Endorsing Political Candidates with Scott Ashton

Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Scott Ashton. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.

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Brandon Burton 0:00

This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.

Voiceover Talent 0:14
Now, your host he traveled to Colorado on a mission to find his favorite ice cream. Here’s my dad Brandon Burton.

Brandon Burton 0:21
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.

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Matt Morrow 0:45
Holman Brothers provide a great training for our sales team in terms of just outstanding sales techniques. But maybe even more importantly than that, they were able to provide us with a system a process that was repeatable and in that we’re able to see very clearly from one month to the next how the how the pipeline is doing, what prospects are in it, what kind of progress we’re making and what we can do to coach people to success.

Brandon Burton 1:07
You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.

Our guest for this episode is Scott Ashton Scott is the president and CEO of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce in California. He has been on the staff at the Chamber since 1996 and took on his current role in November 2016. Scott is originally from Massachusetts, and began his career at the South Shore chamber while attending graduate school at Suffolk University in Boston, where he earned his Master of Public Administration degree. Scott has more than 30 years of experience in the chamber industry in a variety of sales and management capacities. Scott serves in volunteer and or advisory capacity with numerous local organizations as well. Scott resides in Oceanside and enjoys reading, hiking, walking and studying health and nutrition.

Scott, welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m happy to have you on the show now. And this has been a work in progress over several months. But for glad we can make it happen. Why don’t you say hello to all the Chamber Champions and and share something interesting about yourself so you can get to know you a little better.

Scott Ashton 2:20
Sure, grant. And thank you for the opportunity. And like you said, and now this has been a long time in the works. Thank you for your patience and bearing with me to find a time that works for both of us. So something interesting about myself. Well, you know, one of the statistics that I heard recently is that people entering the workforce now will have 14 different careers over their lifetime. And I don’t know if this is interested or not. But I’ve had one career in the chamber industry is all that I’ve known my entire career. So I remember growing up as a little boy, and I couldn’t think of anything else other than wanting to work for our chambers Sunday series. I’m just kidding about that. Okay.

Brandon Burton 3:07
How did you get exposed? Tell me more.

Scott Ashton 3:10
But I guess like, like most people I’ve met, you know, the, just kind of something that we fall into. So I went to I was born and raised in Massachusetts. And as of right now, I lived almost exactly half my life, the first half of my life and Massachusetts and the second half so far in Southern California, so that I went to college as a criminal justice major with a minor in Spanish, got out of college still didn’t know what I wanted to do is I went right into graduate school and had to find work while I was going to graduate school at night. So my friends, my friend, Kristen said, let me introduce you to my dad, he runs the Chamber of Commerce, and he knows tons of business people and can help you find a job. So I took her up on that I went and sat down with her dad who ran the South Shore Chamber of Commerce, which is on the south shore of Boston, one of the largest, I think it’s still to this time, one of the largest chambers in that in that state. And I sat with him for a while and he said, Well, you know, until you find something else, why don’t you just sell memberships here at the chamber? I was like, Okay, I’ve never sold anything and have no idea what a chamber does, but I’ll give it a try. And turns out I had some skills that I never would have imagined that I had and I had some success in selling memberships. I stayed at that chamber for about two and a half, two and a half years and then the membership director position opened up at the Cambridge chamber which is had an office right on Massachusetts Avenue and Cambridge about halfway between Harvard and MIT, so is an amazing opportunity. I was fortunate to get hired for that position, and did that for about two and a half years. And then my wife, who had grown up in Southern California wanted to get back here. So what I knew as a chamber career, so I just got on the phone started calling chambers and asking if they had any openings. And I connected with Oceanside, they did not have an opening, but there’s apparently something in that conversation, a conversation that intrigued them. So they invited me to fly out and have a conversation with their CEO and couple board members. And they created a position for me in 1996, doing membership and business development, which I did here for about 20 years. And then when the CEO position opened up, I really wanted it. Most of the board members at that time were people that I already had built a great relationship with. I had worked with them over the years. Some of them I had sold them their membership to the chamber. I just started reaching out to the board members and letting them know how much I wanted to position. Thankfully they hired and internally and now it’s been six years that I’ve been in the CEO role at the chamber.

Brandon Burton 6:18
Yeah, I love hearing how people come into the chamber industry because it’s always you everybody falls into it a little different. So it is yeah, it is funny most of it’s by accident, most of it yeah that’s what I say falling into it and not not that they found it or you know went after but they fell into it and but luckily the chamber world tends to attract the right people. So glad you found it. Glad you’re here will tell us some about the the Oceanside chamber just to give us some perspective like sighs staff budget type of work, just to give us some some perspective before we get into our conversation.

Scott Ashton 6:55
Yeah, so our size is about 620 or so members. budget right now is a little over a million dollars. We have a staff of eight, couple are part time The rest are full time. And last year, our chamber celebrated its 120/5 anniversary of serving the business community. So we’re we’re one of the oldest chambers in San Diego County. And I the year that I started at the chamber it was its 100th anniversary. So I was here for the 100 and 120. Pets. It’s really another

Brandon Burton 7:37
25 years and yeah,

Scott Ashton 7:39
I do not

Brandon Burton 7:43
come back as a by standard then I guess maybe yeah. Maybe a member of some sort. So yeah.

Scott Ashton 7:50
Hope to be around and be able to celebrate, but not in this position. 25 years.

Brandon Burton 7:59
Well, that that does help. As far as type of work. Are you guys chamber only? Are you tourism? Are you economic development? What what do you guys cover?

Scott Ashton 8:09
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So when I first started at the Chamber, we ran the we ran the tourism operation for Oceanside. And about 12 years ago, we helped, we helped create a separation where they are now funded through through a transient marketing districts tax. So it’s a hotel tax of I forget the exact amount, I think it’s close to 2%. It funds that operation where previously, every year or two we had to go to city council and and request a portion of the T ot taxes in order to be able to fund the visitor operation. But now they have a steady stream of income. And makes me wish at some point that we we had handled that a little differently and didn’t give up that operation because now they have a budget that’s three or four times times the size of our chamber budget. But we work really closely with them. I’m on their board. They’re CEOs on my board, we’d have a great working relationship. So yeah, so while we’re not the point of contact or the main, you know, the the main organization working on tourism anymore, it’s still a very important part of what drives our local economy. So we’re of course involved in it. Workforce development is another key area for us. Small business advocacy, which I’m sure most chambers you’re talking with, are engaged in that and then political action is is the other key element that I think we’re gonna be talking about shortly.

Brandon Burton 9:49
That’s right. And so that’s a good transition right there. So our topic for conversation today people may have seen as they look at the title of this episode, but we’re going to be talking about chain Bruce endorsing political candidates. So I know that’s a topic that some chambers you know, want to shy away from or maybe they are interested in getting into, but they don’t know where to start and there’s some fear or maybe they’re doing it and there’s something they can learn and adapt or maybe it hasn’t gone well and maybe it went really well. So we’ll we’ll dive into our discussion around that and what you guys are currently involved with as soon as I get back from this quick break.

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All right, Scott, we’re back. So endorsing political candidates. How did the Oceanside chamber come to the decision that you guys wanted to endorse candidates?

Scott Ashton 13:31
Yeah, it was a it was a slow evolution. When I when I first started at the chamber. I don’t think it’s anything that they would have even imagined taking on at that point. But at some point along the way, we started doing candidate forums and getting warmed up to that realm a little bit. So fast forward to 2018. Where we had we had done our candidate forums were that year were heavily engaged in trying to defeat an initiative on the ballot, I was the land of local to Oceanside land use initiative, which was basically for ballot box zoning, which we did not want to see happen. So we got heavily engaged in that and fortunately defeated it. So we we exited the 2018 elections with a sense of boldness and wanting to see how much further we can go in the political realm. So in December of 2018, we did a survey to our members and asked them, you know how helpful the information that we put out on that ballot measure was to them and you know, making their decision on voting and got really good feedback on that. And we asked some other questions on the survey about the candidates that have won the election. You know, do you think this person is business friendly or not? And you And then we worked our way to the question on how important is it to you that the Chamber be involved in helping elect business friendly candidates. And it was almost 90% of the survey respondents indicated that it was important to them that we help elect business friendly candidates. So, I know that can mean a lot of different things, you know, that can mean doing forums or publishing scorecards. But what I and our board took that to mean is that, Hey, we should move forward and considering endorsing candidates. So we took those survey results to the board, and our board was, you know, boldly decided to move in that direction. So when we did that survey, we also asked, Hey, would you be interested in being part of some more extensive conversations on this topic? And we had quite a few members that said yes to that. So in 2019, we started holding focus groups with small groups of our members to ask them, what was important to them. And in city council candidates, what what are the things that you want them to address and what what you want them to do. And so we were able to gather a lot of data on what was important to our members, and what they wanted to see and the candidates going forward. And from there, we will use that to develop our policies and procedures.

Brandon Burton 16:30
So I know you as you try to speak as the voice of business as as the chamber, you’re taking a collective of voices, whether it’s staff or board members, or your members, in general, to say this is a candidate that we support, or we’re behind this candidate. Did you have to work through any, you know, putting aside you know, personal feelings? Or, or maybe a board member that didn’t necessarily agree, how do you manage some of those waters that can get a little bit muddy?

Scott Ashton 17:05
So that that is a great question. You know, we have a very diverse pack. And it’s purposely set up that way where we have equal number of seats for for Republicans, Democrats and no party preference. And while when you start to talk about state national issues, there would be strong separation amongst those people. But we find that on local issues related to development. For us, you know, sand retention on our beach is a big issue, housing, workforce development related issues, that there’s really strong unity across parties on that. So. And one of the points that are, you know, when our PAC is going to make a recommendation to the board, they do make a point to remind them that, hey, you might have some personal thoughts on this. But remember, you’re wearing your chamber hat right now. And, you know, please approach it from that perspective. So, and I know we’ll talk about some of the specifics of the elections a little bit, but in the two election cycles that we’ve endorsed candidates, we get have unanimous, unanimous approval from our board of directors. So our PAC has done their homework in both election cycles.

Brandon Burton 18:27
That’s great. And I think it’s good for other chambers to hear that too. Just a reminder of once he started talking about things on a local level, it’s a lot easier to gather consensus and people around one common goal. So take, take that charge and go do it. So. So as we’re talking right now, it’s beginning it’s beginning of December 2022. So we just came off of an election cycle. And you’re just talking about that fed a couple election cycles now to go through with endorsing candidates out, how have those gone? Have you? You know, from the candidates you didn’t Dorse the process along the way the outcomes? What’s the experience been like?

Scott Ashton 19:08
Yeah, so it all goes back to 2019, where we put in that worked with our members, we had those focus groups, we found out what was important to them. And then we developed policies and procedures as to how we will approach the endorsement of candidates. And so far, it’s been just sticking with city council races, you know, here in Oceanside. And so we had this all put in place prior to 2020. And then, when 2020 came along, candidates started piling and so on. We had these policies and procedures in place that allowed us to send out questionnaires to the to the candidates that had filed just to get their feedback on business related issues. And from there, we decided who we would interview or do a personal interview with at the next step because of what happened in 2020. The personal interviews ended up being zoom interviews instead. So we couldn’t sit across the table from them. But what we decided to do, because of the volume of candidates was relatively low. We invited everybody that filled out our survey to come in for an interview, even, you know, even if they’re there, they didn’t have the exact answers to the questions that you know, that we are hoping to hear from them. We still invited them in for an interview, and we were able to manage that volume of candidates. So in 2020, we had three races, and we had two city council races and neoral race. The mayoral race became complicated because we had two business friendly candidates that had been good friends of the chamber, that they couldn’t agree for one of them to back out. And they both stayed in the race. And we basically said that we’re not going to choose between them. We just made a statement that both of these candidates have been good supporters of the chamber and of the business community. And we left it at that. So we focused our effort on the two city council district races, and I 2018, I think was our first year and going to two districts, city council races used to be city wide. So the two district candidates were incumbents that had were in their current seats by appointment. And they had been business friendly. And it was a very easy decision for us to get behind these two candidates. They both ended up winning their races. One was, I think, by less than 1000 votes. So I think we really had an impact there. And we were able to donate, I think in the range of about $12,000 total that we had raised through our political action committee. And we were able to help them out with their to get across the finish line. So we were we were successful in that in that first run, and that embolden us to keep moving forward. Very good.

Brandon Burton 22:12
So do you feel and I don’t know, maybe you have some data to back this up? Or not? Maybe it’s just a feeling but how do you feel the impact of your chamber supporting candidates? How has that helped to motivate people to vote? I mean, to me, it’s always discouraging when you see such small numbers, turnout for elections, and trying to engage that that big population that just doesn’t vote? Do you? Do you have any feeling or any data on how maybe that needles moved over time?

Scott Ashton 22:45
I really don’t. I think we were a little early on in the process to see if we’re making any impact on on voter turnout. But I think we are, you know, the Chamber brand is very well respected in the community. And as we’re able to put forth our candidates, I think people pay attention to that. The other part of it is we have found common ground with there’s two other major organizations in Oceanside that endorse candidates, and that is our Police Officers Association, and our Firefighters Association. So going back several years, they used to endorse the candidates that would basically tell them, you know, what, what they wanted to hear that they would be taken care of. But these are the same candidates that were opposing development and gross. So one of our PAC members had a conversation with with both of the unions and, and just, you know, shared with them that, hey, if you if you want to get paid, what you should be paid, we need growth in our community, we need that development, we need to expand our tax base. And they have been really on board with that and supporting pro development candidates. So you know, the we’re going into it where it’s not just the chamber endorsement, but it’s our candidates have been endorsed by the chamber by the police and fire associations. And that’s a big deal. And in a relatively small city. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 24:13
I love that. And I like that you guys are doing interviews too, with these candidates to be able to help share the story, what their vision is, and give a more informed option or choice to voters. Yeah, I know, not every community is has done that or is equipped to do that unnecessary or maybe they don’t think they’re equipped to do that. But I see a tremendous value because I mean, most times you go to the ballot, and you see names of people that you don’t know who they are. And the especially the common person in the in the community has no idea who some of these names are set to create some exposure and some connection as to what these people stand for besides an R or D next to their name, I think is very helpful. So Do you have any any tips for chambers who want to maybe get their toes wet in this as far as conducting some of those interviews? Or how to get started?

Scott Ashton 25:12
Yeah. So just for clarification, are the interviews that we do are just for our path or not public interviews? So we’re asking them, you know, the questions are important to our business community and how they would approach those issues. And that’s, that’s what we’re using as to decide on where we’re going to put our endorsement. But there are, you know, there are other great resources in our, in our community, we have a local TV station that allows for, for each election cycle for a candidate statements, and, you know, people in the community can hear from the candidates directly on that. But what we’re doing is we’re doing our interviews we’re bringing, we’re bringing our recommendation to the chamber board of directors, and then we’re sharing that with the community in a variety of ways. One of the things that we have is, we do a quarterly magazine that gets mailed out to a lot of the business people and residents. So what we’ve done when we have endorsements, is we target the distribution of our magazine into that district. So ideally, you know, most if not all of the residents in that district, are hearing from us and on who are endorsements are and those endorsements are on the front cover of the magazine.

Brandon Burton 26:35
Awesome, awesome, great idea. So, overall, I like to asking if, if you have any tips or action items for listeners who would like to take their chamber up to the next level? What might you suggest for them? And maybe it has something to do with endorsing candidates, maybe it’s something totally different.

Scott Ashton 26:58
I would say, ask your members what they want. And that’s how we get started on this path, is we you know, we decided to just reach out to the members and see if they wanted us to be engaged in this. And like I said earlier, I know there are a variety of ways for our chambers to influence elections. And it can be just, you know, doing forums, which we did, and publishing scorecards, which we’ve done, not so consistently over the years. But I feel like endorsing candidates is a chance for you to have a real mark on on the elections and to make a real difference. But the starting point is to ask ask the members. The other important tip is to know when to stay out of a race. So I mentioned in 2020, how we stayed out of the mayoral race. This year, we had two districts up for election, one of them was a was a pro business incumbent that we chose not to endorse because of some complications within that race, not the least of which was somebody from her same party, that that would not back out of the race. And we just mathematically didn’t seem like there’s really any path for her to win. So instead of us, and she did not win. And so instead of us, you know, diving into that race and potentially burning a bridge, we stayed out and now we’re trying to build a relationship with a person that that did win that race and with some success. And but the race that we did indoors in one of the districts was a retiring fire chief, who is very well liked in the community, the chamber, police and fire associations all got behind him and he had a strong victory. And that was our first time getting involved in doing an independent expenditure, is there now caps on how much we can donate directly to a candidate. So we put some money into a mailer to support the candidate and there’s no limitations and how much you can spend on independent expenditure on behalf of the candidate.

Brandon Burton 29:09
Okay, so I know, chambers that are listening there, they’re having questions like, but what about this? What about that? What if so, has there been any negative fallout for that’s come from endorsing candidates?

Scott Ashton 29:24
Nothing measurable. You know, it’s interesting going back to that mayoral race, in 2021 conversation I had from a member that was upset was that he couldn’t get out of his mind that he kept selling me you guys endorsed selling science like No, we didn’t endorse in that race. But I guess the fact that we put out a statement saying that these two candidates have both been business friendly was enough to digital but no, the feedback has been great. I think people appreciate that. We’ve taken that had a bold step to put ourselves out there. And they were very thoughtful about how we approach it and try to be very transparent. And we share why we’ve endorsed the candidates and how they aligned with the goals and objectives of the chamber. Yeah,

Brandon Burton 30:17
I think that makes a lot of sense. When with the feedback from your survey, like I said, 90%, saying, yes, if they wanted you to endorse, I didn’t imagine there’d be much negative fallout. So as we wrap up, I wanted to ask you, how do you see the future of chambers and their purpose going forward?

Scott Ashton 30:39
Yeah, I, the direction has certainly changed a lot. And in COVID, certainly had had an impact on that. For us. We’ve slowly moved away from being dependent on events. In the coming year, we actually are doing away with our largest event that really just did not have a strong connection to our mission, and our vision as an organization. So in the event represented about 12, or 13%, of our gross revenue, and so so that’s, it’s hard to let go of something like that. But it’s the right thing to do. So but what what’s freeing us up is, it’s given us the opportunity to focus more on the things that are essential to our business community, the the advocacy, the political action, workforce development, and also, we’ve created a Leadership Academy. So by turning away from some of the things that that brought in money, but didn’t have a strong value to our business community, it’s given us a chance to create some some new programs that do bring value to our businesses. Right.

Brandon Burton 32:00
That’s great. And that is a bold step to step away from from that, that much of your income.

Scott Ashton 32:08
Yeah, and I’m, I’m seeing, you know, just in general, because I know you weren’t just asking about our chamber, but I’ve seen that with other chambers too, and just moving in that direction of being problem solvers in their communities, and, you know, focusing your efforts and using that, to drive revenue opportunities rather than events.

Brandon Burton 32:31
Right, keeps you relevant. That’s for sure. So Scott, I’d like to give you an opportunity for anyone listening who’d like to reach out and connect and learn more about how you went about this process to decide to endorse and the whole process what would be the best way for someone to reach out and connect with you?

Scott Ashton 32:51
Yeah, so well, and I love talking about this, I hope people will not hesitate to, to give me a call. So best thing is just pick up the phone call me at the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce as 7607 to 21534.

Brandon Burton 33:06
Very good, I will. I’ll get that in our show notes for this episode as well, so people can look that up and give me a holler. But um, Scott, I appreciate you hopping on here and visiting with us today on Chamber Chat Podcast for your bold leadership and being willing to share these experiences you’ve had and how things are going there in Oceanside. Thanks for coming on and joining us today.

Scott Ashton 33:30
Thanks, Brandon. I really appreciate the opportunity. If you

Brandon Burton 33:33
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