re in Congress. So There’s not a track record if they’ve not been in Congress. So how do you be able to identify those issues so that, you know, if your agency or your subagency or whatever part of the administration is does something in that member’s, like, an interest area that you’re able to, you know, to push it to them and have them echo and support and and come out and endorse what you’ve done?

So this is this notion of issue up take, which is such an important issue. Like, like and it really is one of the trickier aspects of legislative affairs, which is we are trying to find, what in a former, life, you and I would call a champion. Right? We’re trying to to to to find a champion who’s not merely going to support an administration policy when he has a decision point directly in front of him, but to actually advocate in advance that administration priority. That’s tough.

But what you need, going back to the segmentation, is a pretty good psychographic profile of how members tell themselves stories about their careers. And, you know, I think probably, you know, obviously, there’s some of the the clear ones congress.gov. If the member has decided to introduce a bill on it, that’s the most costly thing a member can do from a time, staff, and political perspective in terms of position taking. Well, that means they’re probably pretty interested in the subject matter. And if you have an administration initiative that’s orthogonal right?

Maybe it’s about government waste, maybe it’s about deregulation, maybe it’s about, you know, restoring American energy. They happen to be, you know, a big proponent of that. I think it’s about nuclear energy. They’re a big proponent of nuclear energy. That’s gonna be you’re gonna be pushing on an open door.

So doing that psychographic profile I would also strongly advise anybody to look get the almanac of America politics, the latest version. Spend the $85. It is incredible. It will give you an understanding of the geography, both political and social and human of every member of congress, every governor, and every senator. It is incredible.

And from that, you can start to build out what your targets are and what you what you think might be best. The other thing is, you know, you gotta, at that point. Right? So uptake is is a heavier ass than vote. So that’s when you get your principal in there.

That’s when you do a little star star power. Right? You get the you get the secretary, you get the administrator, you get the director over there and say, hey, we’d really like to do this, which will show the the, member or the senator that the administration is committed to this policy. And therefore, if they do perceive this policy, they can expect to receive actual backing as opposed to merely a thank you from a staff, which I would love it to be a a gracious sufficiency is often insufficient for, members of Congress. So Yeah.

And one one area that I found major success in was, especially if they had a long track record, was just going back through old press releases. You know, digital digital communications has not always been a real thing, and so the standard of, press releases and sort of old school, communications, has only, you know, has only in the last handful of years really changed. So if they’ve been in congress for a lengthy period of time, going back, you’re gonna find most amount of information in old press releases. This is absolutely maybe the best tip. Like, if you walk out of here with nothing, understand that you may understand what a member cares about by what he issues press releases on in a very rapid clip.

Everything else is built on top of that. And, like, those press releases will tell you immediately what they care about. They will tell you how they think about an issue. Right? And, just totally invaluable.

In terms of in terms there is no better member evaluation tool out there than the media tab of a member’s congress.gov website, in terms of time investment versus output. And so go through that, know those. I think that’s absolutely, like, really critical kind of congressional lore. Yeah. And they They will tell you what they’re trying to do.

Yeah. They will tell what they care about, and those are communicated because they want people in their district, they want people in the media to know. And, in similar fashion, they most members will issue, like, a weekly or a monthly newsletter, and those are gonna communicate even more deliberately about, what it is in either the district or what it is in the congress that they’re doing. And a lot of that stuff can pop up over August recess. And can you talk a little bit about why that might be important?

So members are receiving and being barraged by a constant stream of information. Right? And so they’ve unlike normal sort of people who are who don’t have to do this, members are constantly forced to make permanent irrevocable decisions about what they think about politics or or policies. Right? So, like, you and I will not have not voted.

Right? But you vote as a member and you are, like, sort of permanently liable for that vote throughout the entire recorded span of the American Republic. So they’re constantly kind of on the lookout for real information about what a particular actually means. And so during recess, in a lot of cases they’ll be home. And when people bring stuff up to them directly, they pay attention.

And so, you know, if you can if you can find a way to get information, admitted to to members when they’re in their districts in addition to from, like, key local decision makers or whatever, that’s really gonna change, an a member’s political calculus in a way that immediately DC lobbying can’t. They listen to their districts. They listen to the to their local papers. They they listen to those things and they they find that information very real and very persuasive. And even if it’s not persuasive, it changes the political calculus.

And so, thinking about how you can, you know, maybe influence a member in the in the district or show that an issue affects the district is really really important. I think that’s a good segue to something that is a a key advantage. You’ve got a lot of deficiencies in, the administration. It’s a difficult job, very difficult job. And so lobbying is a hard job and doing it well is even harder.

One of the core advantages you have is your ability to produce information. Right? So August is a particularly critical time to apply and deploy that information. But, you know, you have the a hoard of careers available to you that work work, essentially for you depending on the division. You know, real information about how government programs are actually working is often quite difficult to acquire, like who, how much, how it’s working.

You can get all that stuff. You can get it correctly, and you can get it out to sort of influence the information space. So understanding how your career staff and your your pal your other policy divisions are, like, producing information and understanding how you can frame the terms of that debate, like, how much money is being spent? How much money has been spent on a particular thing? That’s very difficult to acquire for an outside observer, but you can choose and pick, that information, because you have access to that to that information fashioning power, which is so powerful.

I think in in particular, knowing, and and as we kinda wrap up here, knowing, what you talked about, knowing what your, powers are. Right? Knowing how and what levers you have and when to pull them, that’s not always communicated from one administration to the next. So, if you do get a job, you should try to find the person most aligned with you who had the job prior to you. Go meet with them, go talk to them, ask them, hey, should I, should I go meet with anybody else?

Like, get to know the people and ask them what it is that they didn’t know when they showed up that that you would like to know. And so, just in conclusion, you know, I think, you know, staff relationships obviously matter, principal relationships really matter, and knowing the issues, that of the members with direct equities on the on the committees or, they are directly interested in your agency or sub agencies, you know, bucket of of issues are is really important. I don’t know if you have any clues in that. So I’ll just I’ll just make 2 two two, points as expeditiously as I can. Number 1, part of the the the difficulty and core of of being an effective legislative affairs staffer is understanding what you have actually have to accomplish on a particular administration policy initiative.

You know, if you can do it solely through executive action, that means you need to protect the executive action. You don’t have to go out there and and, pass a law. Right? And so what you do need to do is prevent an executive action that could be politically unpopular in the Congress by preventing the junction of Republicans and Democrats. Right?

Well, that that’s that’s when the I mean, the Congress is the article one branch. The executive branch in modern times is more powerful, but Congress, unified, will beat you. And so you need to prevent the effectuation of that junction. That’s really important. So thinking through that is is is key.

You know? If you wanna if you need to pass a bill, you need to get, I don’t know, $500,000,000 for something. Well, that’s gonna have to get passed through the congress, and congress requires bipartisan action for the most part if you’re if you’re trying to beat a filibuster at 60. And so calibrating your investment, calibrating the the expectations of your team, is really important. And then finally, I would just say, you know, there’s an old adage in Washington.

Friends come and go, but enemies are forever. Very heady stuff leading the administration’s position on Capitol Hill. Don’t be a jerk. Always maintain your relationships. It’s always better to to to not burn somebody.

And so that’s the thought I would I would definitely leave with. Don’t be too aggressive. Be firm. Be tough in the service of the president’s agenda, but but do not be a jerk. Yeah.

That’s a great point to end on, James. Thank you for, this discussion, and hopefully, it’s, fruitful to those, watching. Absolutely. Thank you.