“We’re pleased to be recognized for innovative programs for elected officials and organizations leading the charge on progressive reform,” said Winning Connections President John Jameson. “These clients won the closest US Senate race in the country, passed historic environmental legislation, and shifted the national health care dialogue.”

Goings on at Winning Connections

Ari Appel is now Winning Connections’ Vice President of Innovation, in charge of making the firm’s voter contact programs more effective. Ari has designed dozens of voter contact programs for major interest groups, as well as campaigns at the local, state and federal level. Ari previously graduated from Harvard College and worked for America Coming Together.

Winning Connections welcomes Regina Fiorentini as our new Political Director. Regina most recently worked on the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign. Her seven years of experience running field operations for campaigns like Whitehouse for Senate, Knowles for Senate and the coalition that defeated three anti-union ballot measures in California, will be a huge asset to our clients.

Association News

Heidi Ecker , Vice President for Government Affairs, has recently developed membership activation programs for the American Nurses Association, American Physical Therapy Association, and the American Osteopathic Association. “Our clients from a number of industries are celebrating a wealth of grassroots success – be it advocate recruitment, grassroots communications or policy outcomes,” says Heidi.

Personal Pitch

One of my closed friends, Michael Skelly, is running for Congress in Houston. Michael and I bonded in our first year at Harvard Business School in1989 when we realized we were, to say the least, a bit to the left of the typical b-school student,. He has the perfect profile to turn his red seat blue. Michael’s record building a small wind farm company into a billion dollar company plays well in Texas. He raised over $700,000 in the first quarter (possibly the most in the country for a challenger), and he has a real shot. Check him out at www.skellyforcongress.com.

Live Interactive Calls Help Nutter Win Philadelphia Primary

Winning Connections congratulates Michael Nutter on his hard-fought win in Philadelphia’s Mayoral Primary Election yesterday. Outspent 3-1 by his opponent, Nutter overcame a 10-point deficit in the polls with a reformist message that Winning Connections helped communicate with targeted persuasion and GOTV calls. The success of Nutter’s innovative campaign is a testament to the top skills and good stewardship of Campaign Manager Bill Hyer and Field Director Greg Leifer, and Winning Connections extends our congratulations to them and their staff as well.

Winning Connections Fights Fraud with AARP

AARP has found that more than half of all victims of telemarketing fraud are senior citizens. Winning Connections is working with Washington State AARP to educate seniors around the country on how to recognize fraud. If you have a friend who is a potential victim of fraud, please direct them to the AARP Fraud-Prevention Hotline (1-800-646-2283) for advice.

Patch-Through Calls Push Ethics Legislation Through the Colorado House

Last fall Colorado voters approved Amendment 41, an ethics reform law with noble goals, but so broadly written it even prevented the children of government employees from receiving public college scholarships. Coloradans for Sensible Ethics – a progressive coalition – hired Winning Connections to recruit thousands of constituents to call members of the Colorado House and ask them to clarify Amendment 41. Legislators got the message - a bill recently passed by House reversed the unfair treatment of state employees.

Winning Connections Welcomes New Staff from Labor and the Association Worlds

We are proud to announce the addition of two very talented individuals to our team.

Heidi Ecker joins Winning Connections as our Vice President of Legislative & Political Affairs. Heidi has worked in Washington, DC for the last thirteen years; building coalitions and helping advocacy associations make political impact. At the American Nurses Association Heidi coordinated the nurses’ efforts to support the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Before that, she built the American Osteopathic Association into a grassroots powerhouse. Most recently, Heidi was CEO of the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity – a public-private partnership.

Mark Kanarick has started as Programs Director, coming to Winning Connections from the National Association of Letter Carriers, where he was responsible for coordinating field operations in the Western States. He’s helped elect pro-labor candidates in California, Hawaii, and Arizona, and he worked directly for the Tim Johnson campaign in 2004. At Winning Connections, Mark will bring the expertise he has gained from organized labor to develop and implement effective phone programs for our clients.

Jon Tester’s hard fought campaign, with a winning margin of 2,847 votes (less than one percent) resulted from an intensive voter contact effort. Winning Connections began making voter ID calls in Montana in early April. Later Winning Connections sent daily GOTV messages to supporters. Over multiple rounds of live interactive calls, we engaged supporters with individually tailored messages. In addition, we implemented a separate multi-call GOTV effort customized to turn out Native American voters. On Election Day, these intensive efforts paid off for an important Democratic victory.

Winning Connections also worked for Senator-elects Sherrod Brown and Ben Cardin, candidate/Congressman Harold Ford, and on behalf of Senator Maria Cantwell and other Senate candidates through state party coordinated campaign efforts.

On the House side, Winning Connections helped Democrats pick up hotly contested seats across the country such as Jason Altmire in Pennsylvania, Kirstin Gillibrand and Mike Arcuri in New York and Jerry McNerney in California. We also helped push back Republican efforts to oust great Democrats like Leonard Boswell in Iowa and Peter Visclosky in Indiana.

We were also pleased to work for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt and Congresswoman Nita Lowey.

Winning Elections Is What We Do

Every year, Winning Connections strategically uses phones and technology in hundreds of races to identify, persuade and mobilize voters by engaging them in dialogue. This year, we have worked with clients in 33 states and tackled everything from city council races to statewide senate campaigns. On Primary Day in September, 10 out of 15 clients won their races.

One of our clients last month was Keith Ellison, who won the Democratic nomination in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. Next month Ellison will be the first Muslim elected to a seat in the U.S. Congress, facing only token opposition in the overwhelmingly Democratic district. Many observers consider these times a tough political climate in which to elect a Muslim Congressman, but Winning Connections helped Keith Ellison connect with voters in last month’s primary election win.

Winning Policy Fights to Protect the Earth and Civil Rights

Winning Connections uses phone strategies to give our clients an edge in policy battles. In July, our firm created a patch-through hotline program generating over 12,000 calls to Congress to push leaders to renew the Voting Rights Act without any provisions that would weaken voting rights for minorities.

Our clients range from civil rights groups to senior citizen advocacy organizations, environmental groups, healthcare organizations, trade unions, housing advocates and corporations like Toll Brothers.

Recently, Winning Connections has also helped environmental groups mobilize constituents to protect the Earth and those who live here:

• In Pennsylvania, we generated patch-through calls moving targeted state senators on a “clean cars” measure.

• In the state of Washington, our patch-through program convinced Rep. Dave Reichert to vote against rolling back logging regulations.

• In California, we utilized the same program to mobilize voters against lifting the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling.

Winning Connections Outperforms Phone Competitors for the “Oscars of Political Consulting”

Washington, DC — Winning Connections won fourteen awards for its phone campaigns from the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) at the premier annual event for political professionals. This year’s competition, held this past weekend in Napa, California, recognized achievements in public affairs campaigns, and Winning Connections was recognized in 10 of the 17 phone categories it entered. WC garnered Pollies for a wide range of programs, including early get-out-the vote and integrated phone/e-mail campaigns to a hotline helping Katrina victims and advocacy calls that helped defeat Governor Schwarzenegger’s statewide ballot initiatives. Winning Connections took away more Pollies than any of the other phone firms receiving awards. In fact, WC has won more Pollies than its competitors in six out of the past seven years.

“We’re proud of the innovative programs we’ve been doing on behalf of groups like the CSEA Schools, ACORN, the American Diabetes Association and other organizations all over the United States,” said Winning Connections President John Jameson. “We did ground-breaking work in early voting efforts and integrated phone and e-mail campaigns, both of which are becoming more important all the time.” Jameson added, “I’m also gratified that we were able to help everyone from Katrina victims and school kids in California to municipalities wanting to build safer roads and bridges.”

Winning Connections’ award-winning programs included:

• A last-minute get-out-the-vote effort that helped a win a narrow victory in heavily Republican Cobb County Georgia for a tax increase to fund transportation improvements.

• In that same local ballot contest, a call that identified and persuaded supporters, establishing the foundation for our successful integrated phone and e-mail program.

• A program for Katrina victims, in which we quickly set up a toll-free hotline to help homeowners obtain mortgage relief. We worked with our client, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to develop a phone script aimed at obtaining vital information from victims needing mortgage assistance.

• Another program for ACORN in which we delivered emergency calls to Houston residents informing them of the official call for voluntary evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita.

• A call that earned the Pollie for “most innovative use of automated phones,” in which WC delivered customized calls using the voices of mayors in 23 Denver-area jurisdictions.

• A phone program that mobilized absentee voters on behalf of a coalition of labor groups opposing Governor Schwarzenegger’s propositions 74, 75 and 76, all of which were defeated.

Winning Connections is one of the nation’s leading political consulting firms specializing in grassroots advocacy and direct voter contact. WC has delivered 1,300 programs targeting, persuading and mobilizing voters to influence policy and win elections. Since its founding in 1996, Winning Connections has served advocacy groups and associations, political parties and candidates, and corporations in 48 states and in the United Kingdom.

Winning Connections also aided progressive candidates for mayor, school board, and county commissions all over the country. And our work on local government ballot measures ranged from school funding to open space and smart growth efforts.

Overall, we managed integrated direct voter contact programs in 23 states this year, with 60 per cent of our clients victorious at the polls. And we take pride in being part of several courageous, if unsuccessful campaigns that laid the groundwork for better government in years to come.

We look forward to helping many of you build on this year’s successes in 2006!

The staff and I felt much calmer knowing that we had gotten the word out to our members before we evacuated ourselves out of town. The calls really did work. Everyone who called us seems to have gotten a ride out. One ACORN member called in from a senior building where 35 seniors were trying to get out of town and couldn’t get through on the 311 city number after calling for hours and hours. I called the state rep for that district on his cell and he got the Mayor’s Chief of Staff on it right away.

Winning Connections is also helping ACORN assist victims of Katrina to deal with problems concerning insurance and mortgage payments.

Winning approval of even a modest tax increase tied to a specific need is very difficult – especially in the heavily Republican county that was once represented by Newt Gingrich, and especially at a time when gas prices were skyrocketing. Winning Connections identified supporters and persuadable voters, contacting over 50,000 voters with eight targeted phone and e-mail messages over a three-week period. When turnout was light on Election Day, we made 12,000 additional calls to get out the vote. The effort paid off: Cobb County citizens approved the special sales tax, called SPLOST, by 117 votes.

Citizens for Cobb’s campaign manager Billy Linville said, “Simply put, without Winning Connections, the Cobb County SPLOST would not have passed. They were creative, hard working and effective. I don’t ever want to manage a campaign without them.”

Senior WC staff also attended the recent E-Voter Institute’s conference on “Advertising and the Empowered Voter.” Political consultants, national party officials, and congressional staff were among the panelists. There was a consensus that a dramatic shift is underway in political communications. Panelists described how technologies ranging from TIVO and mobile devices to more sophisticated Web sites are eroding the effectiveness of traditional mass media. In the corporate world, these forces already have forced a new emphasis on direct one-on-one consumer marketing. Panelists said it is inevitable that political campaigns will adopt the same strategies, and it is only a question of how quickly and fully they will embrace them.