Episode Transcript – Vote! A Time to Make a Difference

Betsy Cerulo: Welcome to Room at the Table, an opportunity for you to join me, Betsy Cerulo and my guests for conversations about creating equitable and inclusive workplaces where leaders rise above mediocrity and our teams thrive. Pull up a chair, there's always Room at the Table. Welcome to another meaningful conversation on Room at the Table. I am Betsy Cerulo, your host, and welcome to my guest today, Nicole Schlinger, CEO of CampaignHQ, which is a leader in grassroots voter contact, issue mobilization and strategic campaign consulting.

Nicole has been twice named a top political influencer by Campaigns & Elections Magazine. So today, we're talking about the importance of voting and using your vote to advocate for yourself and your community. So pull up a chair, enjoy your favorite beverage, and let's get started. Nicole, welcome. It is so great to see you. 

Nicole Schlinger: Thanks, Betsy. I’m so glad to be here with you. 

Absolutely. And I really appreciate that you were willing to have this meaningful conversation because elections are constant. They never stop. Obviously, this year is a little bit more drama-filled, and presidential elections tend to evoke a lot. But I really wanted to talk to another person who really understands the value of voting. But one thing I do want to start off with was I was out a couple of weeks ago and I saw this really great bumper sticker and it says, “You need not think alike to love alike.” There you go. Very simple. My hope, and I know it’s yours too, when conversations get into politics that people just realize we all want the same thing. We all want peace. We all want love. We all want the world to be a better place. So tell us what's the nature of your work as it relates to United States elections.

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Yeah, absolutely. At CampaignHQ, our mission is to help our clients engage with voters effectively. We specialize in voter contact strategies that rely on two-way conversations, live calls, text messages, telephone town halls. Our mission is to make sure that we work with candidates and organizations and consultants so that their message reaches the right people at the right time, whether that's to ID or persuade or to turn out. Our job is to make sure that every voter has the information that they need on the candidates that we represent to make the best choice when they go into the voting booth, whether that's on election day or they're voting by mail or in person anytime in the early voting prior to that.

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So it's a very passionate and important effort. What drew you to this work?

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So I originally wanted to be a journalist because when I was in high school, I wanted to be in the room where it happened before Hamilton made that a thing. I thought that was the best way to do so. And so I worked at my local paper in high school, I worked at the school paper in college, and what I found was I didn't want to be an observer to the action. I wanted to be someone who was making things happen. When I had my first job, I was expecting, I was paid, believe $3.75 an hour. I was expecting a paycheck of a certain amount. It was of a lesser amount than that. My dad explained to me the nature of taxes, and I was sold. Politics was where I needed to be. 

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So I was in college in the 1980s, and it was certainly an exciting time. I recall when Norm Ornstein, that name might sound familiar, I'm sure he's retired now, but he was my professor. He was a political spokesperson a lot, so you'd see him, over the years, show up on shows. And I realized that I was in that classroom, how important it was, you know, politics 101. And there were always people in the class that were so into it, regardless of what their beliefs were. And I was always amazed by it. And I knew that the coveted positions for a lot of people in politics were to get internships. And I had an internship with a congressman from my hometown, and I realized how fortunate I was to have that role, even though politics was not the degree I was going in. But I certainly learned a lot from the inside, and I could see how it would drive someone.

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Absolutely. So I had a similar experience, Betsy. I also interned for my congressman. And the thing that was so beautiful about that experience was my congressman held open interviews and had a selection committee for interns. And so that meant that someone who could present well and was interested and eager could get an internship with their congressman without having, necessarily, to know someone to make that connection. So I'm still grateful. I remember walking into the room that day having to speak in front of a member of Congress and a selection committee. I saw my high school superintendent there, and he waved at me and I thought, I got this.

That’s awesome. I can remember walking down in the capital and being stopped, and who walks right past me but Nancy Reagan. So I am dating myself. I was fascinated. And when we would be given tickets to go listen, you'd sit up in the gallery but in the top seats, whoever was speaking would come from another country and it was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.

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Yeah, absolutely. That internship in the Congressional Office ultimately led me to the campaign side of things. I went back to school and wound up volunteering for a member of Congress there, and then, ultimately, that was what gave me the taste of the campaign side of things, the fast pace, the excitement, being able to help determine who actually gets to be in office rather than working for the folks after they get in.

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Well, you know what? It's so important because I think we both know there's probably been a lot of really good people that didn't get into office because the campaign part may not have gone in a certain direction. So everything from the moment the individual wants to run for an office is important all the way to once they're complete.

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Absolutely. Understanding, not necessarily changing your beliefs or your message, but making sure that you understand how to share that message in the right way with the right groups of people.

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And that's important because the world is made up of so many different types of people and we, for the most part, all have different things that either inspire us or motivate us. So to be in that position that you're at to help really bring it out for the candidate is just so important. So important. So obviously, with 2024 being a presidential election year, there's so much focus there. But can you share why the state and local elections are critical, if not more important for people to vote?

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Absolutely. One of the things that we find is a presidential election year will drive turnout up from all ends of the political spectrum. But, folks who vote in a presidential year who maybe don't vote quite as regularly will sometimes leave the rest of their ballot blank, in part because –

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Really?

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Yes, yes, they go in to vote for the top of the ticket, and once they start seeing names they don't recognize, they stop voting. That being said, state and local elections can often have a more immediate, direct impact on your daily life than a federal election. Not to say that those aren't important because they absolutely are. But when you think about things like school, public safety, infrastructure, those are made at the local level. They determine who represents us in the state legislature, at the county and the city levels, and that's actually also the places where working across the aisle can be more common. The other thing I point out to people is oftentimes your next congressman, US senator, governor, they often move up from those positions into national positions. So if you pay attention to their policies and their leadership at the grassroots level, oftentimes, you're making a difference for today, but an impact you might not even know about for tomorrow.

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When I co-founded the Maryland LGBT Chamber of Commerce back in 2016-17, I reached out to our governor's office at that time, Larry Hogan. Again, different political affiliation. I was so welcomed. I got phone calls right back. “What do you need? If there's anything, if you're having challenges, make sure you call us.” And I was able to create some really wonderful relationships in the administration that went on to help me in a variety of ways. So I think, too, when people are looking at ballots, and I happen to be one of those people, I wasn't always, happened to be one of those people that I take that ballot and I sit there and I read it. Because some of the language of the different bills that are in a state and local level, it can be confusing. But if you sit there and just read through it, then it makes more sense so you can be able to say, okay, I'm going to either vote for it or I'm not going to vote. So, I agree. It's really, really important, especially, I certainly hear people complain about roads and things like that. Well, read your ballot and vote. So now we go to, when you hear someone say they are not voting, what are your thoughts?

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The first, the first to me is empathy and understanding that, you know, I'm trying to understand why does this person feel that way. People feel disillusioned. They feel like their vote doesn't matter. If I can get to the why behind it, then we can have a conversation about changing it. Obviously, you want that person to reconsider. When you talk about close elections that happen at the local level, those are often things that people who are considering not voting often are not taking those kinds of things into account. There's usually good evidence of something that would have turned out massively differently if people hadn't come out and vote for it. So school bond issues can be a good example of something like that you alluded to earlier. Ultimately, I tell people what do you have to lose by voting? If you already think it won't make a difference, iIt's a small investment of your time. Just vote and see if it makes a difference. Ultimately, when people develop a pattern and a habit of voting, once it starts, it continues. So I start with trying to understand the why and then working my way backwards from there. Because ultimately, we all want our voice to matter. It's not a good feeling to feel powerless. And ultimately, if we can help someone see how participating can't hurt them, but can only help them, that's, I think, the message that's going to resonate.

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So when you're looking for the person's why, what have you experienced in those conversations where all of sudden the light goes off and you see it go off or hear it go off that has them say, I will vote?

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Usually regardless of ideology, people have fear, trepidations, worries about the future, and that can come across in a whole host of ways. Oftentimes, you hear, “It doesn't matter.” Trying to show some evidence of times when it did matter. And oftentimes, those are the less cited examples. Showing that it's a low investment, that if it doesn't matter, what do you have to lose by trying it? Ultimately, it comes down to what kind of fear and hopes do you have for the future and how might your voice when added to other voices make a difference on that? And you have to understand that it's a water on a rock kind of a situation. Candidates don't always win on the first try. Sometimes it takes a while for a movement to take hold. And so this is a long term investment. But ultimately, for what you stand to gain, the investment is small.

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Absolutely. Especially when I hear a woman say they're not going to vote, I first will go to, there's ancestors that died, not necessarily mine, ancestors, women that had died trying to get women the right to vote. How could you not vote? Like what is it? I will hear the reasons, disenchantment, and I could go down the list because we all feel it, but we still go vote. But I always bring someone back to look at how much someone sacrificed and ultimately gave up their lives so we could have that right to vote. And I feel that it is a privilege and it is an honor. And I will tell you my grandmother, bless her soul, she came over from Italy as a four-year-old. And once she was allowed to vote when she got her citizenship, she always voted. I would ask her and she goes, “Because that's my right. I'm an American citizen.” She was just so proud of it and she just approached voting as the days where people get dressed up and go vote. I know that a lot of things people would get dressed up back then and now that people don't but it was just a ritual and one that brought her a lot of pride and many of the old-timers who are no longer with us.

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Right, when you think about women, the 19th Amendment was a little over 100 years ago and so it's unlikely that there's someone voting right now who remembers that passage. So, for our grandmothers, they knew people who didn't have the right to vote as an adult. Even later than that, there are people who, whether it was voting rights or intimidation and things like that, yes people fought and died for our right to vote, but I've not found that alone, without people's personal everyday lived experiences, to be enough to get a non-voter to become a voter.

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Do you, and I know I'm going off questions, but for the work that you do, do you see a percentage of people that don't vote, like an average?

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Yeah. It varies widely in part because participation in a presidential year is far different than a midterm year or a primary. And so, it can vary widely. That being said, we spend a lot of our time focusing on that, what we call that mid to low propensity voter, someone who votes but does not vote every single time. That's the person we have the best chance of encouraging persuading to turn out in an election.

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Do you see that there's also people that will vote for the state and local, but then don't go to the presidential?

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What we know about voters is we know who has voted. We don't know how they voted. The reason that we know there are people who vote at the top of the ticket and then skip the rest of the ballot is because when you look at the vote totals, the presidential candidates have more votes than the people at the bottom of the ticket. Just add them up and clearly people stop voting. So it's not to say it couldn't be the other way around. It could be, but there's not enough of them to show up in the numbers that way.

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Yeah, okay, understood. So as business people, we need to be informed as it relates to businesses and workplaces. How do we distance ourselves from the negative rhetoric that's out there and effectively run our businesses?

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Yeah, absolutely. So that's an interesting one for me because our business is politics. Oftentimes I will say, I go to other business events or family events. And so I'm often in places where it's not the place for politics. And so I tend to face that in those situations more so than in the workplace, because again, our work is politics. I think it's perfectly okay to set a boundary and say, I'm not here to talk about that today. I'm here to hear this speaker or I'm here to be at church or I'm here to worship or learn or whatever it is. It is perfectly okay to set a boundary and say, that's not what we're here to talk about today. At this time of year, people can start to get on political overload, that there's so much on the news, there's so much on social media. We have these conversations where it's not a conversation between two persuadable voters. If someone is set on their beliefs on one side and set on their beliefs on another side, you're just going to have a lot of conflict and not likely a lot of change going on there. So when we do engage, I encourage people to keep it to facts and to understand what the difference is between the facts and your opinions about those facts. You don't have to agree with someone to understand and you don't have to agree with someone to treat them with decency.

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Agreed. I went to a conference last week and there was a session talking about something that's come up politically that could impact the community that I'm part of, the LGBTQ community. So it was interesting because the panel had four attorneys, and they looked at some of the laws that have been passed, and they broke it down to the facts. No noise. And I sat there, I said, yeah, so this is workable. Thinking to myself, this is workable. Because what they kept trying to say is stay away from the noise and focus on the facts, and you’ll see that there are some things that are maybe not as dramatic as the media is saying. So I walked away from that with a more positive understanding. And I know that. When you look at the facts of whatever legislation is out there, it sometimes is a different picture than what we hear when we're listening to the talking heads.

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Exactly. Regardless of your own personal ideology, that's why it's good to look at a variety of sources and kind of triangulate that information, and also understand why other people believe what they believe. You don't have to agree with them, but the why behind it helps you understand.

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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what I had done is I actually moved some of my news apps to a part of my phone that I can't see. So I'm not actually going to it anymore and I have found a shift. I'll read the newspaper on the weekend, I'll go to the business portals that I need to. But right now, I'm doing my best to stay away from it because people like you and I, as I wrote about you need to not think alike to love alike, we get it. We get it that there's more done out in the world when people can collaborate, whatever your ideologies are, but collaboration and integrity is really important. So I find that when you start listening to the noise, it's very disruptive and it doesn't keep me calm. And when you're running a business, you have to have part of your psyche that has calmness. Even if you're in the middle of a challenge or whatever explosion may have occurred, if you, as the business person, whatever your role is in the company, can keep a balanced presence, I just think you can get through most anything a lot easier.

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Yeah, absolutely. And in a business, you need room for strategic thought. You also need to be able to project calm to the people on your team. If you expect them to have a clear head and the ability to make good decisions, then creating opportunities for that to be the case, it starts with you.

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So if we go back to some of the conversations that you had when you're talking about people who don't want to vote, what kind of advice would you give someone who doesn't have the political background that you do? How would you give any of our listeners advice on how to frame the conversation so it has a better outcome? May not get them to vote, but it has a more peaceful outcome.

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I start with what are the facts versus what are our thoughts about them? So trying to understand what motivates that person. Like I said, oftentimes, it is very rare to find someone that doesn't have a political opinion on something. So once you find what that is, why do you feel that way? What motivates you to feel that way? And then I go back to voting being a relatively small investment. Usually, the person who does not vote will come back to, “I don't think it matters very much.” Trying to compare to them the potential impact it could have with the level of effort, that makes it seem like a logical choice. That doesn't seem like this big light bulb or this big aha moment, but yeah, that's one of the most effective things. Another effective thing is who votes and if you voted or not is a matter of public record. And simply, sometimes, someone doesn't want to be the only person on their block who hasn't voted. So sometimes, getting a person who does not vote or, more likely, not someone who never votes but someone who doesn't vote regularly to vote more regularly as an example. School board elections and things like that tend to have notoriously low turnout. And if you think about an election where 20% of the registered voters might come out and vote, you have a five times more impact than if 100% of the voters came out. How could you not turn down an opportunity like that? Strangely, some of the less ideologically motivated reasons to vote can be more effective. And again, it's because asking someone to vote is actually not a big ask. It's usually not a light bulb moment about an issue. Someone doesn't suddenly wake up and realize that they care about school choice or realize that they care about taxes. They either do or don't care about those things. But the notion that everyone on my block might know I'm the only person who didn't vote, that can be motivating. The notion that maybe only 200 people are going to vote on this so my voice actually might mean quite a lot, or that it's really easy to vote. Let's say you're a mom with four kids under the age of five years old and you've got to take all of them, put them in their car, drive someplace, voting can actually be a bigger ask for some folks in different situations. That's one that comes to mind. There's seniors who don't get around so well, all of those kinds of things. When you talk about how voting could be made easier for someone, it tends to be a relatively low bar we're trying to get across.

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So now let's flip it to when we walk into or see a conversation about politics becoming a hornet's nest of a conversation. How do you recommend to set the boundary to ease yourself away from that? If that's what you want. I mean, some people want to be in it. Me, I don't want to be. 

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Ultimately, having that kind of a heated argument doesn't get me the result that I want. So, you know, I'm more interested in finding people that might be more inclined towards my ideological point of view and turning them out because I know that's going to get me the results that I want. Whereas, a loud argument at a family dinner is not. And I know that. So I think that if you know that about yourself, I think the earlier you can lay that down and the more clearly you can lay that down, the better off you're going to be. I think it's hard for someone who generally cares about you to persist in aggressively pursuing a topic when you say you don't want to pursue it. So I think that the earlier you can do that, the better off it is. It's hard to get into a shouting match and then say I don't like shouting, Betsy, when you've been shouting for the last 15 minutes. So I think the earlier you can do that the better. And then I go back to, again, trying to find out what someone's reason behind why they want something. There's some pretty contentious issues out there now that I think Republicans and Democrats agree on what the problem is and have similar fears about what could happen for our country but believe there's a different solution for it. And so if we can agree that we both have similar concerns, but we have a different way that we think they need to be addressed, that can be a way of at least finding some commonality as humans.

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Right. I've even noticed, even if I'm in conversations who have similar beliefs that I do, we can start getting into conversation and then even start going down a bit of a rabbit hole, not in an argument, but in the talking about it. And there have been times I just have to say, you know what? I can't. I can't. It's exhausting. It's also for many of us that engage in the conversation. So I try to focus where I can on integrity, doing the right thing. Everybody has a different version of what the right thing is for whatever's personal for them. But if I run into somebody that has a different opinion than me, I've been so much better at saying, you know what? I don't want to have that conversation about politics. I like you better than politics. And they totally get it. So I've had several people say to me that we probably have different political views, but we have the same social views. And that to me feels – that's a very calming approach when I talk to someone that may have a different belief because, again, I want to surround myself with people that see the good in others and want to just be more cohesive than combative. And I know that's not always the easiest thing, but I'm still going to just focus on putting out more love and collaboration and kindness versus sometimes what we hear out there. It just doesn't serve anybody, and I think that we are better people when we approach those conversations in a more loving way. As silly as that may sound.

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I don't think that sounds silly at all. I think about, what can you control? You can't control the top level messaging that's out there. But you can control your words and your actions and your thoughts. And ultimately, just like we talked about school boards and state and local elections sometimes having more of a direct impact on people, those kinds of things will have more of an impact on the quality of your life than tilting at a windmill of something that you can’t control.

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Right, absolutely. So, Nicole, as we bring our conversation to an end, what is something that you would like to share with our listeners that could just impact them in a really good way as we're going through the rest of the election cycle?

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A few things. The first is when you encounter someone whose political views you find are not the same as yours. Seek to understand the reasons why. Ultimately, you might find you have some commonality and you have some understanding, and you also have some disagreement. I think that we, as humans, whether it's in social situations or family situations or business situations, when we can find some commonality, even in the light of plenty of disagreement, we can move forward in the areas that we're supposed to move forward together. So the first thing is to seek to understand the reasons why. That also tends to dial down the heat of the conversation, which I think makes for better peace of mind for everyone. The next thing I'd remind people is this election will be over. It will be over in less than 100 days from now. So, think about the person that you intend to be after that. There will be another election and there'll be another one after that. I started in politics in 1996. There was nearly a generational ebb in voter participation. Then, people talked about how combative people were and how engaged people were in the 60s, and it'll never be like that again. And here we are right now. The arc of history is long, so remember that there will be a day past this election. And how do you want to show up knowing that?

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Absolutely. Well, I appreciate this conversation. And again, it's important to me that we as leaders model that we can have different beliefs and ideologies and we can do some great work together.

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Yeah, absolutely. 

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That’s what I really want to demonstrate from our conversation because I find that there are people, on both sides, that get so extreme that they’re not even hearing anything. And when people can open up their hearts and, even in leadership, you come to the center, there's just so much more good and important work that can be done there rather than the fighting that goes on. I can handle conflict. When you own a business, like yourself, you run into it a lot. But there's times when I want to have constructive conflict, not conflict just for the sake of having a fight. And I just think, now, that we all need to spend more time just listening and understanding each other.

Thank you so much, Betsy. I appreciate being able to be here with you. 

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Absolutely, Nicole. Always a pleasure to have conversations with you. I wish you all the best because your work is very, very important. I appreciate that someone like you is doing that work because you've got a huge heart and you're just a gift. So I thank you for being here today.

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Thank you.

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