They Send Drew to All the Bad Meetings
Consensus-building as a comms strategy
Given the state of politics these days, you don’t often hear people talking about building consensus as a goal, much less a strategy for success. But that’s exactly where Drew Morrison, a candidate for Montgomery County’s 1st District Council seat, lives.
Over coffee the other day, Drew told me that a client used to send him to “all the bad meetings,” because of his instinct to bring people together: “My job was to get them around the table, have everyone yell and scream and talk about what was bad or good, and then say, ‘Okay, how do we take this into how we move forward?’”
A veteran of both state and county government, Drew has spent his career using that skill in public service. Now he’s leveraging it as a quality voters should consider in a council member.
“We need an elected leader who is saying, okay, we are going to bring different perspectives to this. What can we move forward, and how do we move pieces forward in a way that is sustainable?”
Drew’s outlook — viewing politics as a process of coming together to build, rather than debating endlessly — is an interesting communications angle: he’s proposing to change the communications landscape and the policy focus.
Montgomery County’s perception in Annapolis is a good example of where this could help. In his work at the Maryland Department of Transportation, he’s seen that the county doesn’t always get its “full due.” While other jurisdictions arrive with a short list of shared priorities, Montgomery County sends a slate of competing concerns.
“But if we have cohesive, shared, countywide strategies and priorities that have the might of a million people behind them, I think we’ll be more effective.”
In a county that prides itself on engagement and diversity, I’ll be watching to see where the consensus polls on Election Day.