Movers & Shakers: Jeff Burton

Homepage > Politics Magazine > May 2009 > Movers & Shakers: Jeff Burton

As grassroots director for one of the party’s rising stars, Jeff Burton is working to expand the GOP’s shrinking base.

Jeff Burton joined House Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s staff in January as director of coalitions and grassroots. He was previously chief of staff for Texas Rep. Mike Conaway.

Politics: Your focus in Rep. Eric Cantor’s office is so specific: grassroots and coalitions. Why is that key for the party right now?
Burton: You look at where we as Republicans have been the last couple of cycles— we haven’t done too well. Part of the problem is that we haven’t been connecting with the American people like we used to and like we should. So my job is to rebuild that two-way communication with the American people, to let them know what we stand for and who we are as Republicans.

Our core messaging doesn’t work anymore. We need to delve deeper. That’s why we try to communicate how the policies that we stand for and what we’re trying to do in Congress affects people’s lives. People don’t know what happens in Congress any more—nor do they care most of the time. But on a lot of pieces of legislation, they need to care. It shouldn’t just be what’s on Fox News or CNN that day that the American people are concerned about; there’s stuff happening every day here in Congress that affects their lives.

Politics: How do you see your position developing? Have you set any goals?
Burton: One specific goal is to play an integral role in earning back the majority in the House of Representatives. The larger, over-arching goal is to help rebuild the Republican Party with a solid foundation based on issues rather than on any one individual. The whole question of who is the leader of the Republican Party—it doesn’t matter. The party isn’t based on any one central figure or what he wants, it’s based on the people.

At this point it needs to be an all-hands-on- deck atmosphere. We want everybody’s help. We want everybody who has something to offer. Whether they work here in Washington or around the country, we want them. The best ideas percolate up from the American people to us. The more people that we get input from, the better policies Congress will promote.

Politics: I know you’re new to the job, but what have you worked on so far?
Burton: One of the biggest things I’ve done is a weekly e-mail to like-minded folks throughout the grassroots community called “This Week in Washington.” I’m trying to increase the information flow and talk about issues that aren’t on the nightly news: What bills are passing, what’s going on in certain committees. I send it out early in the week and then I send out something I call “The Weekend Reader,” which talks about what actually happens on votes. We need to get information out about what the Democrats are doing here in Washington and how they’re taking us in the wrong direction. It’s very difficult for us to get our message out through the mainstream media. That’s just one very small piece of the long-term puzzle.

Politics: The Obama ground game won a lot of praise this past fall. Was there anything that he did that you made you jealous—anything you will try to adapt next year for Republicans?
Burton: I wouldn’t say jealous. But the level that they used technology—it wasn’t just, “Here’s these 13 million online supporters,” it’s what they did to activate those supporters. If somebody signed up on a website and wanted to volunteer, they’d get an email saying, “Here are your neighbors who are undecided. And here’s the form to report back.” It was to a level that hasn’t been done before. But you can’t replicate it. For the next 20 years people are going to do bad replications of the Obama campaign—like people tried to with Reagan and Bush. When somebody’s successful, everybody tries to have the same messaging.

Politics: Organizing For America is trying to convert some of that grassroots success to governing. How do you make it work once you’re in office?
Burton: With Obama, just because it hasn’t worked yet doesn’t mean that it’s not going to. In many ways they are on the right track—and we’re thinking about running along similar tracks. It’s a lot about microtargeting, even on the policy side. You’re not going to excite anybody with one blast e-mail to 10 million people on spending. But if you send some personal e-mails, make some phone calls with people that really care about spending and will act on it—that’s worth way more than a 10 million person e-mail. It’s the action that comes out of it. I think everybody on both sides is still working out on the policy side just how you can activate people. But it’s just getting to know people. On the Congressional level, we have the technology available to know your constituents. You can really know people. It just takes a lot of work and effort.

Politics: As you say, Republicans have a lot of work to do. Where do you start?
Burton: The over-arching priority has to be restoring the American people’s faith in the Republican Party. And the biggest part of doing that is figuring out how we communicate our message, how we develop a broad message that can attract independents, and at the same time not pissing off our base. There are a lot of people that we have to keep happy.

We need to soften our image and show people that we care. We need to show people that we’re not so steadfast—that, yeah, we stick to our principles, but we’re also there to listen and we’re open to adjusting to where the American people need to be.

Politics: So what’s the message in three years?
Burton: The thing we have to do is show up. We have to make an effort. It’s as much where we say things as how we say things. We need to take our message to the American people and that means we need to go places where some members of the party haven’t been as comfortable. We need to go into the minority communities and talk to them: talk to them about our vision, what our solutions for their hardships are. We haven’t done that for the last few years and I think its showed. People aren’t going to vote with us and support us if we don’t show up.

Will a majority of them support us? Maybe not right away. But we need to start showing up regularly. We share a great number of values with African-Americans, with Hispanics, with union members. We believe in a lot of the same things. But there’s been a history where we don’t trust each other. We need to start. We’ve been talking to the same people for a long time and we need to expand that group of people. We can’t be the party of old white guys and plan to survive.