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Washington DC - The violence that erupted in the aftermath of the Iran elections left very few around the world untouched. Increasingly, US policymakers have looked to the Iranian-American community and to National Iranian American Council for feedback and guidance. As a grass-roots organization representing Americans of Iranian descent, NIAC in turn depends on feedback and surveys of its membership to determine its priorities and inform its directions. At no time has the input of the NIAC membership been more important than during the tumultuous post-election period.

Antidiscrimination or civil rights groups seek to ensure civil rights compliance and the equitable treatment of all Americans under law. They play a crucial role in the policy process by filtering out ideas deemed detrimental to the interests of a community well before these ideas reach the final stages of the decision making process.

The First Line of Defense

Antidiscrimination groups play an important, yet subtle role for communities in setting the political agenda. Antidiscrimination activities serve as an “intolerance filter” for what is deemed acceptable in terms of rhetoric, public discourse, and government policies pertaining to specific groups. In other words, antidiscrimination groups campaign to ensure that ideas deemed detrimental to the interests of a community are eradicated before they reach Washington, D.C. and enter the policy process. In that sense, antidiscrimination groups play a crucial role for communities by constituting their first line of defense.

A good example is the STEP Act of 2003. This controversial bill would deport all Iranian nonimmigrants from the United States within 60 days of its passing—even though they were lawfully in the US – simply based on their national origin. From the Iranian-American community’s perspective, the problem with this bill was not that it had a realistic chance of passing—because it didn’t—but that it was introduced in Congress in the first place.

The idea that you can target Iranian immigrants simply because they are Iranian should have been filtered by an anti-discrimination group at an early stage in order to disable the idea from finding its way to Congress. Once in Congress, the task of confronting the bill is best suited by a lobby group, but there is no reason that it should not have been stopped at an earlier stage through the efforts of antidiscrimination groups.

After all, a failure to stop it in Congress can spell disaster, so Congress must be the last—and not the first—line of defense. The introduction of the STEP Act was an indication that the Iranian-American community’s first line of defense had been breached, for the simple reason that we lacked effective antidiscrimination groups.

Next: Think Tanks

Political Action Committees (PACs) are set up to raise money for candidates running for office, or to serve as a general fund for a particular party committee. PACs mostly represent business, labor, and political interests. Individual PACs may contribute $5,000 to a candidate per election, $15,000 annually to any national party committee, and $5,000 annually to any other PAC. PACs may accept $5,000 from any one individual, PAC or party committee annually.

PACs Don’t Lobby

Individual communities utilize PACs to raise and spend money on campaigns and candidates sympathetic to the community’s interests. In this respect, it is fair to say that PACs are campaign oriented interest groups. What happens the day after the election in terms of working with elected representatives on their agenda, and making sure your community’s interests are included, is better performed by lobby groups.

Melissa Schiffman, the deputy communications director of EMILY’s List, widely considered the most successful political action committee in Washington D.C., notes, “We are just a campaign organization. We don’t lobby, we are not an issue advocacy group. We help candidates, and once they are elected we don’t do much with them. Once they’re members, they’re members: we have done our job.”

PACs and Lobbies Go Hand-in-Hand

Although PACs are extremely important in providing communities with the means of putting sympathetic candidates in office, they are usually not suitable as principal leaders of a community
mobilization strategy. That task is better left to national level interest groups who unlike PACs, are involved in the policy-making process on a continuous basis—not just during elections.

Without PACs, interest groups clearly would have difficulty contributing funds to current or aspiring lawmakers; yet, without interest groups, coordinated leadership and the continuous negotiation and dissemination of a community’s political preferences would be absent. While money certainly is a very important ingredient in the electoral process, it does not necessarily have to be channeled through PACs.

According to Aram Suren Hamparian, Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), eighty-five percent of the Armenian community’s political contributions go directly to candidates or campaigns rather than through PACs.

The Most Effective Money Is Money that Travels the Shortest Distance

Although EMILY’s List has garnered national recognition and enjoys a substantial annual budget, its campaign operations remain localized. Schiffman notes, “We don’t do anything at the national level: it’s just too expensive.”

Instead, EMILY’s List empowers and educates its community at the grassroots, emphasizing the stakes of elections at the district level. Accountability is the greatest when the distance between the donor and recipient is the shortest. As a result, the most effective money is money that travels the shortest distance.

Back to: Making sense of the policy process

Persian Text

Think tanks play a crucial role in framing the debate on policy issues. Though they may have little influence on the final decisions lawmakers arrive at, they define the parameters of the debate by offering various alternatives that may not have been on the agenda previously.

From a community’s perspective, think tanks are where ideas are manufactured to add intellectual weight to the message of the community. In order to permeate the policy world and influence lawmakers’ decisions, communities must package and sell a message crafted by reputable scholars that spend the vast amount of their time thinking about these issues.

The ability to craft your message is a crucial ingredient, no less important than numbers, money or organizational strength.

Council on Foreign Relations Program Director Daryl Edwards
remarks, “You want your ideas to come from a think tank environment. You can have all the money in the world and even have a good issue, but, above all, you have to hone a message. The goal is to shape the parameters of the debate. Once you own the debate, it’s like owning the highway. You can charge any amount for the toll you want. If you lack the ability to frame
the debate then you are at somebody else’s mercy in this country.”

There are many different viewpoints on every issue each with its own merits, but the side that shapes the meaning of the issue in Washington will have a distinct advantage. The most successful think tanks have credibility and knowledge on their side, which is attained by being “fair and balanced,” and having high quality scholars on their team. Daryl Edwards concurs, “One of the things that can really influence the debate in Washington is how you are seen by the other players of the game. If you don’t have credibility on both sides of the aisle, then you are not going to have much influence on the debate.”

Next: Lobby Groups

A Guide for the Iranian-American Community

How can the Iranian-American community become influential? How do issues or ideas get on the public agenda? Who or what grabs the attention of policymakers? What patterns guide the process of transforming an idea into policy?

Seeing the Big Picture

Too often, groups seeking to affect the course of public policymaking in the U.S. take a narrow view of the process at the expense of fully understanding the bigger picture. A good example is the tendency for public debate to focus on controversial political issues of the day. Another example is the tendency to focus almost exclusively on political campaigns and the role of campaign contributions as a singular vehicle in advancing the agendas of interest groups. 

To become a community that has the power to influence every day decisions in America, we need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of government decision making. By attaining a broader sense of the context within which policy is made, we will improve our ability to participate effectively by adopting strategies that are multidimensional and sustainable.

The Two Myths

There are two myths about the policy process in general—and held by our community in particular—that have plagued Iranian-American efforts to influence policymaking. The first myth is that the policy process operates in a predictable, linear, and mechanical manner. Or, that ideas and initiatives go through orderly and pre-determined, sequential stages before being written into law.

From this perspective, the policy process is initiated through the rational definition or identification of a problem, which then prompts the search for a solution. Once a likely solution is found, it will go through various reviews before finally—if successful—being adopted as policy.

However logical this approach may appear, it does not reflect the reality of policymaking. Although certain aspects of the legislative process do tend to follow a linear and structured pattern, the policy-making process in the United States is more accurately characterized by the coupling of problems with pre-existing solutions. More often than not successful groups are those that are proactive, and which continually float ideas and solutions on Capitol Hill while awaiting the emergence or formulation of a problem that will enable their solution to become policy.

The ongoing coupling of problems with solutions is necessarily both fluid and non-linear. It requires the continuous reframing of problems in order to make them fit a rapidly changing political context and with one’s preferred solution.

This can even cause the policy process to move in apparently contradictory directions at times. As a result, not only is it incorrect to assume that the policy process is linear and unidirectional, such an assumption can actually damage the cause of groups that rely on it at the expense of other approaches. It can lead to frustrated communities who waste huge amounts of resources—money in particular—on badly timed proposals for what are seen as “nonexisting” problems.

The second myth is that the success or failure of an initiative depends on one factor above all others; in other words, that a single variable determines whether an idea is translated into policy or not. The most widespread example of this myth is the perception that money, channeled through an all-encompassing lobby group or PAC, is the one magic factor when it comes to community mobilization.

That is, if a community group doesn’t have an entity through which it can fund sympathetic candidates for political office, that community will not be successful in influencing the policy process in its favor. This myth is based on the flawed notion that if a particular lobby group has an idea as well as the money to put into the right people’s hands, then it is only a matter of time before their idea becomes law or policy. These two myths yield an approach to the policy process that can be described as the “Simple Model,” as illustrated in Figure 1 below.

This model also feeds off a perception that money is the only “oil” that can lubricate the policy-making machine. Although sufficient financial support is very clearly important to the success of a policy initiative, it is by no means the only important resource that communities can bring to bear on issues of interest to them. Nor is the simple cause and effect model that flows from this assumption reality.

Lastly, no one single type of civic organization or public interest group can, in and of itself, adequately protect and advance the full spectrum of an entire community’s interests. Such a strategy is doomed to fail in the long-run.

How the Policy Process Really

Instead of using a simple linear model and seeing only a few important actors and an even smaller number of relevant resources as the keys to success, the Iranian-American community needs a more accurate model of the policy-making process—a model that appreciates and accounts for the multidimensional and dynamic nature of policymaking. Figure 2 illustrates this model.

This alternative model is also far more promising in terms of yielding results by virtue of its ongoing (i.e., not episodic/every 2 or 4 years) and balanced approach. The ultimate path by which a proposed solution becomes adopted as policy in reality involves a multitude of actors and competing agendas, whose success largely hinges on the persistence and creativity through which they are pursued. Single-mindedly relying on a strategy to “grease the political gears” via lobbies or campaign contributions ignores the full range of these actors and agendas.

The most influential communities in shaping policy are those that have members present and working at all times, and in as many areas in this model as possible. Ideas, groups, and individuals that are successful are active and attentive—not in the sense that they are constantly setting specific goals and dedicating resources to solving specific problems, but active and attentive insofar as they have readily available solutions to any relevant problem or political current that comes their way.

The core concept of this approach is to pursue your group’s interests by viewing the emergence of problems or crises as opportunities, taking full advantage of those opportunities by presenting relevant solutions that are beneficial to your constituency, and doing so in a timely and adroit manner through a variety of means simultaneously.

Mobilizing a community coalition consisting of organized political forces (interest/advocacy groups), civil servants, scholars, political parties, and the media, and getting them to bark the loudest at the most opportune time—despite their diverging agendas—is a challenge whose success will make or break a policy initiative. But just getting these groups to bark at once does not mean their policy recommendations will be accepted.

Aggressive lobbying in support of an initiative in a political atmosphere that perceives the initiative as illogical or irrelevant will not get the initiative at the top of the policy agenda—the all-important “front burner.” There are bad times for good ideas, as well as good times for bad ideas.

From the perspective of the Iranian-American community, investment needs to be made in future political influence through the active development of a plethora of different types of organizations involved in the policymaking process as shown in our model. In the following pages, the most important of these types of organizations are described.

Next: Civic Education and the Role of NIAC

Building meaningful relationships with lawmakers on Capital Hill is essential for a community’s political influence. Senators and Congresspersons have the authority granted by statute and constitution to directly affect the political agenda and policy alternatives considered for legal application. It should be selfevident, then, as to why these powerful individuals ought to be courted if even a nominal level of influence is to be attained. Although these men and women are fighting the political battles on the front lines in Washington, D.C., their attentions are most often fixed on the needs and wants of their constituency back home. Ultimately, it is the people in the lawmakers’ local districts that give them the chance to stay in office and make a difference.

Money is Not the Only Oil in the Political Machine

A widely held public misperception is that lawmakers respond most acutely to campaign contributions and the wishes of powerful interest groups—in effect, that money is the only form of “oil” in the political machine. In reality, principles and persuasion are the foundations of lawmakers’ decision-making
method. Former Wisconsin Congressman Jim Moody, who spent two years in Iran in the 1970’s and serves on NIAC’s Advisory Board, states that personal principles are the reason most people are compelled to run for public office: “Courage is rewarded in the system. You don’t go to Congress to be an applause meter, and you certainly don’t go to make more money or spend more time with your family.”

For instance, Jim Moody was faced with an initiative that he favored yet was very unpopular among his constituents. “Eighty-five percent of my constituency was staunchly against the burning of the American flag and supported amending the Constitution to make it a federal crime. I disagreed and
voted against changing the Constitution, and yet survived and even prospered politically because it showed that I had convictions.”

Any Three to Four People Can Tip an Election

Politically influential communities take advantage of lawmakers’ primary focus on events and currents in their districts by acting locally. These communities mobilize their local members through grassroots political education and campaigning. They build mutually beneficial relationships with influential leaders at the local level as well as coalitions with other communities that have similar interests and complementary resources.

The most influential communities are ones that are able to persuade lawmakers by presenting themselves not as mere individuals, but as representatives of a network of individuals, or an active community. “People that are involved in their community get bonus points because they have networks,” says Jim Moody, stressing the importance of local networking. “All members of Congress know that any group of three to four people, if properly organized and very active, can tip an election, even in a non-competitive seat.”

Meeting in the District

Influential communities provide opportunities for their interested members to meet with their lawmakers face to face at the local level. District gatherings, as opposed to meetings in Washington
D.C., are beneficial for both constituents and lawmakers. For constituents, or members of a community, local meetings are generally the most effective in terms of time and cost.

In the district, constituents do not compete with lobbyists for the time of the representative. According to Jim Moody, “Money can help you buy ‘face time’ back in Washington DC, but face time is free in the district.” For lawmakers, district meetings are also very attractive because they are able to devote more time to organized constituents and their set of concerns.

Getting “Face Time” with Lawmakers

How exactly does one get “face time” with these seemingly insulated powerbrokers? First and foremost, lawmakers are not as insulated as one might assume. Putting together a small group
and requesting to see your lawmaker is usually all it takes.

Another route is to show up at a small fundraiser, discuss the issues that are important to you and your community with a representative, make a small donation, and then fit yourself into his or her schedule. This “face time” with lawmakers is crucial to advancing the interests of a community. And if you don’t do this, you are almost sure to lose. As Jim Moody puts it about the decision-making process, “If you only hear one side, the vote is easy.”

Next: Antidiscrimination Groups

Civic education is arguably the most important element in readying a community for political action in the United States. Through civic education, organizations can generate political capital at the local level by enhancing the collective political knowledge and activism of a community. Civic education is the necessary condition that enables the political activism and influence of a community or group.

Successful Communities are Politically Educated Communities

Only when a community is well familiar with the policy process will it be able to effectively participate in the democratic process and advance its interest. Successful communities are ones that have intimate knowledge of political institutions, as well as up-to-date information regarding changes in trends, laws, and procedures. Well informed communities are better equipped to use their resources (money, manpower, and media-related tools) in an efficient manner.

Some of the strategies or activities employed by organizations to educate their communities include holding educational workshops; providing up-to-date information on key legislation; facilitating face-to-face discussions between constituents and their representatives; and perhaps most importantly, exposing members of the community to the policy world.

The Role of NIAC

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), unlike issue-specific interest groups, dedicates its resources to the goal of civic education while remaining ideologically and politically neutral. NIAC does not take stands on specific legislation and/or ideological platforms. As a result, NIAC is able to disassociate itself from potentially divisive issues and welcome involvement by all interested individuals in a culturally homogenous community with heterogeneous political stripes.

NIAC Board Member Sean Murphy describes NIAC’s mission and goals for the Iranian-American community in this way: “In choosing to remain apolitical, NIAC has been able to aid, through
education, the Iranian-American community in its quest to achieve greater political viability, without all the messiness that comes with partisan politics.”

Through its civic education activities and programs, NIAC is creating the necessary foundation for the flourishing of Iranian-American interest groups who can advance the collective goals of our community.

Next: Communication with Elected Officials

Lobby groups are instrumental actors in American politics. They direct their efforts toward influencing the legislative and executive branches of government. By providing in-depth knowledge on specific issues and solutions to complex problems, and through promises of continued support, lobby groups work to persuade legislators to endorse legislation favorable to the lobby.

Lobbies: Communities’ Representatives to their Representatives

Media often portray lobby groups as shadowy figures who callously buy off government officials at the expense of the average American. Though some very powerful lobbies have dabbled in corruption to put their items of choice on the agenda, the common perception of lobbies as purely self-interested is flawed. Lobby groups are instrumental in educating and mobilizing communities and decision-makers. By harnessing the political capital – i.e. political support for their concerns – generated by efforts at a local level, lobbyists convince lawmakers to fight for causes important to that community.

One may think of lobbyists as a community’s representatives to their representatives. The question then becomes: what does a lobby group need in order to succeed in the highly competitive Washington political environment where other opposing groups may be tirelessly working against their interests? Moreover, how do they create political capital, and how do they spend it wisely? Though there is no single formula for success, there are a few attributes that lobby groups must possess if they are to effectively sew a community into the enduring fabric of Washington.

Lobbying is a Bottom-Up Process

Directly lobbying government officials is a key component to the
political success of a given community. However, without knowledge of the political process or political involvement at the local level, the chances of putting a desired initiative on the agenda in Washington are extremely low. According to Aram Suren Hamparian, the Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), “The most fruitful strategy in advocacy is working locally, in educating and mobilizing local communities. This is a bottom-up process. Spending political capital is easy, but unless you are out there
generating it you will have nothing to spend.”

Lobbies Provide Communities with “Political Savvy”

Community members must have a keen understanding of how the policy process works in order to ensure a high level of activity at the grassroots level. Lobbies, civic education groups, and other advocacy groups have the duty to educate their community on the ins and outs of the political process. Workshops, seminars, and other educational tools provide communities with an understanding of how to effectively translate their interests into results. Both the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and ANCA devote considerable resources to educating their respective communities.

Hamparian notes the secret to the ANCA’s success: “You can’t mobilize people that aren’t educated. Fifty percent of political success is done through education at the local level. This is a constant process. You have to remember that you are swimming up stream, so training is a constant effort. The second you stop or slow down you get swept away.” Once a community attains a base level of knowledge of the political process—or “political savvy,” as Keith Weissman of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) puts it—it can effectively mobilize to create the political capital needed at a local level to supplement the work being done at the national level.

Communities Must Have a Multitude of Lobbies

Political capital is best generated at the local level. Communities leverage political support by building mutually beneficial relationships with local politicians, which can eventually be translated into influence at the national level. Relationships with local officials must be established, nurtured, and maintained, while a genuine interest and commitment to local issues that fall outside the realm of a community’s broader interests must also be developed.

When local officials sense that a community cares about issues important to them, and they can count on their support, these officials will develop an acute awareness of that community’s concerns and consider their interests when fulfilling their role in office.

Hamparian discusses ANCA’s grassroots strategy: “The group
that is generally going to have the most political success is the one generating it in the field. A member of Congress might be torn on an issue, and one of the things they will take into consideration is ‘what do the folks back home think?’ If you have a significant number of local relationships you can sustain what you are trying to do nationally.”

AIPAC’s Keith Weissman echoes Aram Hamparian’s sentiments when he discussed AIPAC’s secret to success: “What we pride ourselves on is being active in every district. Every town with a
substantial Iranian-American population must have a chapter of their national lobby organization.”

Focusing on the intricacies of inside government lobbying is futile if those lobbyists are not supported by a well-informed and active community that is committed to its causes, and prepared
to fight at the local level for the benefit of that community. As Aram Hamparian puts it, “It’s fun to be the general, but first you have to build your army.”

Lobbies Must Use their Influence Responsibly

AIPAC’s Keith Weissman stresses the importance of building trust with one’s community by “using your influence responsibly.” Weissman recommends “cultivating a relatively simple message,
remaining non-partisan, and being responsible enough to know that you can’t ask for everything.”

Lobbying government officials not only involves asking them to consider the interests of one’s community, but also educating them on issues that they do not have the time or the resources to become experts on.

Changing the frames of reference used by legislators is a crucial element of rendering them more sympathetic to your communities’ interests. Thus, it is important to craft and deliver a message that not only resonates with the community at large, but also with decision-makers.

Weissman adopts a clever metaphor, stating that “If you go fishing in Washington you have to use the bait the fish like, not the bait that you like.” If a community does not have a substantial localized presence, or is not prepared to recognize their representatives’ other concerns, they will find few allies on Capitol Hill. Weissman sagely concludes that “If you want a friend in Washington, you have to be a friend.”

Next: Political Action Committees