OC Blog: Winning Measure M: An Interview With Jeff Flint

Public affairs consultant Jeff Flint had a big day on Election Day: his firm, Schubert Flint Public Affairs, won virtually every race they were involved in. The toughest race was Measure M, because convincing two-thirds of the voters in conservative, anti-tax Orange County to renew a 20-year old half-cent sale tax for another 30 years is a tall mountain to climb. Even though I supported renewing Measure M, until the last few weeks of the campaign I was skeptical it would clear the two-thirds. The Yes on M team needed to hit 66.7%, and ultimately garnered 69.5%.

Frankly, I think the only reason it won is the campaign was in the hands of a politically conservative consulting team that understands Orange County. As OCTA's Monte Ward told me on election night when I asked him how they won: "Because we ran a Republican campaign."

I interviewed my old friend Jeff about the political mechanics of the Measure M renewal victory.

Matthew Cunningham: When did the Renew Measure M Committee form, and what was the configuration of the campaign consulting team?

Jeff Flint: The committee was formed in May, 2006. The initial campaign team consisted of Townsend, Raimundo, Besler and Usher for strategy and direct mail, Schubert Flint for strategy, day-to-day management and coalitions, Smith Watts for strategy and transportation planning, Jim Moore for polling and Stacy Davis for fundraising.

At SFPA's recommendation, we added John Lewis and Matt Holder over the summer to help with mail targetting strategy and Meg Waters to help with earned media.

TRBU left the campaign in late August, and SFPA took over responsibility for direct mail and overall strategy. Smith Watts and Moore left with TRBU. We added Meridian Pacific to help with mail production, and used both Vince Monaco and Jim Bieber to produce mail. We added Gary Lawrence for polling.

MC: Why were the particular consultants for this team chosen?

JF: TRBU was hired because they have done a lot transportation measures before. SFPA was hired because of our management skills and local contacts/knowledge.

We suggested adding John Lewis and Matt Holder because, well, as you know, I have known them both forever, and know they are very good.

MC:What did the campaign think was necessary to win two-thirds approval for M's renewal?

JF: From the beginning, we felt voters needed to believe 4 things to vote to renew Measure M: One, that the current Measure M had been successful and had used the money well; two, that the new plan would have projects in it that would alleviate traffic, particularly localized discussions of specific projects that would benefit local voters; three, that measure M would not raise the tax rate; and four, that the taxpayer safeguards in the Measure would ensure the money would be spent as promised.

Of course, we felt all along that it was essential to have small, disorganized, un-funded opposition.

That was pretty much it. The other elements included having a lot of credible spokespeople endorsing the plan. Having a broad, diverse and deep support list that included the whole gamut...business and labor, GOP and Dem, environmentalist and developer, etc.

We planned on mailers that would include city-by-city versions, regional versions, etc, that made sure we talked about local projects in the area of the voter. Some mailers included 35 or more versions.

MC: At the outset, what did the Yes on M team see as the biggest challenge to winning this campaign?

JF: We saw a few potential challenges.

One was the potential for organized and funded opposition. We worked aggressively to nip any such in the bud, as you may have seen with the OCGOP endorsement. Todd Spitzer, Mike Duvall, and others were champions on that, as were John Lewis and Matt Holder. I also personally worked very hard with the Orange County Register editorial page to lessen their opposition. We assumed they would oppose, but I am told that they editorialized 33 times against Measure M in 1990. They did less this time, obviously, and allowed that there were good aspects of the plan. We also responded every time they criticized about it. Finally, we worked very hard behind the scenes with John Moorlach and Chuck DeVore to make sure that they did not make opposition to Measure M a cause, because those two have the ability to rally the conservative base. Both stayed officially neutral.

We were worried that high gas prices would cause people to feel less comfortable voting for the Measure, but that dissipated, obviously.

Finally, we worried that the long ballot, all the bonds and taxes on the ballot ahead of M, and the string anti-tax campaign that was being run from the Governor on down to No on 86 thru No on 89 would create a string, anti-tax environment. We also worried that voters might think that Props 1A and 1B "solved the traffic problem" and that Measure M would "not be necessary." We did an extra round of polling and focus groups to explore this, and found that voters were more inclined to support a local transportation funding measure than a state one.

MC: What, if any, surprises did you encounter during this campaign?

JF: Surprises? Hhmmm...nothing really. Well, I guess the thing I was most surprised by was how many people assumed that we weren't really trying to win this time, or expected to lose, assumed that the plan was to have multiple tries all along, etc. I was certainly in to win from the start.

I was surprised that more candidates didn't associate themselves with M, and that some avoided it. We were always going to get 64 or 65%, I think, as a worst case. I thought it was a no brainer for local candidates to ties themselves to M, bit some didn't want to.

MC: What does passage of Measure M say about the OC electorate? Does it mean they are less hostile to taxes than traditionally believed? Can it be interpreted as a "shift to the middle"?

JF: Less conservative? Not at all. We ran as conservative a campaign you can for a tax/spending measure. It was a central premise of our campaign that this was not a tax increase, and that we had the money locked down so the money had to be spent as promised.