Demarco Factor

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. Includes a unique strategic template that includes momentum-building stages over a multiyear campaign; using the media to engage public support; building coalitions of faith, community, labour, public health, and business groups; and persuading candidates to support legislation before elections, rather than after they have been elected to office.|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.

"The DeMarco Factor is the engrossing tale of a once powerless American building power for himself and others to curb entrenched hitherto undefeated commercial interests. This is a teaching, motivating book for all who aspire to shape a just and humane society, but do not know how."--Ralph Nader, "The DeMarco Factoris a must-read for these challenging times. It shows us how to bring people into the fold, rather than just folding."--Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post, "An essential guide for every citizen frustrated with the power of big lobbies to derail progressive laws that are supported by the vast majority of Americans. Vinny DeMarco is a conscientious legislator's dream. When you fight for a bill that Vinny has organized on, you know that the power of the special interests opposing you is shrinking away."--Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Chair, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, "I have known and worked with Vinny DeMarco for more than twenty-five years. In all that time he has been motivated by an unfailing passion for justice combined with an extraordinary ability to make others want to join him in action to achieve justice. They trust him because they know he's in it for the long haul, not just the day. He will do most of the work, then give them all the credit. His deep knowledge of history, which he never displays, guides him and helps make him a true leader. The lively campaign stories in this book capture the essence of that leadership."--Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor, "I've never met a more authentic person. There is no pretense; there is no put-on with Vinny. He's an extraordinarily compassionate, committed person, a very bright person, and one who knows how to get things done. The faith community in Maryland and across the country has benefited greatly from Vinny's uncanny ability to mobilize us behind life-saving public health policies." --Bishop Douglas I. Miles, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD)

Michael Pertschuk has had a long and distinguished career in public health advocacy: as consumer counsel and ultimately chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, from 1965 to 1976; as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, from 1977 to 1984; and as co-founder and co-director of the Advocacy Institute. His previous books include Revolt against Regulation, Giant Killers, and, with Wendy Schaetzel, The People Rising.