Call to Action - Beat RedState at their game & pass the budget

No Congressional representative with a lick of sense will pay any attention to the RedStaters' astroturf calls coming from outside his/her district. If you live in Etheridge's district, by all means call his office. Otherwise (or in addition), call Kay Hagan's office at 202-224-6342. I expect that she needs the calls as well, and her staff will be paying attention to calls volume from anywhere in the state of NC. At present, she seems preoccupied with protecting her political flank from the tobacco lobby's possible attacks. Let's demonstrate continued enthusiasm for Obama's push to address health care and climate change now rather than in some indefinite future.

but will it actually affect his voting decisions? I've never spoken with a legislator who (when speaking candidly) pretended to care about lobbying calls/letters/emails from outside his/her district, unless they were from someone with a separate connection to the rep, or contained an unusually compelling personal story that somehow made it through the staff screening process (very rare).

That reasoning doesn't apply to relevant new information delivered directly to the rep in question, or to an aide with responsibility in the subject area, but you can't normally achieve that through an advocacy phone call to their office. On a big topic like this, you're just reaching a staffer counting numbers, and if you don't live in his district, they're probably not even including you in their count.

If you have contrary feedback from Etheridge's office, please correct me on my assumptions. I recognize that there can be exceptions to these standard patterns.

I don't recall discouraging anyone from calling in support of Obama's budget. I called myself--Hagan's office. I just encouraged people to call a target that I believe will be more influenced by their calls.

This is a recurring debate within every activist community with which I've ever been involved. What's worth our time and energy in terms of effectiveness? If all we're seeking is the personal satisfaction of expressing an opinion, we can lobby whomever we wish. If we're trying to influence voting/legislating behavior--which is my priority on these things--then it bears weighing who's likely to listen, versus when we're more likely to be wasting our time.

Most legislators, lobbyists, and public interest advocates I've ever spoken with have suggested that calling campaigns from people outside a legislator's district are more likely to be discounted, or even influence them negatively, than to win their support. When I've personally been targeted for lobbying on city votes by people who live outside the city I represent, that's how I feel: Thanks, but you guys aren't the ones I represent. (Again, exceptions can go to those who have specific good information for me, but that exception doesn't apply to contacts that never reach me personally, which is the case with mass Congressional office calling campaigns.)

So I was surprised to see your general call for contacts to Etheridge, and think it's within the spirit of working to effect change to suggest a callee more likely to listen to most of us. Nothing personal, and if I didn't want the pro-Obama-budget advocacy to succeed, I wouldn't even have commented.

Thanks for doing this Betsy. By the time I got home & called the mailbox was full.

We definitely need to call. I was in a seminar & subject of issue reform in Congress came up. It was noted that even when there is overwhelming public support for something there is a "cottage industry" of letter writers and callers to flood Congressional offices with messages 100:1 in the opposite direction.