Communications Director, US Congressman Darin LaHood

My names JD Dalfonso and I'm the communications director for Congressman Darin LaHood. Generally speaking, I serve the congressman in capacity of communications director which will entail me running the communications for correspondence in and out of his office. Whether that's press releases, social media, through numerous avenues there, to e-news letters and surveys for constituent feedback to just to be in touch with what's going on locally and also nationally regarding policy issues. And then corresponding some thoughts and talking points and some opinions and some perspective that I've read and found out to the congressman to help kinda target how he's going to approach and then communicate those. Outside of that, I'm based in the district where much of my colleagues in this capacity are in Washington D.C. But the reason for me being in district is to grow even greater response, relationships with our local media. So that's T.v., radio, print, even local magazines and weekly papers across the 19 counties that my boss represents. So we set aside about an hour every Monday to join not only myself as communications director, our deputy communications director, our scheduler, our legislative director, and our chief of staff. And with that, we're able to put all our heads together and understand what's upcoming in this week. What's newsworthy, what's important for the district. And then what's worthy of communicating for the congressman and then how are we gonna go about that. What avenues are we gonna use to portray the congressman's message and his stance on issues. So in the instance of a D.C. workweek, there's gonna be a number of pieces of legislation on the floor. So we're gonna highlight, what's passing through committee, the process ahead of us. And then find out what's the best avenue to put the message out. Is that social media, is it a press release, is it a one on one interview with a reporter. Particularly in parts of our district. Is it e newsletter survey, do we wanna poll people to get constituent feedback. Is it TV interviews. Which TV networks are we gonna use. Or at least reach out to. And then we tailor that approach and then that gives us a blueprint of how we want to execute it throughout the week. And then anything that gets added we'll add, or anything that may come up that week, we'll just add to that agenda and then add to the task and responsibilities and timeline for the week. So we try to keep it very structured but it all starts on Monday afternoon.