The Six C’s of Effective Local Political Discourse

Our discourse is broken. If we wish to make it work effectively, it'll take significant effort, but it will be worth it. In my experience, discussions improve when we replace blame with empathy.

The first bit of reality that slapped me in the face as a newly elected public official in 2019 was how constituents typically chose to open our interactions.

“I know you’re a conservative, but” is how at least 50 percent of the discussions began. My initial thoughts—“What does my political leanings have to do with anything we might choose to discuss?”—quickly went out the window after one memorable encounter, which took place at a diner in a neighboring city in early September.

Constituent: “I know you’re conservative. What I don’t get is everything I saw from you (during your campaign) was all about God, family, guns, the flag, police and the military. Really? Guns?! I don’t get that. Maybe—and I mean this with all due respect—your priorities are a little out of…order.”

It was at this point that I realized that one of two things was certainly true:

1. Either local politics is NOT going to work for me, or

2. I am going to be who I am, come what may.

I chose No. 2.

We must be willing to work together. We don’t have to agree or even like one another.

After a brief pause, I said, sternly…

“When you say everything you saw from me, you can only be talking about my personal Facebook page, where I—when I do choose to share content—frequently post about my personal interests, those things that are important to me personally. I don’t, mind you, typically post things of a professional or political nature on Facebook. The things you list are important to me; they do not have to be priorities for you or anyone else. When I made the decision to run for office, I had two thoughts top of mind:

1. I can’t be anyone other than who I am, and

2. Not everyone will like or agree with that person, but I am perfectly OK with that. I get to be who I am; I will be me.

“And, who I am is a person AND as a local elected official is someone who has always stepped up to support the kids, families and businesses in our city. ALL kids. ALL families. ALL businesses. So, anyone who has a problem with my political affiliation or with how I vote has a problem of their own choosing.”

After this testy initial interaction, we moved on to discussions about how we could work together on projects of mutual interest.

So, anyone who has a problem with my political affiliation or with how I vote as a private citizen has a problem of their own choosing.

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The ability and, indeed, the willingness to work together is critical to the success of any thriving community. I challenged myself to do a better job of enabling positive interactions.

A strategy was born

During a long weekend at a nearby coffee shop, I went through several hundred pages of campaign notes searching for the tidbits that I could distill to create and share for improving local discourse. Several words seemed to jump off the page after a few hours of persuing myriad lines of handwritten text.

Now I use what I call the six C’s to guide my interactions with the public as a local elected official:

1. Conversation

2. Civility

3. Constructive

4. Collaborative

5. Change

6. Community

That is, if we engage in a conversation that proves civil and constructive, we can likely collaborate to bring about change that benefits the community.

This theory has been tested more than two dozen times in the last year; it has yet to fail me.

Here’s an example from a more recent discussion.

A group of parents expressed displeasure with how I handled a situation over the summer. As the noise ramped up publicly and privately, several people from the group reached out to hear my side of the story. I listened to each of their complaints, making mental notes as they talked. Then I shared details they were not privy to while making them aware that my actions were consistent with my words of wanting to promote unity, not division. After listening, they agreed that (a) my decision was the right one, (b) they should have reached out to gather further, more accurate information, and (c) though our methods might be dissimilar, our goals are not.

What you’ll notice and what I’ve learned to be true is that the first three C’s are the most important: People must be willing to engage you in dialogue—rather than spew vitriol online—and that dialogue must be civil and constructive if anything is to be accomplished.

I’m a believer in the 6 C’s strategy. I think it could make a useful arrow in your quiver.

(IMPORTANT: This post is meant as a useful primer for guiding interactions that involve local politicians and their constituents. Discussions of politics among constituents is an entirely separate matter, one I don’t care to parse.)

(I read I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations more than a year ago; I found it very useful for helping to broach difficult topics.)