Courtesy of LuAnn Bird
LuAnn Bird with U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil.
Wisconsin liberal activist LuAnn Bird recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to lobby against federal cuts. There she spoke briefly with her House representative, Republican Rep. Bryan Steil.
In his 12 years representing Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan says his office has never been contacted by so many people.
“People are calling us. They're sending emails. We're getting postcards, a lot of contact on the website,” says Pocan.
5 Calls, a liberal-aligned nonprofit that provides online, issue-specific phone scripts for those seeking to contact their congressional representatives, has faced a similar boom. Since it began in 2017, the organization has facilitated 7.9 million calls to congressional offices around the country. Nearly 45% of those calls have taken place since Donald Trump took office three months ago.
“[Demand has] been, honestly, the biggest we've ever seen,” says Nick O’Neill, a former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign field worker who co-founded the nonprofit with his wife.
As Trump rapidly dismantles federal agencies and smashes political norms, many liberal — and some conservative — Wisconsinites have been wondering how to best make their voices heard. Republican members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation who have held in-person town halls have been faced with scores of angry constituents, and many have shifted to virtual town halls instead.
A group from the liberal-leaning advocacy group Opportunity Wisconsin recently made their way to Washington, D.C. to speak directly with their representatives, Congressmen Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden, both Republicans.
One member of the group, LuAnn Bird, a resident of Milwaukee suburb Hales Corners and two-time Democratic Assembly candidate, says she’s been contacting Steil’s office since Trump’s inauguration to voice concern about how cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are affecting his constituents. In D.C., Bird spoke briefly with Steil and talked for a longer time with one of his aides. Potential cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are a top concern. The department, which provides benefits and healthcare to U.S. veterans and their families, is planning to cut over 80,000 employees, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press.
“My husband's a Vietnam veteran, and he's paralyzed,” Bird says. “He's pretty critical right now, in terms of his health, and the shaking up of the [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs], like they're doing, is actually putting his health at risk.”
Pocan says that sharing a personal story face-to-face, as Bird did, is the most effective way to contact a representative.
“Your unique story is always the most powerful. That's why town halls are so effective, because you can really say it to someone's face, and you can have a real conversation about it,” Pocan says.
Though some advocates have suggested calling congressional offices, Pocan says a “well-written email” may be more effective than a phone call because it provides a first-hand record of what was said.
His ranking: in-person conversation, email, phone call, and, “way down below,” a postcard or letter: “If you do it via the mail service, because they screen everything for ricin and other toxins, it can sometimes take weeks to get that message.”
O’Neill says “having a short script,” like the kind provided through 5 Calls, helps make the prospect of calling a congressional office less intimidating. In Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, whose office did not respond to a request for comment for this article, is in highest demand though the app, O’Neill says. Johnson has received 14,816 calls over the last month; Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is close behind at 14,309.
Pocan has received the most calls through the app of any Wisconsin U.S. House member, at 3,342. Trailing him are Republican Reps. Scott Fitzgerald (1,838), Bryan Steil (1,726), Tom Tiffany (1,725), Derrick Van Orden (1,556), Tony Wied (1,485), and Glenn Grothman (1,424). Democratic U.S. Rep Gwen Moore has received the fewest calls of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, at 1,203.
Wisconsin’s five most called-about issues in the last month include opposition to a Trump-approved budget stopgap measure, which generated around 4,600 calls, followed by the mishandling of classified documents during “Signalgate”; Trump’s tariffs, “unlawful” U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement detainments, and Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education.
O’Neill, like Pocan, says that sharing how one is personally impacted by policy decisions is the most effective way to communicate with lawmakers. He says that it’s particularly helpful to call right before a vote on a piece of legislation — letters and emails need to be sifted through by staffers.
“If you see a vote that's coming up the next couple days, you definitely want to call versus send an email, because you're sure that your opinion is going to be heard before that vote happens,” says O’Neill.
There are limits on who you can contact. Almost all congressional offices require constituents to verify residency on their contact forms, to ensure only a representative’s constituents are getting in contact with them. Both O’Neill and Pocan say it’s not worth anyone’s time for people to contact lawmakers who don’t represent them.
“We have well over 700,000 constituents and a couple of people who take care of all of that. Over a couple weeks ago, we sent out 18,000 replies to people, if you could imagine the amount of work that that takes,” says Pocan. “To be fair, I don’t think anyone — even if they’re in leadership — takes a lot of calls or contacts outside their district, because it’s really difficult to be able to respond to.”
Pocan instead advises those who live in his heavily blue district to “talk to people” who live in Wisconsin’s six Republican-controlled House districts and encourage them to contact their representatives.
“You can help organize people who share your values in their district, and if they do the outreach, then that would be very powerful,” Pocan says. “Sometimes it's not going to be your direct message, but you're helping to organize people in another district to contact their representative.”
Bird says she’s “optimistic” that if enough constituents share their stories, representatives like Steil may be more willing to block Trump’s cuts. But, she adds, “It’s not going to happen by me alone.”
