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After the election, DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen picked up an additional job, Assistant to the Speaker, and a broad portfolio that includes policy liaison duties, work with the White House and the wonderful task of "incumbent retention" -- making sure Democratic members of congress, especially more-vulnerable freshmen and sophomores, keep their seats. This generally entails a lot of staff oversight and making sure that each member's office is following best-practices for constituent outreach. One new way of doing so: Van Hollen's office has sent a memo to members' staff urging them to appoint someone to work with constituents interested in participating in programs from the stimulus act. The idea originated in the office of Rep. Dan Maffei and was quickly seen as a smart move. A memo sent out by the office and obtained by the Prospect details the role of these "economic development coordinators":
"It will be the job of this individual to provide guidance, answer questions, coordinate with state officials, research formulas and application processes, write support letters, and troubleshoot for worthy individuals, government entities, groups or organizations who would like to access funds ... transparency measures are a large part of what gave this package credibility, and our constituents expect and deserve this money to land where it was intended. Accordingly, your office needs to be ready and willing to raise heck if and when you see things going wrong."Several members have already signed on to the idea and detailed staffers to deal with recovery issues, including Reps. Paul Hodes, Larry Kissell and Eric Massa. The Dems' continuing work on the stimulus is in part communications strategy: a separate section of the memo encourages offices to "brand" the stimulus and use local statistics to communicate with skeptics and keep them updated on its results. But more than that, detailing these staffers to manage the economic recovery locally is smart political outreach to ensure a complex program works. "It helps to put in another layer of accountability," one House Democratic aide told me. "People are going to be calling about his anyways and it makes sense to have one point-person on it."The Democratic leadership is starting to buy the idea that they live and die on the success of their policies, and they're willing to devote extra resources to ensuring that their districts can benefit from the economic stimulus legislation in tangible ways.
-- Tim Fernholz
