Lawmakers seeking reelection this year are especially keen to hear from their constituents. This offers a great opportunity for our community: These legislators already are in campaign mode, and MOAA’s grassroots advocates can take advantage of this openness to build a relationship with their offices – specifically, their staffers.

The below guidance will help you maximize MOAA’s influence with these key participants in the legislative process. And remember: For our nonpartisan agenda to have the best chance at success, we must engage with all of our elected officials’ offices, not just the ones we like.

[TAKE ACTION: MOAA’s Legislative Action Center]

Why Staffers Matter

If you ever served as a staff officer, you know commanders rely on their staff to review and synchronize a plan and provide options before making a big decision. Lawmakers have the same expectations of their staff: to study and evaluate legislation, and its potential impact on voters, before recommending support.

For this reason, staff members hold significant influence with your House member and senators. Many lawmakers will not support legislation without a thumbs-up from their staff.

Important staff members in your legislators’ offices include:

• The military legislative assistant, dedicated to military legislation.
• The veterans legislative assistant, dedicated to veteran legislation.
• The legislative director, responsible for reviewing all legislation in the office.
• The district director (for your House member) or state director (for senators), leader of the local district/state office who often has the pulse of what voters want at home.

Some of these staffers may look like they’re fresh out of college or law school, but don’t be deceived by their age – they are the difference between support for critical legislation or a noncommittal form letter response.  

Invite Them to a Meeting!

A sustained relationship with these staff members can be more important to moving legislation than petitions, or even fundraising. A great way to begin that process is to invite them to a council or chapter meeting; staff and elected officials recently attended a MOAA Virginia Council of Chapters meeting at a military retirement community to communicate their support for the organization, for example. 

Be sure to coordinate any invitations with your council’s legislative chair so they can help synchronize efforts across all chapters. If you do not know your MOAA chapter or council legislative leaders, call (800) 234-6622 or email chapters@moaa.org for support, or find chapter contact information at MOAA.org/Chapters.

In-person, in-office meetings and/or follow-up conversations over the phone or video conference will help cement your standing with the office and build a critical rapport.

Why Is Rapport Important?

Rapport describes a developed relationship where communication is easy and trusted. It’s such a critical concept that even our Military Joint Doctrine sought to break it down for those who were more mathematically inclined, coming up with the following formula:

Rapport x (Credibility + Value) = Influence

Put simply, for the non-math set: Without rapport, there is no influence.

Do Your Homework

MOAA national staffers hear variations of this statement from many members during our chapter visits: “Our representative supports the troops, but I really do not like our senator, who doesn’t do anything for us.”

Then, we look up a series of military- and veteran-focused bills on Congress.gov to see who signed on as a co-sponsor and who didn’t. Many MOAA members are surprised to learn the ground truth – “I can’t believe it, I thought he supported us …”

Before reaching out to your legislators, check to see what legislation they have co-sponsored. It’s a binary process – the lawmaker is either signed on or not signed on. Although there are some cases where a chairman or ranking member of a committee may invoke a tradition of committee leaders not co-sponsoring certain legislation, the vast majority of elected officials can and should co-sponsor these important pieces of legislation to support our community.

You can see whether your elected officials support specific bills when you send a message via MOAA’s Legislative Action Center. The center creates a preformatted message for each piece of legislation (which you can personalize); if your legislator backs the bill, the message will begin with a “Thank You” note for their support.

You can visit your legislator’s profile page at Congress.gov to find all the bills they co-sponsor, or search a piece of legislation to see all of that bill’s supporters. This information is especially helpful if you find your elected official is the only lawmaker from your state not signed on to a piece of critical legislation.

Here are a few key pieces of legislation to check before you talk to staff and begin building rapport. Click the links to see co-sponsor names (sponsor figures are as of Jan. 2):

• H.R. 1282/S. 344, Major Richard Star Act: 327 House members | 71 senators
• H.R. 2537/S. 1823, BAH Restoration Act: 58 House members | 2 senators
• H.R. 1277/S. 596, Military Spouse Hiring Act: 143 House members | 48 senators
• H.R. 1413, Expanding America’s National Cemetery Act – 76 House members
• H.R. 3232/S. 1588, Respect for Grieving Military Families Act – 17 House members | 3 senators
• H.R. 1083/S. 414, Caring for Survivors Act – 66 House members | 22 senators
• H.R. 1045/S. 956, Health Care Fairness for Military Families Act – 83 House members | 9 senators

Moving the Message Forward

The relationships you build with staff members will help you secure in-person or virtual meetings before or during our annual Advocacy in Action event, which will run the week of April 15 and include a series of in-person meetings April 17 on Capitol Hill. Your continued engagement with the staff will earn reciprocal efforts throughout the year.

One powerful voice from our military community is paramount during an election year. Register for our Legislative Action Center and recruit your network of friends and family to join the action center – MOAA membership is not required to sign up.

You can also encourage members of your network to contact their representatives at 866-272-MOAA (6622), MOAA’s toll-free line to the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Ask to speak with the military legislative assistant (MLA) in the office; if that staffer is not available, consider scheduling a follow-up call to make a personal connection with these influential MLAs.  

Grassroots advocacy works! This is why MOAA is a leader in The Military Coalition, a group of military and veterans service organizations focused on advocacy. This election year, don’t miss the chance to engage your representative and both senators. They most likely will not know what our uniformed community needs if you don’t engage them with your stories and enthusiasm.