Facts About PACs Podcast
The Facts About PACs Podcast is the #1 PAC podcast in America. The show is produced especially for the members of the National Association of Business Political Action Committees (NABPAC). Each weekly episode includes a recap of the association's latest activities, actionable intelligence for the employee-funded and business trade association PAC community, and an interview with a featured guest. Show host Micaela Isler is the President and CEO of NAPBAC.
Facts About PACs Podcast
Spring Forward
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Spring has arrived, and so has the Facts About PACs crew — with some new peeps. Sharon Sussin joins Micaela, David, and Adam for a season opener packed with candidate meet-and-greets, member resources, and a timely reality check on what PACs are actually worth.
I believe that PAC contribution is the beginning of a relationship. And all the things we do, the things in the toolbox, that's all protecting that investment.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Facts About PACs. I'm Michaela Isler, MAMPAX president and CEO. And I'm joined today by David Schild, Adam Belmar, and Sharon Sesson. Welcome to spring, my friends.
SPEAKER_03Michaela, it is so beautiful out, and all I can think is 257 days until winter. This, if you're shopping for a snowblower, the deals are right now.
SPEAKER_01Uh, I'm so glad to be here with Michaela because David and Adam, you guys had so much fun on the last podcast. So it's time for the girls to come in and join the fun too.
SPEAKER_00We're lucky everybody is back. I don't know how long we could sustain any of this without you, Michaela.
SPEAKER_02Well, I want to just wish everyone a happy belated Easter and Passover. I hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend. As I've been saying, we're emerging out from the long, dark, cold winter, and I'm so excited about this beautiful weather. But it also brings me to all of the fantastic NAPPAC activities that we have coming up in April and into May and June. It may be recess here in Washington, but here at NabPAC, we are not slowing down. I'm really excited to share that next week we've got a couple of great events as we continue with our candidate meet and greets. And I'm so excited to have Sharon on board to kind of be able to talk a little bit more about that. But next week we get to meet probably our next congressman, for sure, our next congressman from the 10th district in Texas, Chris Gober, someone who most in our community know pretty well. He actually is someone who really understands campaign finance issues, and we're excited to kind of get him around a table and chat about our issues and our membership. So we'll be looking forward to meeting with him next week. But we also next week have one of our Let's Talk webinars, kind of a niche topic, but we have two just veteran PAC directors who are going to be talking about operating a PAC as a U.S. subsidiary. And I know, David, you know all too well the challenges uh that that can bring and pose for PAC directors. And then we kind of wrap up the month with our roundtables that are always popular in the month of April. We love to have our members come around, whether they're from a corporation or a trade association, to talk about anything that's on their mind, issues that are they're dealing with, the elections that are coming up, and really use the community to help each other navigate either challenges or things they're trying to maybe start with their pack coming into this election season. And then finally, we are excited to bring Congressman James Walkinshaw, Democrat from Virginia 11, to our NABPAC Policymaker speaker series at the end of the month here at HQ. So, guys, another busy month for us.
SPEAKER_03Michaela, if you spent the weekend eating marshmallow peeps, you're gonna spend this month hanging with your political peeps. I love all this programming.
SPEAKER_00Sharon, you've uh certainly brought a great deal of energy and focus into all of these events that are going on, especially with candidate outreach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's been amazing. It's hard to believe I've only been here in uh, you know, three months, but it has been uh so amazing to reconnect with candidates and consultants that I've worked with over the years who um as soon as they heard I was coming over to NABPAC, they said this is just a perfect place for you to be. And I I want you to meet with my candidates that are coming to DC. So it's been a great transition, and I've met with several candidates that are running. Most of them have a business background, some of them are members of our uh NABPAC association members. So it's been a really great opportunity. And as Michaela said, we're kicking off uh with a meet and greet next week. I'm excited about that too.
SPEAKER_00Our membership is really excited to have you, obviously. But Rocky Krivajansky and the team put out this great first quarter newsletter that I really enjoyed, Michaela, and I saw something in there that made me very proud, proud of the work that Amy Adams does and that the legal hotline also does. I understand you correct me if I'm wrong, we've got like 130 member companies with almost 250 unique cases that came through those phone hotlines in the past calendar year. That's a lot of work in supporting our membership through important times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is a real member benefit for the folks that join NABPAC. You know, we talk about, you know, the value add that we bring to our members. And a lot of our folks join because of the great work we're doing, both on the advocacy front, you know, really defending and promoting the business pack community. Others join for the professional development and the networking opportunities. And then we see through our PAC and legal hotlines that we have a large number of members who really rely on these free resources. And it really covers everything from managing your PAC budgets, reviewing maybe your PAC bylaws, setting up a PAC board, kind of all those governance issues to also like strategies for how to manage your lapse donors or reaching out to the younger generation. How do you deal with uh a large number of retirements or layoffs? And and we also talk about audits and annual reports. So it really runs the gamut. And I'm so pleased to see that so many of our members have taken advantage of this resource that's available to them at all times.
SPEAKER_03Mikaela, one of the things we talk about is how being in this community, you're often a solo practitioner, right? And so when you're at NADPEC functions, of course, you look around and you're like, hey, it's people like me. And then when you're sort of sitting in that corporate or association office and maybe feeling a little bit isolated, you've got the legal hotline. You can get really great advice about you know compliance and how to stay on the right side of election law. And then you've got the PAC help hotline, right? And Amy Adams and somebody who can, you know, give you insights on how to conduct your solicitation strategy. You know, if you just want to vent about the last season of the Golden Bachelor, right? Amy is there to listen. And I think this is one of those things that you know people need to take advantage of. If you're not picking up the phone and calling these numbers, you should be.
SPEAKER_02And it's really easy. A lot of folks email and say, How do I get in touch with Amy or Mark? Really, you just have to email us at NATPAC's email account, and we can put you in touch with both Amy and Mark. And, you know, I think also now that we have Sharon Sessin on board, we're really exploring even a third hotline and really being able to provide that overall political engagement, help and assistance with Sharon's background and expertise. And so how do you take your program to the next level as you look at get out the vote, issue education, GOTV? We're really excited to be able to bring Sharon into the mix on that.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, Michaela, what I've I've had an opportunity to speak to several members who have reached out and I talked to them about the three-pronged approach I think every political program should have. And it's about number one, identifying candidates that are good for your industry or your association, your business. It's about engaging, right? Engaging those candidates with your members. And then it's about voting, getting out the vote. Elections are going on now, we know, right? There was a special election earlier this week. And so primaries, we have a break, a little lull this month, but we kick it up in May, May 5th, back at it. So every organization should have those key components. And I've been excited to talk to members about how they can do that for themselves as well.
SPEAKER_00Well, while we're running around the News You Can Use track, one of the things that I think is most important for people who don't know to understand is that Mikaela Isler is a little bit like DoorDash. She can come to you. Okay, sure. We do the podcast, but she gets out there to make speeches to large PAC members. And I know you were doing that recently, and that those conversations can be really beneficial when a PAC board or a group of professionals in our space have come together to talk to a leader like you and really break down, hey, give us some feedback. What do you think about us? What do you think about what's going on in our space? I know you've been at that recently. Will you want to share anything about what those conversations look like and feel like?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm happy to. It's been, you know, this first quarter was pretty busy. We we've been invited to speak to an all-employee town hall where we had over 600 employees dial in to hear about, you know, so why the pack is important, why an organization like theirs would be involved in politics, why the pack plays an important role as one of the major tools in the toolbox that we always talk about. All the way down to two weeks ago, I had an opportunity to go and speak to one of our members' PAC boards, and they, you know, brought in all of their executives from their home office to DC for kind of a three-day intensive on just being on the hill, talking to legislators and staff, but also really having an opportunity to hear from some experts in DC, what their competitors are doing, how they stack up against other businesses as far as their political engagement. And it was a great opportunity for me to go in and really share a lot of our data that we've been collecting over the last three years that, you know, corporate PACs, employee-funded PACs, business trade association PACs really still have a strong voice on Capitol Hill and why they need to continue to build out a robust political engagement program. So we love those opportunities to be able to speak to our members and their pack boards, their employees. And, you know, it's another benefit of being an appac member to utilize. And now we've got between Amy and Mark Renad and Sharon and myself, we've just got decades of experience that we're happy to bring forward and share with our members and their employees and members.
SPEAKER_00In our last episode, Sharon, we were talking about some, I think, important context to keep in mind, especially when the news cycle is running as hot as it has been recently and just leaving questions about what are the priorities either at the government level or within our own company. But I have also seen uptick, I think, of people who are making a lot out of data that's not really there, conflating things for a narrative's purposes that trouble me. And I'm thinking a little about the PAC space when I mention it because having an understanding of where we are both within an election cycle and the power and relevance and presence of PACs, this is something you have to have a fundamental understanding of before you just start listening to people that say this the sky is falling. Do you buy that?
SPEAKER_01No, no. I mean, I think what and it's a testament to the candidates that want to talk with us, to our members that want to engage. PACs are definitely relevant. But I think, you know, we know that PACs are one tool in the toolbox, right? You know, there are so many things, uh, activities that a PAC can do beyond giving it a check, giving money. I believe that PAC contribution is the beginning of a relationship. And all the things we do, the things in the toolbox, that's all protecting that investment, right? I mean, we have limited resources, we want to use them in the most efficient and effective way. So by doing get out the vote and civic engagement and making sure our members or employees are educated about the issues and where the candidates stand on the issues that are important to that industry, to that business. Listen, we know, we know there's a lot of noise out there, but it's important for us as PAC professionals to be mindful of those priorities that are important to us. But that's not going to change tax policy, healthcare policy, regulatory policy, whatever that is, that's what's important for our PAC members and for our employees. So we have to make sure that we're doing our due diligence by finding those candidates that support our industry and doing what we can besides the money, but really controlling our message through our activities to get our friends elected.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Adam, you know, you can look at some of these figures that have come out about sort of the effective capacity of PACs and the marketplace and the participation rate of people in the political process. But you know, what I keep coming back to is that if you were to say it's not worth the resources, corporate association resources that we are expending to have a political action committee, you're kind of engaged in unilateral disarmament because your competition is not going to behave that way. Washington is a competitive political marketplace, right? And there's two kinds of competition. There's the first, the competition for attention. You go into a congressional office at 8 a.m. and you're bookended by the Girl Scouts and the Steelworkers, and there's just nothing but 20-minute meetings all day in that office, and it's the same in the world of candidate fundraising. They're just going from one interest to the next. And so you have to stand out in that crowd. That's one thing that, as Sharon talks about, a full portfolio of political involvement programs, including a PAC, helps you do. And then there's the more direct competition, which is people whose interests oppose yours. And in a democracy, we all go before the Congress, we petition for a redress of grievances, right? We ask the government for relief. And sometimes there are countering views, there are opposing perspectives. If you decide, you know what, I just don't think my PAC's an effective tool anymore, can you be guaranteed that your competition is going to step back as well? Or are they simply going to dominate the argument because you're not there? I think that's one of the things you've got to consider when some of these numbers get a little scary.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think we have to be careful about this sort of I think we keep seeing this number of something like 70% effective capacity lost, you know, as far as talking about the metrics around PACs and a lot of it is at the end of the day, our packs have never been indexed for inflation over the last 50 years. Obviously, that's going to have a decline in value. But I think the market share decline, while real, it's it's the spending has exploded. We haven't capped spending on this. And so I think we have to be really careful that when we talk about, you know, the PAC's overall effectiveness. As Sharon said, there's so much more to our engagement than just that pack dollar. And it's not just about the money.
SPEAKER_00To be sure. And there has been news this week with major firms who are standing up new employee-funded PACs. And the reason that they are doing this is because they serve exactly the purpose that Sharon Sussen said at the beginning. They are the beginning of your relationship.
SPEAKER_01You know, there's a lot of focus on direct giving to candidates, which is important. But remember, NAPPAC is not a PAC. And if many of you that joined us at our uh we had a couple weeks ago, we had a great session talking about what you can do to supplement that PAC. And so whether that's again inviting candidates to engage with your employees at your facility, doing, you know, get out the vote, doing uh communications around elections, right? The good government civic engagement is so important. So that's a lot of what you know we think is important to focus on. You know, we know and respect that there's so many issues that are important to voters across the country, they change by the day, right? We're in a very volatile, ever-changing environment. But I think what our responsibility to our members and employees is to make sure we are communicating on the issues that we care about. So we're not gonna talk about issues that don't affect our business. You know, that's why we think elections are a business decision. So if we can help support the legislators and candidates that are gonna be good for our industry, that's what we're all about. Michaela mentioned some of the candidates that we're meeting with. We're excited about the opportunity to meet with these folks before they come to Congress. So they already know, they're already gonna know our NABAC issues. They're gonna be, you know, around our NABPAC members. So they're gonna be hopefully fast friends when we start to kind of ramp up as the next Congress begins. But we're really pleased by the support that we're seeing from candidates that want to come talk to us, that we can help introduce them to our members and just so that they're well versed on the issues that we care about.
SPEAKER_00David, one of the things that has troubled me, especially as we've seen it manifest since we did an episode many years back on direct giving, is the idea that increasing your number, that number that you quote, what did what was our impact? What did we do? Well, you know what? The FEC is ultimately the arbiter of what your employee funded or business trade association PAC has done in terms of supporting candidates. But the direct investment gang out there is trying to broaden your class so that people who aren't a part of your group can give money. And and it is not clear in any way to me that that redounds to the benefit of your firm or your PAC. And it's a little bit like impressions. If anybody out there has dealt with a communications firm that tell you your money just got you 10 billion impressions, and you're thinking, I don't even know what that means. It doesn't make sense to me, and it's all these metrics. Well, listen, what makes hard sense in a hard dollar environment is the actual money that an employee funded and business trade association pack give. And that's what resonates both on the record and with candidates. And a lot of this to me, David, sounds like inflation of impact and inflation of greatness that doesn't really exist.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, Adam, the FEC is the tool that Congress put in place in the 1970s to give us authoritative, unbiased data on what's happening with money and politics. And I think that if you're using an aggregator website, if the data is passing through another site, it still comes down to, hey, what's in those FEC reports that we all had to file on the 20th of every month? What I do think is that when you give money to a political action committee, it's not about flexing from a records or statistics perspective, right? Where I want to flex, if I'm giving $5 a paycheck or $5,000 a year, is at a candidate fundraiser. It's at a gathering with someone who's running for office where the issues I care about are going to be attached as an issue message to the support that I'm giving. And I just think it's very easy inside Washington, it's very easy inside the subset of the media that covers money in politics to think a lot about aggregation and direct giving and the credit that you may or may not get as the data is analyzed. Is that in any way comparable to somebody from your organization shaking the hand of a candidate and saying, I'm so glad I could be here tonight to support you? Let me tell you a little bit about my industry and the people I represent. Isn't that the relationship building that we're trying to do through the aggregation of these dollars through these investments? I just I don't think it comes down to data analytics.
SPEAKER_02It can't. And I think it has to be, you know, whether it's direct giving or contribution from your pack. It it's all about in the aggregate, what are we doing to support these candidates who support our issues? And so it's that full spectrum of I mean, we talk about you know, sort of the the spokes in the wheel, you know, there you've got a number of spokes in the wheel, and if you're doing all of these things collectively, I think in the end you're gonna have a better result. It it just can't come down to, like you said, David, to the metrics and the dollars. It's the full spectrum of of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00And Sharon, uh, this is something that I've been key on a little bit recently, but you might have some insight considering your deep background. The idea of handing over your donor relationships to some third-party platform is not buying you anything good in the long run, not when you think about the intentionality and the purpose with which your relationships have been built among your solicitable class.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I come from the association world and those donor relationships are are just gold. You know, it you take a lot of time and effort to really grow and build those relationships because that's who you represent, and you want to make sure that you're always putting their experience first, right? Without members, we don't have uh, you know, a functioning organization. So we would always be very careful about you know how we would proceed to the next level regarding that. We would always instead, you know, as another option to direct giving is you know, send one of our local members to a fundraiser on our behalf. So the candidate absolutely knows that this person, this local business owner, is representing our organization. The candidate sees with his or her own eyes, our, to David's point, our our representative. Um, so we did a lot more of that uh through the years and found that was way more impactful because those donors had a an experience. And that was something you can't you can't always put a price tag on that for sure.
SPEAKER_00Well, guys, I love these kinds of episodes. Michaela, I I know, and I want to tease for the people who are listening and they want to know we've got a really big show next week. I mean, we're turning the corner for a year on into the pack swag conversation that was like our beat the band episode last year, and we're gonna revisit that with Lori Barber next week. I'm really excited about it.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, pack swag is always a topic on our roundtables. Everybody wants to know what the latest and greatest was. I think Lori shared with us last year that crazy socks were kind of all the rage. So I'm actually really curious to hear what the latest and greatest is as we go into the selection cycle.
SPEAKER_03Little FOMO, David. Uh, if we don't get a nap pack labu boo out of this, I'm gonna be very, very disappointed.
SPEAKER_02LaBuboos are so 2025, as I have learned. Well, with that, guys, what a fun conversation, incredible insights. I'm so glad, Sharon, that you were able to join us today. But also thanks to everyone downloading and sharing this podcast. Subscribe and meet us right back here next week.
