D.C. DeWitt lays out all the reasons that Tom Price is a truly horrible choice for Health and Human Services. This diary is about how we can prevent his confirmation in the senate.
First of all, for those of you planning to come to Washington, DC for the counter-inaugural or any related protest, visit your Senators’ offices and tell them you want them to oppose Price. Office visits are the gold standard in lobbying.
For everyone else, here are some ideas as to how to block Price’s confirmation. Every senator has district offices Find out where your senators’ district offices are located, and visit them. Senators will assume that for every person who cares enough about blocking a nominee enough to visit a district office, there are 100 more who care enough to vote on election day.
We should visit every senator. We need to let Democrats know that we expect them to defend health care. We need to let the Republicans know that we are organizing on this one. All politicians are susceptible to pressure, but the ones most susceptible will be the Republicans up for election in 2018, Jeff Flake(AR), Joe Donnelly(IN), Angus King(ME), Roger Wicker(MS), Deb Fischer(NB), Dean Heller (NV), Bob Corker (TN), Ted Cruz (TX), Orrin Hatch (UT), and John Barrasso (WY). Dean Heller is especially vulnerable as Clinton carried Nevada.
When you visit your senators’ offices, write a diary about your experience, that we can track what the responses are.
In addition to visiting our senators’ offices, we also need to be writing letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are one of the most popular sections of any newspaper, so this is an opportunity to build support for our position. Even if your letter is not published, it gives the local newspaper a feel for popular sentiment and will affect news selection. When you write your letter, in addition to outlining all the reasons that Price is not suitable to be Sec. of HHS, mention your Senator’s name. All press secretaries have Google news alerts on their member’s name, and so it will come up on his daily news alert.
For example, you could write that “Dean Heller needs to oppose the confirmation of Tom Price for Sec. of HHS because his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and support for privatizing Medicare will jeopardize the health care of millions of Nevadans”. The next day Heller’s press secretary will see the letter in his daily news alerts and will know that people in Nevada don’t like Price.
Alice Marshall is the author of The precinct captain’s guide to political victory.