“This is What a Lobbyist Preps Like”
Welcome back to our membership series “This is What a Lobbyist Looks Like”. As we continue our Fall Membership Drive I wanted to provide insight into who the staff are on our Lobby Team and the work they are doing to prepare for the upcoming legislative session. One of the ways you can prepare for the session is to join Texas Impact as a member.
This week, I sat down with Texas Impact’s Policy Advocate, Bobby Watson, to learn more about what he is expecting from the upcoming session. You can read excerpts below or watch the full interview here:
Kat:
Hey y’all. Kat Karbach, Membership Manager for Texas Impact. I am with Bobby Watson, policy advocate for Texas Impact – tell the people, tell us some things about you, your history, your hobbies, school, that kind of fun stuff.
Bobby:
Yeah, so I’ve been with Texas Impact for the past three years, and I focus both on our immigration related policy and on our gun violence prevention related policy.
Before that, I was at Trinity University and I studied international politics there with minors in Russian, Spanish. And I’m a lifelong Texan. I have a big old family of seven siblings and came from Wimberley, grew up in that area. So real familiar to Central Texas and glad to be here in Austin working and working with y’all.
Kat:
I think one of my favorite things about you is when we’re in the office working together, oftentimes Bobby will talk in English and then in Russian and you just never know what you’re going to get. And it’s been really fun learning Russian from you.
Bobby:
I picked up some fun, cool colloquialisms I like to use a bunch.
Kat:
You’ve been working here for a while, and this is not your first session as a lobbyist. You have previous experience, right?
Bobby:
Yeah, I worked last session in 2023. That was my first session and I was part of the lobby team with Josh Houston, who was with us at the time, who was really helpful. And so I got to learn about the legislative process, then see how the structure is, get some behind the scenes knowledge and really kind of glean the knowledge from him. And Beaman Floyd, who works as our contract lobbyist and is also part of the Texas Impact family.
Kat:
What sort of things specifically have you either learned from Josh or from Beaman about preparing for the upcoming session?
Bobby:
Yeah, so preparing, there’s a lot and also not a lot you can’t do. So some of it is just making sure you get your dry cleaning done. It’s a pretty higher level dress code, so wearing suits every single day and that’s not something I’ve experienced before. So making sure that’s prepared for.
Kinda getting all of your affairs in order because from January till May, you’re kind of off the grid and inaccessible. So sending out warnings to friends and family that, “Hey, it was great seeing you, loved you. I’ll see you again in six months.”
And then doing the nitty gritty of policy research bill filings already started. That happened last month and we had a ton of bills filed this time. A historic amount over 14,000 bills, sorry, 1,400 bills were filed at the first day of bill filing. I’m covering, like I said, gun violence prevention and immigration. So tracking all those bills, knowing what’s coming, getting to meet legislators and making sure they know who we are so that when session hits the ground running, we know all the people in the building, they know us and we can get straight to working on policy that is good for Texas.
Kat:
So you’re doing all of this research, you’re there at the capitol all of the time, which makes me think you probably have a “go bag”, so to speak, for the capitol.
Bobby:
Yeah, I am a big outdoorsman. I like to backpack a lot. And so I realized pretty quick into first round of session that going to the capitol was a lot like prepping for a mini backpacking session. And I do have a different backpack.
I take a bag large enough where I have both enough room for my large water bottle, my coffee, my lunch for the day. I try and not eat the cafeteria there just out of pure economic reasons. And then all of the stuff I need for legislation for that day, which it’s constantly changing. So it’s a pretty thick bag filled with all of my full day rations and all the materials I need.
Kat:
Amazing. Anything else you want to talk about as far as how our members can navigate the Capitol, tips and tricks there? Maybe talking a little bit about what it’s like to interact with a legislator or a staffer since this isn’t your first time. I think you probably have some good insight there.
Bobby:
I think the best advice I could give would be, one, check out our 10 Commandments for Legislative Visits that’s on our website and also has some of our quick best tips, best practices for speaking to a legislator.
And two, just remember that they are people and whether or not we disagree with someone to extremes or not, they are constantly talking to people in volatile, high energy, high emotion conversations. And when you come in and present your values in a principled, yet respectful and calm way, that makes a difference. I even have a bunch of friends who are staffers and they talk about one of the difficulties of working in that building is the constant bombardment. So whenever we prep our people to come in and be compassionate voices yet still principled, that really means a lot and can have a profound effect on how we are remembered and our values as an organization.