Statehouse Staffers Explain How To Influence Ga. Lawmakers -- WABE
Channel: Better Georgia
Date: 2017-02-16

“People are much more fired up than they were before,” says Stefan Turkheimer, who works with Democratic Sen. Elena Parent from DeKalb County.

Current staffers working in the Georgia Legislature agree that contacting and influencing state lawmakers should be approached much differently than reaching out to members of Congress.

“There’s a big difference between Washington, where they’re getting 3,000 calls for and against [an issue],” Turkheimer says. “You can affect legislation at the local level in a way that you can’t at the national level.” 

Tom Krause, a staffer for Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert of Athens, says there’s a theory at the capitol: one or two emails or calls perks up the ears of a lawmaker, a dozen contacts and they know something must be up, but 20 or 30 and “you know it’s a crisis situation and something that’s going to take a lot of your time.”