<p>A physician and I are trying to set up visits with our 4 elected officials in August, while they are in Honolulu. They and we all have pretty busy schedules, so I am trying to set the schedules up efficiently. In the past, we have had others make the appointments for us and piggybacked with them. No one is offering to make the appointments for us this time and I am trying to figure out what makes sense. </p>
<p>Of course, it would be preferable if we could have all the visits on one or two days instead of 4 separate days. Also, two of the elected officials are running against one another and one is likely to lose the primary election in August and not be returning to Congress in 2015. Any suggestions on how to go about making the appointments? I have called all 4 offices and they all say send an email requesting an appointment with details.</p>
<p>Thanks for any tips on what has worked for others. Scheduling makes me crazy!</p>
<p>Are you lobbying for particular legislation or are you providing information on an issue that affects the legislator’s constituents? Do you know anyone who is a large contributor or influential supporter? If so, enlist the help of those folks. Have that person find out who makes the legislator’s appointments and talk to the person directly or find the staffer who can make the meeting happen. Be persistent. You might have to do some digging. Did you call the local office or the DC office. You might have better luck calling DC. </p>
<p>Send an email to each person’s chief of staff. They control access to the electeds, and they know the schedules an availability. You might be able to find their names on official’s website. A generic email won’t go to these people and may or may not be fowarded. </p>
<p>I spoke with the scheduler for each local office. We want to visit them while they are in Honolulu. I do have the emails for each of them and will follow up. I guess I will just list our availability and see what meshes with their schedules. They all sounded like they will try to fit us into their schedules. We are talking about healthcare issues and some pending legislation, some legislation that is badly affecting Hawaii constituents and other lung health issues. I don’t know huge donors.</p>
<p>E-mail the scheduler as they’ve asked, but follow up with another phone call three or four days after the e-mail if you haven’t gotten a response. Make sure that you note that you are a constituent, and if you represent a group of more constituents, make sure you state that. You might not get a meeting with the legislator, but rather with a staffer who covers the issue. Honestly, that can sometimes be better.</p>