Whip Duties. Enough said about backgrounds. Let’s talk about the whips job or what it should be:
- Communication. Communicate, communicate ,communicate! A Whip and other leadership members need to maintain constant communication with members, not with lobbyists or with the media. (It is inexcusable that I, as a member, found out from two different lobbyists about the caucus meeting tomorrow six hours prior to receiving the email from leadership). In addition, a Whip must be able to have a firm grasp on all aspects of legislation—both the substance and the legislative procedure. He (or she) must be able explain bills to members in easily understood terms, both in person and in writing. After over 10 years of House service, I have mastered these skills and have worked on some of the most complicated and most challenging measures in the General Assembly. Regardless of background or training, no other candidate for Whip can dissect a bill, map out a legislative strategy, build consensus or help maintain a unified membership better than I can.
- Technology. Using technology to allow us all to know quickly and simply what we as a team are doing. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
- Open Doors. The Whip (and all other leadership posts) must have an open door policy for all members. A lobbyists can always wait for a member, but a member should never have to wait because of a lobbyist. As your Whip, I will be accessible to you 24/7, and you will always be my highest priority.
2010 Session.
This upcoming session, we will be grappling with the budget shortfall, but this should not and cannot mean new taxes. Tax cuts are the road back to prosperity, not the imposition of new taxes.
We will also be dealing this session with other major issues: transportation, education, mental health, water policy, public safety, federal health care (which could burden the state with an additional $2 billion in unfunded mandates) as well as all the usual number of various state and local issues.
Another critical issue for this session is reapportionment, which will, of course, play a large role in helping to determine our ability to maintain our majority. I have experienced three reapportionment sessions, and I even helped pay the legal expenses for Sara Larios’s federal lawsuit preserving one person one vote. Without this effort, we would not be in the majority today. We will need experienced hands to steer us through this difficult process.
Finally, fundraising is a job with which the entire leadership team needs to be engaged. We need to help all caucus members raise funds for their reelections because money is the mother’s milk of campaigns—without it, you lose.
