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Michael Pertschuk
Vanderbilt University Press

The DeMarco Factor: Transforming Public Will into Political Power

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AuthorMichael Pertschuk
PublisherVanderbilt University Press
PublishedJan 22 2016
Book FormatPaperback
ISBN-139780826517036
Dimensions8.8 X 5.9 X 0.7 inches
Weight 0.8 pounds
BISAC
CategoriesPolitical Science > Political Process - Political Advocacy
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

Vinny DeMarco might be a latter-day Don Quixote except that he tilts his lance at real obstacles to social justice: lobby-locked state legislatures and Congress, stonewalling the public will. And he makes impossible dreams come true. In twenty years of organizing campaigns in Maryland, he has led successful efforts to pass gun control laws (against National Rifle Association opposition), to hike cigarette taxes to prevent youth smoking, and to extend health care to hundreds of thousands of low-income workers. He has also built a unique alliance of mainstream and conservative faith groups, which helped secure rare bipartisan votes in Congress for the enactment in July 2009 of landmark FDA regulation of tobacco manufacture and marketing.

DeMarco's unique strategic template, developed over two decades of serial campaigning, includes momentum-building stages over a multiyear campaign; unrelenting, skillful access to the media for engaging public support; coalitions of hundreds, even thousands, of faith, community, labor, public health, and business groups; and a hard press on candidates to support legislation before elections, rather than after they are comfortably in office. As an organizer/leader, Demarco also succeeds in his campaigns through force of personality: his unquenchable exuberance and idiosyncrasies delight and madden his opponents--sometimes his allies, too.

Michael Pertschuk, himself a veteran advocate, here chronicles three of DeMarco's campaigns, each facing a different obstacle course. His deep analysis draws out strategic and leadership lessons that engaged citizens and advocates for popular causes stonewalled by powerful lobbies can put to immediate and practical use.

Author Bio

Michael Pertschuk served as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 1977 to 1981, and he cofounded the Advocacy Institute. He is the author of Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars and The DeMarco Factor: Transforming Public Will into Political Power (both published by Vanderbilt University Press) and three other books.

Mr. Pertschuk has had a long and distinguished career. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1959, he served as a legislative assistant to Senator Maureen Neuberger of Oregon (1962 to 1964), and went on to become chief counsel of the Senate Commerce Committee. While with the committee, Mr. Pertschuk became one of the congressional staff’s most important and influential members.

For example, he was instrumental in drafting numerous consumer protection measures, including the Magnuson-Moss Warranty-Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act. Ironically, the stringent standards for FTC rule making imposed by that act were the basis of a recent District of Columbia district court decision disqualifying Mr. Pertschuk from further participation in the children’s advertising case. (He was said to have made prejudicial remarks on the subject.)

Among Mr. Pertschuk’s published writings is an article that appeared in Juris Doctor in September 1974 entitled, “Getting Your Way in Washington.”

Source: Vanderbilt University Press and American Enterprise Institute

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