Turning the unexpected into money and momentum for your campaign.

Originally published in Campaigns & Elections magazine on December 12, 2011.

It was during an address to a joint session of Congress that a relatively unknown South Carolina congressman became a household name overnight by calling President Obama a liar.

After Rep. Joe Wilson pointed at the president and audibly shouted, “You lie!” in response to an Obama claim that his healthcare proposal would not cover illegal immigrants, the South Carolina Republican was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. The moment galvanized politicians, pundits, and voters—both pro- and anti-Wilson.

As congressional leaders condemned Wilson’s outburst and pleaded civility, a viral movement swept across the online community mirroring the Tea Party dynamic that would govern the 2010 midterm elections. Both Wilson and his Democratic opponent raised millions of dollars online in a matter of weeks for a congressional race that wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen before Wilson’s outburst.

Leaving ideology aside for a moment, what’s a campaign to do when faced with its own “You lie” moment? In an age when the most nimble and responsive campaigns are often the ones that win online, it’s not a bad idea to give a game plan some serious thought.

Start by realizing that events of this nature are extremely time-sensitive and the narrative surrounding them can quickly become muddled. It’s crucial that your campaign leverage the Internet and social media to fundraise, garner positive earned media, recruit new supporters and rally your base—quickly and efficiently.

A few dos and don’ts when it comes to converting controversy into cache online:

DO Strike While the Iron is Hot—and Keep Striking. The very moment your campaign has its own “You lie” moment, the clock starts running on how long you’ve got to make effective use of it. Within days, if not hours, it will have been analyzed to death on cable news and you’ll have lost your ability to get your message out. In the case of Wilson’s big-money moment, his team knew they had to work quickly and were able to bring in over $1 million from conservatives online in the hours immediately following “You lie.”

In late 2010, liberal lion Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) took to the Senate floor to filibuster the extension of Bush-era tax cuts. He stayed there for more than nine hours. The “Bernie-buster” was a surefire earned media goldmine and his staff immediately took to Twitter to create a social media sensation. Within hours, as Sanders still held the floor, he had acquired over 4,000 new Twitter followers and became the top-trending Twitter topic for most of the day. Team Sanders used outgoing tweets from the senator’s official account to define the message, creating a drumbeat that was quickly echoed by liberal groups like MoveOn.org.

DO Money Bomb. Money bombs are an online fundraising tool that became part of the campaign lexicon during the 2010 midterms, when candidates pulled in Tea Party-fueled millions via online donations from all over the country. The number one item you need for a successful money bomb is a specific, galvanizing message or event, which you’ve got. Now you need to turn it into a catchy fundraising email to blast to any and all campaign lists. The Sanders campaign, for example, could have emailed supporters repeatedly during the “Bernie-buster” and asked them to donate $1 for each hour he remained on the Senate floor. Small asks are key and most will give more.

DO Solicit Voter Responses. This will likely be a love-it-or-hate-it moment in terms of how voters feel about your candidate. You won’t convert anyone who was turned off by the remark, so your time is much better spent activating those who thought it was right on. Social media is key here. Develop a dedicated Twitter hashtag and special Facebook badge to allow supporters and surrogates to spread the word, encouraging like-minded folks to repost or retweet. Be sure to harvest the new supporters you’ve recruited.

DO Be Open to Criticism. In a situation like this, is it better to open up your campaign’s social media platforms for comments—both positive and negative—or should you closely monitor and police feedback? We think it’s important that you are, or at least appear to be, open to criticism. This doesn’t mean that you need to accept or placate your opponent’s point of view, but actively stifling negative feedback merely gives your opponents another talking point and creates a process story.

That being said, if your candidate’s comments have really fired up the opposition, things can get ugly. If detractors are making extreme accusations against your candidate, you should delete selected comments that truly cross the line. Allegations of racism or use of profanity would fall into that category. Just be prepared to defend it on the grounds that you’re committed to maintaining a Facebook page appropriate for viewers of all ages.

DON’T Engage Opponents. In the wake of any moment that generates significant controversy, comments and tweets directed at your candidate will often be unfair and he or she will likely be chomping at the bit to respond. Resist the temptation to engage directly with individual opponents via social media; it is a no-win situation for you. If there are serious allegations being made that the campaign decides must be addressed, do so via a press release or cable news interview which you can push out via YouTube and encourage supporters to post and tweet.

John F. Kennedy famously pointed out, “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” Many would view a moment like Wilson’s as a crisis to be avoided; but if your campaign reacts quickly, intelligently, and maintains message discipline, you can turn a potential crisis into an advantage.

Patrick Hynes is the founder and president of Hynes Communications, a global agency focused on new media and online communications for public affairs clients. Amelia Chasse serves as an account director at the firm.

Google launched Google+, its answer to Facebook, last week amidst a good deal of, um, “buzz,” not all of it good.

The search giant has been hungry to break into the social networking space for years but has yet to get it quite right.

Still, Google has a billion daily web users and a vast advertising customer database, all eager for the Next Big Thing in communications technology. Is Google+ that Next Big Thing?

More important questions for our purposes are these: What utility and functionality does Google+ bring to the table for public affairs and communications professionals? Does your coalition or your client need a Google+ strategy? Below Hynes Communications analyzes some features and share some additional thoughts about Google’s new product.

1. Users can +1 your favorable search results and media placements, which in theory could increase their appeal in Google’s search algorithm. Your coalition or client can use this feature to help make news stories go viral, as they currently do with Facebook “Likes” and Twitter. However, early demonstrations show it is not yet competitive with Facebook and Twitter in the social sharing of news.

2. That said, a new “Notifications” feature on the Google toolbar (a dropdown menu that provides activity updates to your Google+ account) shows a good deal of promise. To date, Notifications simply tell you who has added you to a Circle or commented on a post. But it’s easy to imagine Notifications telling you who within your Circles have read an article (think Facebook Connect on Huffington Post but for every Google-owned property). This would generate a powerful deliverable that tells you which Key Influential or Target has read an important news story or even seen a potent YouTube video.

3. Circles have the ability to streamline message distribution to multiple press and stakeholder lists, making it potentially valuable to harried public relations and public affairs professions. This functionality is not limited to Google+ users. Google will deliver these alerts via e-mail to people not on Google+. However, unlike with Facebook, there appears to be no easy way to upload distribution lists to your account.

4. “Sparks” are essentially RSS feeds you can read from Google+ based on your favorite topics (like Google Reader). With two clicks you can then share these stories with your Circles. This makes Sparks a potentially major timesaver and powerful targeting tool for public affairs professionals interested in narrowcasting news stories or blog posts.

5. The final item of note about Google+ is that it is a platform, not a finished, finite product. That means developers will help to build it out and craft it to their own purposes. Social games will be played on Google+ as they are on Facebook. So creative public affairs professionals have an important new outlet to drive a message, collect information, build audiences and conduct media intelligence.

Published in the Daily Caller on June 29, 2011

Last Saturday, the Nevada Democratic Party’s Central Committee selected State Treasurer Kate Marshall to be the Democratic candidate in the upcoming special election to replace now-Sen. Dean Heller in the House of Representatives.

Marshall won the near-universal support of those voting, a testament to the strong backing from influential party members with which she enters the race. However, the most powerful individual behind Marshall in her fight to take Nevada’s Second District appears to be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

As of Saturday, Reid — whose 2010 campaign earned high praise for smart and early organizing that guaranteed former opponent Sharron Angle a much tougher fight than many expected or even observed during the campaign itself — had reportedly already helped Marshall raise close to $100,000.

More money will likely follow. Per Fred Lokken, a political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College quoted by the Reno Gazette-Journal, “What Harry Reid has repeatedly demonstrated is that he has juice. Not only can he raise a phenomenal amount of money for his own campaign, his star power also brings those types of contributions to the people he endorses.”

But the Reid factor is just one of two reasons that the special election, which is slated for September 13, is worth watching.

The second is the lack of clarity surrounding who the contenders in the race will be.

A week before Democrats nominated Marshall, Republicans nominated former state senator and state party chairman Mark Amodei. Provided that Nevada’s Supreme Court signs off on the method of selection used in both cases, the race is set. If, however, the Court allows other candidates to be included on the ballot, the race could be somewhat messy. Former USS Cole Commander Kirk Lippold wants to run and has some prominent supporters, including former Congresswoman Barbara Vucanovich, who represented the district from 1983 to 1997. However, according to some involved with the race, Republicans’ desire to beat Reid by proxy is motivating them to unite and get moving.

Amodei, for his part, has come out swinging.

As of Saturday, his campaign had brought in about two-thirds as much cash as Marshall’s.

Following his nomination, Amodei released an ad that might politely be described as “attention-grabbing” (though others have used spicier terminology) focused on the issue of the national debt. Amodei’s campaign concedes it’s “provocative.” However, they also clearly see the issue of the national debt — and the debt limit — as a major concern in the district, as it is nationally. According to Amodei consultant Rob Stutzman, “We see the debt limit as a very timely and important issue, particularly for the voters of Nevada … Mark was anxious to set the agenda for what this race is about.” So, too, is the National Republican Congressional Committee, it seems: On Wednesday, the NRCC released a Web ad focused on the national debt entitled “Kate Marshall’s Chinese Credit Card.”

Marshall, for her part, has been arguing that the race is about many of the usual catch-phrases popular with Democratic candidates running in Republican districts while seeking not to offend. To summarize a fundraising email, her goals are to stand for working families, create jobs, control runaway spending and make government perform for Nevadans, not for special interests. But observers of the race say Marshall is already veering far to the right in an effort to appear more conservative than she really is. One individual watching the race closely characterized Marshall as in truth more Hillary Clinton than Heath Schuler.

While benefiting from Reid’s support, Marshall also seems to simultaneously be seeking to distance herself from him, and from President Obama. In a statement to the Gazette-Journal, Marshall said “Sen. Reid is supporting me, and I greatly appreciate that. But this is about one person and one vote, and I will need every vote to win this race.” Marshall has also been critical of the Democrats’ health care reform law, noting that Obamacare has not proven effective in bringing down health care costs, and she has signaled that President Obama has not done enough to create jobs.

A dive into statistics relevant to the district indicates why Marshall is positioning herself as something of a conservative, Blue Dog Democrat. As of January 2011, NV-2 had close to 180,000 registered Republicans, about 150,000 registered Democrats and — perhaps critically — about 20,000 conservative, registered Independent American Party voters. That combines to give Republicans an advantage. In 2006 — a bloodbath year for Republicans, who sustained losses elsewhere across the West — Heller beat his Democratic opponent by five points. Despite Reid beating Angle by five points across the state in 2010, he did not beat her in the district (nor did Obama beat Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain).

That may explain why, despite Democrats’ recent track record of besting Republicans in special elections, they are not getting carried away with optimism quite yet. As Eric Herzik, chair of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno, and himself a registered Republican, says: “I keep coming back to the numbers. It is such a daunting task for a Democrat.”

But, as one operative put it, special elections — even in R+5 districts like this one — should not be treated as “gimmes,” and turnout will be key. Watch for plenty of money to be plowed into this race to get voters on both sides to the polls on a day when “election” is not likely to be the first thing on many people’s minds.

Liz Mair is a political consultant focusing on communications and new media. During 2008, she served as the Republican National Committee’s Online Communications Director. Her clients include several Fortune 500 companies and major trade associations; she previously consulted for California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC.

Published in the Daily Caller on 6/23/2011

Among many political commentators, the meme du jour regarding the 2012 presidential race is that President Obama’s real opponent is the economy; who Republicans nominate is of limited importance.

On its face, this characterization makes sense. As Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson note in their book about the 2008 election, as early as spring 2007, focus groups were turning out results that showed deep pessimism about the country’s direction, with economic worries overshadowing all else. That was a setup that inherently put Sen. John McCain in a bind, as the candidate wearing the same partisan label as the incumbent overseeing what many voters saw as a period of deep national decline. When the financial crisis hit, the deal was sealed: McCain was, you might say, destined to lose.

But what if McCain had faced a different opponent, one less associated with the dual concepts of “hope” and “change,” one less capable of raising money, one lacking a platform like MyBarackObama that gave Obama an online and offline boost? The election likely would have been closer. What if Republicans had nominated a candidate other than McCain, arguably at the time the Republican with the strongest appeal to Independent and Democratic voters? Obama would have had an even greater edge.

The reality is, in politics, myriad factors affect the outcome of races, and the identity of the candidates matters.

With the 2012 presidential race now underway, and the Republican field largely set, Obama has two major, related liabilities: The economy and the general sense of the direction of the country. He also has a number of assets: Americans like him (if not his policies); recent polling shows him scoring better on foreign policy and national security matters than on the economy; he is likely to have a very large campaign war-chest; the RNC remains in financially dire straits, and Democratic-aligned third-party groups will play in the 2012 race just as Republican-aligned groups will. Obama will do a better job than most, perhaps all, Republican candidates in leveraging technology to boost his campaign. Perhaps most importantly, he is the incumbent. To what extent any of these factors proves overwhelming, or irrelevant, depends not just on the unemployment rate, but also greatly on whom Republicans nominate.

Like Obama, each Republican contender has assets and liabilities that they will bring to the table, and which will significantly affect the outcome of the race. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, currently the man to beat, looks likely to end the current financing quarter with plenty of cash in the bank. Last month, he locked down $10 million in a single, day-long fundraising push. Earlier this year, Republican insiders indicated Romney already had the backing of about one-third of the party’s big donors. The more it looks like Sarah Palin will enter the race, the more big donors will flock to Romney. In a race against a president who, news reports indicate, plans to raise and spend as much as $1 billion, money will matter — and Romney appears likely to have a lot of it.

That’s a big help, but of course, Romney has his liabilities, too. While his record in business will prove inherently attractive to some voters, should he win the nomination, it will be the subject of hard-hitting attacks ads with which Democrats can be expected to blanket airwaves, especially in the Midwest. That’s a strategy that could prove highly effective, particularly if Romney is forced to spend more time and energy on states that traditionally go Republican because of skepticism over his ideological commitment, religion, or both (no matter how unfair concern about the latter of those is). Significant segments of the Republican base dislike Romneycare, his health care plan that formed the basis for Obamacare, which remains controversial and unpopular among voters in his own party. Romney also can strike observers as plastic, robotic, and inauthentic. More Piers Morgan-esque interviews may diminish that, but for the time being, it should not be discounted.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty frequently is charged with being uncharismatic, boring, and in the aftermath of the most recent Republican debate, shy about throwing punches. However, one of those liabilities could in fact prove an asset: Obama continues to strike some as a lavish-spending, fiscally irresponsible celebrity-esque president at a time when voters might prefer the less-exciting, responsible, trustworthy, relatable guy from next door. Pawlenty also has a clearly positive outlook and is capable of making Americans feel good, much like candidate Obama from 2008 — coincidentally, the Obama Americans would probably like to see more of, but who may or may not make routine appearances over the next year-plus.

Pawlenty also has a record, particularly on health care and spending, that presents a clearer contrast with Obama’s than other Republicans — and Minnesota’s population is among the better-off, healthiest and most educated in the U.S. If health care remains a high-profile issue, he could benefit (the same is true to a degree with spending). If it does not, he could suffer. His campaign is also generally regarded as more tech-savvy, potentially enabling him to better match Obama on that front. Currently, however, Pawlenty lacks Romney’s fundraising base. He will need to bring in quite a bit more money to match Obama should he win the nomination.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has, since before his appointment as ambassador to China, been the prospective contender the Obama camp has reportedly been most worried about, with campaign manager David Plouffe saying in 2009 that Huntsman makes him “a wee bit queasy.” Of course, some parts of the Republican base might take a similar view, unnerved by Huntsman’s more moderate profile and quick transition from ambassador to China to Obama opponent, which might diminish enthusiasm for phone-banking, door-knocking, and other essential volunteer activity in some quarters should he win the nomination.

Huntsman also has a record in business, which is potentially exploitable in view of voter angst about unemployment numbers. Huntsman’s business connections could enable him to finance a tough, expensive campaign (which he does not plan to pay for out of his own wealth) and bolster arguments that he knows how to create jobs. As a Republican nominee, the Utahan might run a more attention-grabbing, earned-media dominating campaign than other Republicans or indeed Obama (see ads created by Huntsman adviser Fred Davis), which could minimize the impact of advantages Obama might otherwise have. Huntsman has also done smart things from a new media standpoint, and that will help. In the event that a major national security event occurs in the run-up to November 2012, and if Obama missteps or voters’ priorities shift, Huntsman could clean up. Bill Clinton benefited when the 1992 election became focused on “the economy, stupid” and George H. W. Bush’s leadership in the context of the Gulf War was disregarded as yesterday’s news. In 2012, that scenario could occur in reverse.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the (current) non-contender around whom attention swirls, could, if he runs, be Obama’s toughest opponent or his easiest of these four, depending on what circumstances prevail. Some Democratic insiders see him as the real-life equivalent of the West Wing’s Gov. Robert Ritchie, depicted in the show as a conservative, ideological, dim-bulb Southerner. Others say Perry is just too similar in terms of his appearance and demeanor to George W. Bush to pass muster with voters quite yet.

But Perry could be a real threat to Obama in an election about jobs. Texas currently boasts an unemployment rate of 8 percent, more than a percentage point lower than the national rate. According to the Wall Street Journal, Texas accounts for 45 percent of net U.S. job creation in the “post-recovery” period, using non-farm payroll employment numbers. As several conservative bloggers and commentators have been quick to quip, like Obama, Perry too inherited an economy from George W. Bush — it’s just that Texas’s looks very successful compared to what we see nationwide.

A Perry campaign would have the money it needs to ensure voters understand which candidate knows how to create jobs, no matter what else is happening in Republican-land. Arguably more than any other candidacy, a Perry run would diminish Obama’s ability to claim credit for anything that even remotely appears to be going right. And say what you will about Perry’s superficial conformity with stereotypes often associated with Republicans, unlike most politicians, Perry does not come off as putting on an act.

A lot can change in a year-and-a-bit, and yes, factors like the state of the economy will be important in deciding the outcome of the 2012 race. But they will not be the sole determiner; who Republicans nominate still matters greatly.

Liz Mair is a political consultant focusing on communications and new media. During 2008, she served as the Republican National Committee’s Online Communications Director. Her clients include several Fortune 500 companies and major trade associations; she previously consulted for California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC.

Yes. And no.

A recent POLITICO story titled “Social media not so hot on the Hill” no doubt caused some trade association executives to reconsider their budgets.When a member of Congress tells a major Beltway publication on the record that “there’s a lot of trolls on Twitter . . . I just got to the point that I was sick and tired of it,” one can assume that the Congressional love affair with social media is beginning to wane. Like star-struck lovers, issue advocacy campaign managers have spent too many resources chasing the proverbial shiny objects of the Internet and not enough on meaningful grasstops and grassroots communications with Members of Congress, regardless of the medium. And many consultants have too eagerly encouraged this kind of behavior to the benefit of their own bottom lines.

But does that mean the relationship is ending? Hardly, it just means that the courtship stage is ending; moving from the “this is fun and anything goes” stage to the search for more meaning and substance. Advocacy groups that realize that the marriage isn’t ending and are willing to adjust to the new environment will continue to reap the benefits of social media outreach. But this will require a shift in strategy for many, and as with marriage, it is likely that more than 50% of those in the advocacy world will ignore the signals and fail.

A close examination of the POLITICO story mentioned above bears out the true grievance from Capitol Hill: Members’ inboxes, Twitter feeds and Facebook walls are cluttered with Astroturf. This is the same grievance that Members and top staff have expressed about all Astroturf campaigns, whether they are postcard mailings, patch-through calls or faxes.

A recent survey of top Hill staff conducted by the Congressional Management Foundation titled “Communicating with Congress: Perceptions of Citizen Advocacy on Capitol Hill” demonstrates exactly what most advocacy professionals ought to know intuitively: The quality of your communication with Capitol Hill matters more than the quantity. This is true across all media.

“Congressional offices are integrating social media tools into their operations, both to gain an understanding of constituents’ opinions and to communicate information about the Member’s views. Nearly two-thirds of staff surveyed (64%) think Facebook is an important way to understand constituents’ views and nearly three-quarters (74%) think it is important for communicating their Member’s views,” reads the summary of the study.

The study also notes that Twitter “has gained acceptance on Capitol Hill,” with 42% of respondents saying it is important. Almost three-quarters of respondents say YouTube is important for sharing Members’ views.

The disparity between anecdotal evidence presented by POLITICO and the information provided in the CMF survey is easy to reconcile. An actual constituent with an original thought posting a self-produced web video onto a member’s Facebook wall and Twitter feed is significantly more meaningful than scores, or evenhundreds, of uniformly-worded tweets targeted directly to @[RandomMemberofCongress]. For that matter, this single video, which would cost nothing to produce, would be exponentially more powerful than a message-tested postproduction web video, which costs thousands to produce.

Unfortunately, some advocacy professionals forget that the “social web” is just a tool to facilitate communications with decision makers. They allowed themselves to be misled by self-appointed social media gurus into spending lots of money on tactical gimmicks that are predictably ineffective. A watched phone never rings and an expensive, customized app never tweets unless someone uses it. The problem is that many advocacy groups in Washington, D.C. pay for numbers; they want thick reports with big totals. How many views your web video has and how many Facebook “likes” your op-ed receives trump actual persuasion.

But if your target audience consists of a handful of Members and staff on a specific committee, 15,000 views of a web video may be 14,990 more than you really need. And that means you are talking to a lot of people who willhave little or no impact on helping you achieve your goal. This is not to say that ambient noise is immaterial to a public affairs campaign. On the contrary, it is absolutely essential. But successful campaigns do not make it their master.

As the POLITICO story highlights, strategies — and yes, gimmicks — toproduce numbers for fancy reports have attracted the resources of advocacy organizations with ill effect. No doubt, many in the advocacy community will continue down this path, but the smart manager will recognize that in the world of Congressional relations, quality trumps quantity.

Patrick Hynes is the President of Hynes Communications.

After the whistleblower group Wikileaks released Afghan war documents identifying local informants, its founder Julian Assange said in an interview with the Today Show that if American sympathizers were targeted in the divestment’s wake it would constitute his own collateral damage: “If we had, in fact, made that mistake then of course that would be something we would take very seriously.” Continue Reading

At the Huffington Post today, I write about a Washington, DC-area homeless man who is using social media to highlight the plights of his underserved community. Admirable and indeed pioneering, but nonetheless agitating for someone who grew up dirt poor in South Georgia: He rebuffs formal 9-to-5 jobs lest it detract from his capacity to marshal his burgeoning social media empire. Continue Reading

Even as the House Republican Conference looks to sell the public on its new-found spending restraint, we learned that earmark requests for the Congressional Tea Party Caucus—whose members hoped to position as a leader on spending—had crested the $1 billion mark. In a op-ed today for Fox News, I warn legislators that voters—in particular the anti-big government activists whose enthusiasm they’re looking to coopt with cutesy caucuses—won’t swallow another Republican-led House that spends like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Continue Reading

My piece, up at CNN:

In less than two months, members of the Republican National Committee will convene at National Harbor, just outside Washington, and select a chairman to lead the organization over the next two years. Continue Reading

ex wants to talk in person
how to know that an ex boyfriends wants to get back together
how to get back with ur ex gf fast
words to get my ex back
how to get a girl back by text

The 2010 midterm cycle has produced an unprecedented number of female candidates, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1992.  Hynes VP Liz Mair spoke with the Atlantic about the trend and what it means for

psychology of getting your ex back, how to win your partner back.

the most amazing way to get back together

how to get your girlfriend back through text

how to get my ex boyfriend to want me back

i give up hope that ex bf will ever come back

how can i get my ex girlfriend back

best songs getting over an ex g

get back after break up

ex girlfriend

how to win your ex back

is it bad not to text your girl back

how to my ex boyfriend back

how to word an i want you back text to a boyfriend

what to text ur ex boyfriend to get him back

tips to getting back with ex boyfriend

How to make ex bf miss you after 2 years

why is my ex girlfriend trying to compete with me

how do i get my man back

letters to win your ex back

message to get your girlfriend back
the “old boys club” going forward. Continue Reading