A Grassroots Organization...If You Can Keep It

Convention of States volunteers Bill Scott and Ed Mulholland on “upstream” advocacy, the mechanics of running a grassroots organization, and civic hope

Last July, I wandered away from our booth at the National Convention of State Legislatures for a minute to stretch my legs, turned a corner, and ran into the massive installation for Convention of States (COS).

Couldn’t miss it — also, didn’t realize I was taking a picture of former Senator Rick Santorum [R, PA]

I was a little familiar with the organization’s work,¹ and curious. I ended up striking up a conversation with one of the volunteers (thanks, Patrick!) that continued over email for the next few months, and he was kind enough to introduce me to the Ohio State Director for COS Bill Scott and Zanesville-based Regional Captain Ed Mulholland (for more on COS itself, I would recommend watching Bill’s recent testimony to the Ohio House of Representatives). Today, I am delighted to share our conversation about grassroots advocacy, building public support for “upstream” issues, and the role of emotion in engagement. And this is our first audio issue!

Two things in particular fascinated me about COS:

1. This is a newsletter about constituent engagement that has not yet really talked about grassroots organizing and the advocacy world — which is how most people interact with their representatives. COS is by all appearances very successful at building an engaged network of volunteers, so I wanted to hear how it works, ideally from some of the volunteers who engage on this stuff.

2. But, unlike many other examples that come to mind when I think of grassroots organizing, COS is not aimed at “issues,” but has managed to mobilize an engaged audience around a big pitch for a relatively weeds-y constitutional process. How do they make that pitch, and what attracts people to COS?

You’ll hear the whole thing for yourself, but a few highlights for me were:

1. Ed’s three phases of activism. You can tell that Ed is a longtime Boy Scouts manager as he describes watching new activists go through the “three phases” of activism: first happy to be invited, second demanding, and third listening. This has really helped me reframe how I’m thinking about the wave of new public engagement we’re seeing today, and maybe even generations of advocacy movements and organizations.

2. How engagement feels is important: We talked about how retirees (including Bill and Ed!) find community in this type of work, the feeling of civic awe in participating in a mock convention, hope and off-ramps for burned-out activists, and finding the right moments to build relationships. There’s a real sense here for the emotional management necessary for this work, and the value of giving people something to look forward to.

3. What does long-term organizing look like? After retiring from an executive role at an insurance company, Bill has been working with COS for ten years, so he speaks from experience on the challenges of slowly building and keeping a volunteer organization together, and striking the right balance of flexibility vs. a narrow focus.

Sincere thanks to Bill Scott and Ed Mulholland for spending the time with me — it was a really fun conversation!

---

Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity and may differ slightly from the audio recording.

Anne Meeker: Bill and Ed, again, thank you so much for joining us. This has kind of been a long time putting this together, so I appreciate your patience as we started this newsletter. We kind of got kicked off here because I actually met someone from the Convention of States at NCSL this year and had a wonderful conversation, and I have just been fascinated by your work ever since. So can I just ask you two to introduce yourselves and then tell me a little bit about the Convention of States project?

Bill Scott: Sure. Well, I'm Bill Scott. I'm the state director for the state of Ohio for Convention of States, been with the organization about eight years, and the last three years as the state director.

Ed Mulholland: And I'm Ed Mulholland, I'm a regional captain covering basically central Ohio, working with the grassroots and our legislators. And I've been doing it for about four years.

Anne: We were talking before we recorded, the Convention of States has been around longer than I think I was familiar with. Can you guys just tell me a little bit about the project and the organization?

Bill: I'd be happy to jump in there. The organization has been around since around 2013. It was started by Mark Meckler, who was very big as one of the Tea Party Patriots founders out in California. And when he had kind of run his course with that, he decided we need another way to make changes, the Tea Party is not getting it done. So he and another partner, Dr. Farris, Michael Farris, created the Convention of States Project back in 2013. So that's how long we've been around. It's organized as a 501(c)(4) for the action arm, which is Convention of States Project or Action. And that's where the most of the lobbying and the grassroots work occurs. And then there is much like, POPVOX [Foundation], there is a foundation associated with the Convention of States as well, which is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and that is where the education goes on. And no lobbying or nothing that could be deemed a violation of our or tax status there.

Just as an example, the education side of that foundation ran the simulations for Convention of States over the last several years. There’s been two that have been done, one in 2016 and one in 2023, just recently. And there was also last year a grassroots version of that, which was, you know, our volunteers from around the country. But of course, the most interesting and most realistic is the one that occurred with actual legislators running the simulation, in Williamsburg both times. So, that's a little bit about the organization.

Anne: Perfect. And you may not have this off the top of your head, but do you have a sense for just kind of the scale of the organization — just for who signed the petition versus who volunteers?

Bill: There's about two million, four hundred thousand petition signers across fifty states. We are organized in all fifty states. The teams, of course, are at different stages of development in the various states. But Ohio is one of the more mature and one of the more active and large teams around the country. But of those 2.4 million petition signers, some of them are leaders like Ed and I, and others are grassroots in their district level alone, trying to get to meet and know their legislators in the State House, at a district level in their state. And others might be what we call volunteer activists: people who have signed the petition, but they're willing to do grassroots work. They write letters, write emails, attend rallies, do whatever is needed by the team. Say, out of the 2.4 million, just roughly maybe 10% of them are active, beyond, you know, just signing the petition. A couple hundred thousand people involved in various levels indicating their willingness to volunteer and then those that actually do.

Anne: Got it. So part of why I was excited to talk to y’all for this newsletter is — again, we're looking at constituent engagement, just what is the current state of constituent engagement between people and their legislators? Where is that going? What are the different models that are kind of salient right now? And I was excited to talk to y’all as an example of a very highly mobilized grassroots organization and grassroots effort. It sounds like you two are both very committed volunteers, and have been a huge part of the organization for a long time. How did you both get involved?

Ed: You know, I retired about four years ago and, having watched the news and been frustrated about various issues for years and years, I finally had time to pay a little more attention to what was going on. And, you know, the truth is, there's a hundred issues I could fight every day, but I ran across someone who was talking about Convention of States, and I immediately saw that most of the problems we have come down to structural things that have occurred, to change the way Congress and the federal government operates, giving them way more power, and, you know, basically taking sovereignty from the states. And if we felt like if we could solve that, it would help solve a lot of other problems, or at the very least, bring those problems closer to home, where I can actually reach out and touch my state legislator. So, yeah. And then it just went from there really quick. Quite frankly, I don't even remember who first introduced me to the concept, but I was in immediately.

Anne: I love that — we talk a ton at POPVOX Foundation about Congress being like the upstream challenge of all of the other issue-based problems. So that definitely resonates a lot with the work that we do, and I appreciate that. What do you think the attraction is for people working on this specific structural reform piece, as opposed to getting involved in more of an issue based advocacy campaign or some other method of engagement?

Bill: Well, we have folks that come to us from all different perspectives on, whether they have been active or not. I'll just give myself as an example — I told you how [my interest in the organization was] piqued with Mark Levin's book, but I would characterize myself prior to that as only marginally involved with politics and issues. Certainly aware of it — I supported various political campaigns or candidates with either money, or maybe helped with a phone bank once in a while. But I was not an activist per se. Now, I consider myself a huge activist.

Then there's other people that come to us who already have, like you say, a favorite issue. And so they are already activists, but it's in a narrow lane — like maybe it's right to life; maybe it's balanced budget, maybe it's, you know, medical freedom — could be all kinds of things. And some people are a little bit into everything.

But what we found is that the activists that come to us that already have some, some background in other issues, see the benefit of this organization being a broader, like, an umbrella organization for the ills that, you know, we suffer in the country that come down from overreaching government. And so they can immediately identify, “Okay, well, here's an overarching way, an organization that has resources, it has training, it has commitment, it has success. It's passed in nineteen states so far, that have signed [a resolution sent to Congress].” And they like the organization, basically — the training and the fact that we can get involved in things. They are going to make a difference.

Now, it's a long term thing. Many, many folks that are involved with one issue, it's one and done. But this is not a short term thing. We've been at it for ten years, and we're hoping that, you know, we make progress on the convention side of it, but longer term, we like to say we're more than a convention. We're an army of grassroots citizen activists who are engaged in the political process. We want to make a difference in our country. The convention is to get us there, but eventually we want our citizens to be involved with their government at all levels to make a difference.

Anne: Interesting. And maybe that's the right time to dig in on something else that I find really fascinating here. So my background here is very kind of tech world and constituent engagement. And I think a lot of the conventional wisdom in this world is always: make it easier for people to engage, reduce the friction, lower the barriers to engagement, make it easier to do, you know, “one click, call your Representative, here's a script.” And it seems to me a little bit that this bucks that wisdom, and that you're actually asking a lot of people who want to engage. There's a lot of civic savvy that has to happen for people to understand what you're trying to achieve and where the authority is to call this convention, and then there's a lot of work to get involved in kind of the grassroots work of this. But it sounds like maybe that's almost sort of the appeal — tell me how you think about just what that appeal is.

Bill: You know, I'm going to let Ed fill you in a little bit about some of that that goes on in the State House pretty regularly under his guidance. But, yes, we do those normal things too, that you mentioned. We have civic-type campaigns where people that want to do one and done, you know, send a note to your legislator, there’s a hot issue right now, or we have a hearing coming up on our legislation, please contact. And we do that, but we do much more than that, because we realize that's kind of one and done, but you want the people to stay engaged. We want them to get to know their legislator. You want them to help out with their campaigns, if they want to, or their issues. It doesn't have to be a campaign. Some of the legislators that we’d like to support us are involved with many other issues, and we like some of those other issues. So we tell our grassroots, you know, look at their page, see what else they're sponsoring, what is important to them. Can you identify with that, help them out, write a letter or help them with something? An event that they might be hosting for that? And they will get to see your name. They'll get to see you in person. And, so it's a long term process to build these activists.

And once they get started, they really see the benefit of bringing their government back local. They can't touch them in Washington, DC. There's US Senators, and even their Congressmen are pretty untouchable, unless you're a big donor or something like that. Our state-level people, you'll see them in the grocery store, you'll see them at the church, you'll see them at the county fair. So they really like being able to reach out and touch their elected Representatives at the state level. That's what we're all about, trying to bring our government back to where the Founders said most of the power should be, with the states. Federal government should be limited to the powers that the Founders gave them. But that's no longer the case today, sadly.

Anne: Ed, anything you want to add on that?

Ed: Just going back to the first part of the question, what I find in the volunteers that that come up, the vast majority of them, in my mind — I grew up during the bicentennial, and, I lived in New Jersey, and we hiked all the historic trails, and we saw all the trees where Washington watered his horse. And so I have this, you know, this deep embedded sense of patriotism, love of country, that kind of thing. And I find that in our volunteers, they love the country and the principles that set us apart from other countries. And they want to get back to that. They're looking out for their grandkids or their children. They just want to make this thing last another 200 years. That, to me, is like the underlying fundamental thing that draws a lot of volunteers I run into.

Anne: In this newsletter so far, one thing we've really kind of talked about a lot is the experience of interacting with government right now, and just how that feels for people. And so clearly, a lot of the work that you're doing is civic education, helping people understand what they can do on that Article V option. Bill, in one of your emails, you had this wonderful phrase about, really helping your grassroots find hope. I'm curious when you have volunteers together — what's the vibe? How is Convention of States trying to make people feel as they engage with you?

Bill: Hope is a big thing because so often people are discouraged by the political process. They say, “Oh yeah, we'll have a balanced budget someday. Oh, yeah, we'll do this in Washington.” And it's all talk and it never happens. And people see this program and they see this power given under Article V that, hey, go another route, go around the US federal government, go to the states and try to make a difference. So that's where the hope comes in, to say, “Hey, you're not spinning wheels necessarily, you have a path. It may take a while, but you have a path to make change that's actually going to stick.” And that's what we think this whole effort is about is that, even if — look, what's going on right now² in Washington, DC over the row about the budget, they can't even agree on cutting a budget for the existing federal budget. That should have been done months ago, and it's still not done. So they're going to have another Continuing Resolution. And the DOGE folks have identified all kinds of fraud, waste, and things that can, should, and and eventually will be cut. But why aren't they cut right now? People don't understand that. You haven't even finished your budget for the current year, why not cut those things?

And so that's getting back to the hope thing — people see the fact that, yes, you really could have a difference if you get down to the state and local level.

So, a little bit off target, but when I say state and local, what I mean is all the way down to your township meetings, your city meetings. And we have a group of folks in Ohio that are actually doing that as well. We call it our municipality project, where people who are COS activists, take that simple message of Article V and they go to their local township, which, there might be ten people there in the meeting, and they show up and say, “Hey, let me tell you about Article V,” and see if maybe your local township would be interested in sponsoring a non-binding resolution about Convention of States. And we've had great success with that. Dozens and dozens of municipalities around the state of Ohio have already signed non-binding letters of support, resolutions, saying that we, Township X, back an Article V convention. Think about it: the local supervisors, their budgets are controlled, a lot of it out of their hands. Mandates have come from outside their townships, and much of it emanates from federal regulation. And they see this as a way that we could get control back at the local level as well.

Anne: Yeah. And again, so you're getting really weedsy with folks on, on kind of the civic education that you're providing them right there and then. Can you just kind of articulate for me the skills and the civic knowledge that you kind of have to give your folks for them to be able to participate in this way?

Ed: Well, you know, I've been organizing this thing we call “Stand Up at the State House.” We're trying to go to the State House once a month just to be present to let them know that this is an issue people care about and start building relationships with legislators. And, I've kind of found most people go through three stages.

You know, the first thing is the perfunctory stage, right? The aide does return the call the first time, and they will be willing to schedule an appointment at some point. And you meet with the legislator and it's kind of like a “smile and wave” kind of thing, and I don't know that he's engaged. You know, sometimes you go in there and they just like, you know, you're a constituent, “Look at me, I'm meeting my constituent, thank you very much, now get out of here. I got things to do.”

And then you move into a kind of a demanding stage as an activist where, you know, you're like, “You have to support this thing! We got to do it today! It's so important!” And then you realize, of course, that's not going to get you very far.

And you start to, go into what I call, like, the listening phase and relationship building. Now, you can go in and you talk to the aide, and you find out what the legislator’s thoughts might be. They never commit to what their legislators are thinking, of course, but what they might be. And maybe you have a little email campaign with four or five people just kind of trying to address that. You go in and you listen a little bit more with the long-term idea.

I mean, some [legislators] will jump right out. “Yep, I'm totally in.” And that's great. But most of these legislators are very reluctant to have an opinion or public opinion on any issue until it's actually really close to having a vote or whatever — because, you know, if they side with me on one issue, it’s automatically telling everybody else on the other side that, “sorry, you're out.”

So it’s working with them slowly, giving them information over time, educating them so that when it does get to a point that it's of real interest to them, first of all, they know who they can call for information. And second, you know, they have this background of experience, at least from our side of the issue, that hopefully swings more our way when the time comes if they have to decide.

Anne: So I'll say yes, as a former legislative staffer, I'm getting some flashbacks just hearing you talk about that whole experience because it is hard. And then there is a very participatory element to a lot of what y’all do. I really want to ask about the grassroots conventions. I think this is such an interesting way to engage people. It sounds like they are so fascinating to be in the room for. So, tell me about the mock conventions! How do they work? Who's there? What's it like? I'd love to know everything.

Ed: Okay. Well, they've done two mock conventions that involve legislators from the fifty states. These are legislators who volunteer and go to this convention and in a matter of, you know, a three-day weekend, right, they try to come up with solutions.

My experience personally was the first simulated convention conducted that involved volunteers. So, first of all, I was incredibly honored to be selected as one of two delegates from the state of Ohio — that was just insane. And, you know, that put a lot of the weight of responsibility on me to try to do the right thing.

I got there, and it was held at the Patriot Academy, which is an organization that teaches about the Constitution. And they had built a — basically a replica of the Texas State House. So everything was very government, very official. The big dais up front. And it was run — the first thing we did was decide that we would use, Black’s Rules of [parliamentary procedure].

Then they divided us into three groups, one group to talk about term limits, one about fiscal accountability, one about limiting size and jurisdiction. And then in those groups, I walked into term limits with — you know, I had it all written out, I had the perfect term-limits plan. And as I listened to other people, I realized, “Wow, that's a good idea. And, oh, yeah, that's a flaw with mine, you know, that would cause a big problem.” Just an incredible learning experience.

I think legislators would have the same benefit of hearing all the different ideas. They might make fewer mistakes from the outset about, “Oh, if we did that, it would cause this problem.” But just the number of ideas that came forth, and again, in one day, right?

And then the next day, we go back into the chamber and run through the process of introducing our proposals from each of the three committees, and debating them, and eventually, voting to issue one as a proposal or not. And we probably voted to propose a few things that, really, we would never propose, but we had three days, right? So we came up with the best plan [possible]. I imagine this thing would take, you know, six months as they haggled through all three of those issues.

But, yeah, it was a tremendous learning experience, and just a great opportunity. Everybody that was there was fully committed to, you know, doing something that would be the best thing for the country. And we had some people that had completely different ideas than the rest of us, but we all worked together. And it was a lot of fun.

Anne: What did that mean to you, getting to see kind of a deliberative process up close? Just how did that change your understanding of what we can do in this country?

Ed: Two things. It's a lot harder than you think it is. And I gained a lot of respect for representatives and legislators, you know, because they're just one of the crowd, and you're not always going to get everything you want, but you can get the best you can, and that you can learn. And that it's very deliberative, whatever the end result is. I mean, I just got the idea that, you know, nothing crazy is ever going to get out of there, because you’ve got everybody else saying, “that's crazy.” By the time you whittle it all down and merge everybody's ideas, you're going to have something that potentially has the ability to go out to the states and garner enough support to be ratified.

Anne: Very cool. That sounds like a very moving experience to see government in action from just the grassroots folks. Did you get a lot of training beforehand on understanding the process and the proceduralism of it, or are you figuring it out on the fly?

Ed: The truth is we got, you know, a lengthy email that explained what the rules would basically look like, what the weekend would look like. And then, actually our National Director Mark Meckler was the Speaker of the House, I guess, and he laid out some rules up front. And, you know, we had a lot of fun actually playing with some of the rules, too — you know, shutting down people, you see people get up and run over to the other side of the room and have a little consultation right there with three other delegates, you know, to figure out how to address what just came up in the debate. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

It was, in some ways, you know, I gotta say, it's kind of spiritually moving, because of the way everybody was so focused on doing the right thing. And it felt real. They did a nice job of making it feel real. We knew in our heads, of course, that, you know, nothing was ever going to come of this, but, yeah, it felt real. And it was just, it was very emotional and intense. And we learned a lot.

Anne: How do we help other Americans have that experience, of participating in something and living out what it means to be in a deliberative democracy? Do you have just a sense for how should that change how we do civics education or adult continuing education?

Ed: We should do a lot more of exactly that. Yeah, we really should. If you want to learn about the Constitution, have people come up with ways they would try to tweak it, and they’re going to have to understand it, and they're gonna have to argue with other people that understand it differently.

Bill: Yeah. We would love to see civics come back into the curriculum of the public school. When I was, back in the Stone Age, back in the 50s and 60s, when I was going through school, we had civics class, and we had things called government class. We had more than one. And that's just missing today, and it's kids, parents have to dig up some or others.

But a number of our volunteers around the country take it on themselves every Constitution Day, September 17th — they will go to their local school and offer to come in and teach a class for you on Constitution Day. And they get taken up on it more often than you would think, and that's one way to do it, just to introduce the Constitution, the aforementioned Article V, and as part of that process. But they would go through the whole Constitution and what it means in terms of what they would cover in a class.

Ed: I think it's a law that requires all schools to study the Constitution on Constitution Day. Most don't.

Bill: We try to help them comply with that, if we can.

Anne: Interesting. I don't think I was familiar with that. I'll have to look that up. Very cool.

So then thinking about that, so much of the work that you're doing is civic education and helping your grassroots folks understand what's possible, and again, these tools to engage civically… you've mentioned that this is a long term project, that it is bigger than a convention. How do you see this going long term? If you're kind of building this “army,” as you call it, of folks with these civic skills and the civic knowledge, how does that change, long term, big picture, the way that legislators and their constituents interact. How do you see our civic life changing down the road?

Bill: Yeah. Well, it all gets back to education, as you mentioned. And, motivating people to be engaged citizens, good engaged citizens. And, that's when we say that we're more than a convention. Our immediate mission is to get this passed through 34 states. But in the process, we're building this large — actually, right now, we're probably the largest active citizen engaged army in the country, in terms of our ability to mobilize people in fifty states and so forth.

So, we're using that to our advantage for the immediate mission of getting the 34 states necessary to call a convention, but also then to channel those grassroots into other issues besides Article V. And we actually have a concurrent effort going on, for states that, unlike us —we're very busy because we've not passed yet in Ohio our resolutions — but if you take a state like next door to us in Indiana, they passed the Convention of States resolution in their legislature a number of years ago, but their army is still there and their army is still engaged, and they're still, you know, thirsting to keep the state government, as the one where the power and the legislation should be focused, not the federal government.

So the army around the country can do what we call “F3,” and that stands for anything related to federalism, freedoms, or fundamental rights. If something, a piece of legislation or a ballot issue or some other political issue comes onto the political agenda, we might look at those selectively and say, “Hey, this is an issue our grassroots might be interested in helping out on.”

Somebody from the grassroots might bring it to our national team and say, “Hey, there is a ballot initiative going on in Ohio that has to do with changing the threshold for the state constitution to propose amendments to the state constitution to be, you know, 50% or 60%.” So that was something that we actually got involved with that has nothing to do with Article V, but it does have to do with our fundamental freedoms. Our fundamental freedoms are impacted when the state changes to allow ballot initiatives to go on the ballot with only, you know, 50% voter approval as opposed to something higher, like 60%. Now, if you think about it, how many things in our country have either two thirds or three quarters requirements?

You if you can pass something with a grassroots, 50%-plus-one change in your state constitution, which is a governing document, it shouldn't be subject to kind of mob rule or things where foreign donors can put money into the state and hire canvassers and go out and say, you know, please sign this to make it easy for the people to change their constitution. That is something that we got involved with in Ohio as, non-related Article V. But it is related to fundamental freedoms.

Anne: Yeah, I remember that was hugely controversial in this last cycle.

Bill: Right, very. And unfortunately we lost that one. Yeah. It did pass, and it’s now 50% in Ohio to put something on the ballot for changing the Constitution.

Anne: Is there any kind of back and forth with your national team then on which issues under the triple-F framework to get involved in, which might create some issues down the road for the nonpartisanship of the Convention of States project?

Bill: It is definitely vetted and cleared. And not every project that the grassroots in the states suggest gets approved. They're very strategic, and very careful from a legal review from a down-the-road view as to is this something we want to get involved with, and it has to fall within that F3, category that I mentioned.

But, you know, when that is done, those activities are not done through the nonprofit C3. It's done through the action [the C4]. So that's the separation, when they do those kinds of activities.

Anne: Okay. So the C3 still stays very Convention of States education-focused.

Bill: They would never get involved with those types of issues now okay. They only do education about the Constitution, things like simulation and those kind of basics.

Anne: So again, one thing that we've kind of crept up on a little bit is thinking about [how] constituent engagement takes both sides. It takes the organization and the civic savvy on the constituent side, and then the ability to receive and act on that input from the legislator side. And you guys have done so much work directly building up these long-term relationships with legislators. Just from your perspective, I'd be curious if there's anything that you think would help legislators be more receptive, be more able to act on constituent input? Anything that you're seeing in those interactions where you're like, this would be really helpful?

Ed: I would say one thing is availability. I mean, it is difficult to find people who can travel to the State House. And when are the legislators there? Tuesday and Wednesday, when everybody's working. So when you see our crowd down there, you see much older people. Doesn't mean that all our supporters are older, but you have to be retired, basically, like I said, to go maybe once or twice a year. So how do you fix that? I don't know, because even back out in the districts, you know, you hear about where they're going to be — well, they're surrounded by, you know, all the typical Republican Party people or whatever. And it’s difficult, you know — they're there for a reason, and it's difficult to just have a conversation.

Bill: But there is more opportunity in the district. Sometimes we have a booth at these county fairs or community events and they will stop by and we get a captive audience, and we'll engage with them or we'll talk to them while they're at another booth, with another issue.

So there are opportunities beyond the two days a week that they're generally in the state capital, to see them in district. And we encourage people to do that. We say you have a lot better chance to not be having aides say “Your 10:00 is here and your eight minutes is up.” So if you're able to get them in the district, that's ideal. Plus, you get that relationship built if you're helping them on something else, maybe one of their favorite issues. And, I can't tell you how many times people have run into their legislator in the grocery store and they don't mind chatting for a minute. You know, you don't have a half hour conversation while their milk is getting warm, but, you know, you do take that opportunity to engage and let them know who you are and so forth.

Ed: Something we do is we have a couple people that are constantly trawling Facebook, reading the Facebook pages of these guys to find out where they're going to be. Is there anybody available to, you know, attend this meeting here or whatever and maybe chat with them? You know, places that we can build the relationship or just be visible, you know, put the COS button on or whatever.

Anne: You know, I get asked so often, like, is there one best way to contact my legislator? You know, is it better if I call them or if I show up to an event, and it sounds like you're telling your folks, “Hey, there's no one weird trick. You just gotta show up everywhere and constantly.” Is that right?

Bill: Yes. Repetition.

Ed: Yeah. And I've learned also that, the aides, sometimes the aides, you know, building a relationship with the aide is — I mean, it's always very important, but there are some that are very, very influential with their legislator and totally connected at the hip or whatever. And so you can work through them quite effectively in many cases.

Anne: And I think that that kind of comes back to maybe a final question here, which is, is it possible to to kind of build a coalition that that focuses explicitly on structural issues?

Ed: I think we're doing that now. And I think Bill and I, if we're different in any way, he's very good with the structural-technical. And I think I hit people more from the emotional side a lot. You know, they want to balance the budget. They want to cut the term limits. I mean, ultimately, they're structural changes, and you have to approach it from both directions. I guess.

Anne: So structural works, but tied back to kind of that personal. “This is how it impacts me. This is how it impacts my kids. This is how I would like to participate in my government.”

Ed: Yes.

Bill: That's the education process that we want people, not only the legislators but our grassroots, to understand that most everything that you don't like that's going on can be traced back to some sort of government overreach. And you have the ability as a citizen to make a difference there. And just using the Constitution to save the Constitution, and save your kids and grandkids from being spent into oblivion.

So we're very bullish on the prospects for the country adopting this. We would have liked it already done by now. But we know it's a long-term process and we're getting there. And we hope, hope one day to have it.

Ed: And that long-term process — right now we're working in Ohio just to get the state to call the convention. Imagine if a convention is called, when we get 34 states, the amount of education and civic engagement to make sure delegates are selected, that, you know, we want, that they're going there with the right state of mind.

And then, you know, six months, three months, a year later, whenever they propose some amendments. This army of ours has to be prepared to help push those through or defeat them if they are not what we were looking for. So, yeah, long term this could be going on for a while.

Anne: And if/when that happens, I would love to follow back up with you guys and hear more about the specific questions that you're getting. But let me just say again, Ed and Bill, thank you for taking the time to chat with me. This is really, really fascinating to get to hear just how you think about organizing this grassroot movement and the experience that people have and the challenges that you face talking to legislators.

Bill: Our pleasure. Thank you.

Ed: And thank you very much.

1. We had previously cohosted an event on Congressional reform in partnership with an organization working on offering an alternative approach to COS’ work.

2. This interview was recorded on Monday, March 10, in the middle of negotiations over a Continuing Resolution and the threat of a government shutdown.