Situation: Electric restructuring legislation was moving through the Ohio General Assembly, with major implications for Ohio’s investor-owned electric companies, industrial and commercial energy users and residential consumers.

Goal: Provide communications support for Ohio business and industrial customers and their allies in the General Assembly and promote the passage of a favorable Ohio electric restructuring bill.


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Strategy & Tactics: Pierce directed a communications campaign that aimed to avoid the technical ‘gobbledygook’ of the issue and focus on the simple message of saving money and protecting jobs.

• We worked with more than 50 coalition members to develop a coalition roster of nearly 1,000 individual companies or community leaders who supported our legislation, and communicated with these entities on a weekly basis via newsletters, faxes and emails.

• Leadership organizations included the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, NFIB-Ohio, Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Manufacturers’ Assn. and Industrial Energy Users (IEU) Ohio.

• We emphasized the sheer size and economic clout of our coalition in communications to the General Assembly. Every document or statement contained the tagline ‘The Coalition for Choice in Electricity represents 300,000 municipal electric customers, 195,000 farm households, agencies representing 400,000 low-income, elderly and disabled customers and businesses with more than 2 million employees and countless Ohio shareholders.’

• We worked with our member corporations and supportive legislators to create local news opportunities featuring how individual local commercial and industrial electric customers could save money and jobs through electric restructuring. Media events to promote the Coalition’s position included:

• Local media events, including a ‘Power Picnic’ on the Statehouse Lawn, tours of steel plants, petroleum refineries and main street business organizations to demonstrate the local impact of this bill to reporters, voters and legislators,

• Guest editorials and letters to promote or defend the Coalition’s position,

• Video News Releases (VNRs) to all state tv outlets,

• Newspaper, public or televised debates with legislative opponents, and

• Editorial board visits to each of Ohio’s largest newspapers with coalition members and legislative leaders.

• Daily contact with statehouse reporters and editorial writers, providing hard-hitting and effective research documents, commentary, story ideas and rebuttals.