First Friday, September 2026: The New Public Affairs Playbook: Prepare Earlier, React Less

[00:03] Neil Hughes: Welcome back to Public Affairs Trends. I'm Neil Hughes, and this is your First Friday briefing, which is our monthly look at the stories, research, and ideas shaping public affairs, government relations, advocacy, and strategic communications. And this month, we're looking at crisis preparedness. The growing strategic role of public affairs, an unusual scenario that could affect control of the U.S. Senate, and why the traditional community engagement playbook might not be enough for the next generation of data center projects. So let's get started. So we're going to begin with crisis communications. D.C. Newsline reported in late August on guidance from Craig Stevens. a partner at DCI Group, who argued that organisations often don't struggle during a crisis because they lack expertise. Instead, they struggle because they cannot coordinate that expertise quickly enough. And Stevens pointed out that large organisations normally operate in separate lanes, and legal has its responsibilities and communications has its own priorities. But government affairs, operations, and executive leaders, they do the same. So this structure can work perfectly well during normal operations. A crisis though, that changes the equation completely. According to Stevens, crisis exercises commonly reveal weaknesses in 3 different areas. First, organisations might not have clearly established decision-making and escalation systems. Second, first-hour templates and response documents might not actually reflect how the organisation now operates. And third, important relationships with reporters, regulators, and even internal decision-makers might not have been developed until they're suddenly needed. And DC Newsline also cited survey data that showed that nearly one-third of public companies surveyed did not have a formally defined role for their boards in crisis management preparation, while only 15% of public company boards participated in scenario planning or tabletop exercises. So why does this matter for public affairs professionals? Well, it matters because many modern crises cross organizational boundaries immediately. That means an operational problem can become a media story, a regulatory matter, a political issue, and a reputational problem almost simultaneously. So the lesson isn't simply to prepare better talking points. It's actually to establish who makes decisions, who needs to be in the room, and how information moves across the organisation before that crisis ever happens. Next, I want to talk about public affairs strategy because public affairs moves closer to the executive suite. That's the idea of integration. It also appears in a recent article from Gov Business Review. Where the publication argues that public affairs is increasingly moving away from being primarily a reactive function and becoming what it calls proactive strategic capability. And the article points to policy analysis, stakeholder engagement, strategic communications, crisis management, and advocacy planning as increasingly interconnected responsibilities. So it argues that public affairs is becoming more closely aligned with broader corporate strategy, and this includes anticipating policy changes, assessing regulatory risk, under— understanding stakeholder sentiment, and using digital tools and data analytics that help organisations adjust their strategies. In other words, public affairs isn't simply being brought in after the problem emerges, and increasingly is being asked to help leadership understand what could happen next. And why does that matter? Well, for public affairs teams, it changes how value is demonstrated inside an organization. Success isn't only a bill defeated, a regulation changed, or a positive media story generated. It can also mean giving executives better information before they make a business decision, identifying an emergency policy risk, or helping different departments respond consistently to external pressure. And the broader trend here is clear: public affairs is increasingly being treated as part of a business strategy rather than merely a function operating separately from it. Next, I want to look at Washington Watch. Could John Fetterman complicate the battle for Senate control? Which takes us to Washington and the Public Affairs Council Elections Impact Series. Senior political analyst Nathan Gonzalez recently examined an unusual scenario involving Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and control of the Senate after the 2026 elections. He noted that Democrats could theoretically gain 4 Senate seats this fall and retake the majority, but with such a narrow margin, even a single senator changing parties or changing which party they could alter control of the chamber. And this is where Fetterman enters the discussion. Gonzalez points to Fetterman's continued disagreements with elements of the Democratic Party and examines what could happen if he were eventually to change parties. And an important caveat here: Fetterman has said that he is not considering switching parties. We must make that clear. So this isn't a prediction that he is about to become a Republican, but it's just a scenario planning exercise illustrating how narrow Senate margins can make even unlikely political developments extremely consequential. And Gonzales also points to a historical example too. In 2001, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords left the Republican Party and became an independent, shifting control of the Senate. Why does this matter for public affairs? It matters because election planning doesn't end with forecasting who wins individual races. Government affairs teams also need to model what different governing coalitions could mean for committee leadership, legislative agendas, and the ability to move or stop legislation. When margins are narrow, scenario planning becomes particularly important. A Senate majority on paper might not always tell you everything that you need to know about how Washington will actually operate. Finally, an issue we're likely to be hearing much, much more about. Yeah, data centers are becoming a public affairs test case. In a recent article titled The Old Public Affairs Playbook Can't Stop the Next Data Center, Nicole Schillinger, founder and president of Campaign HQ, argued that traditional public affairs tactics might be poorly suited to increasingly contentious infrastructure projects. Schillinger points to data centres as a very clear example. She cites a national survey of 3,000 registered voters by Deep Root Analytics in which just 32% supported data centre development, while 53% opposed it. Her argument is that the political problem can become more difficult at the local level. Opponents who strongly dislike a project, they're motivated to attend a planning commission meeting, city council hearing, and other public forums. And people who might support a project because of jobs, tax revenue, or infrastructure investment, they might be much less likely to show up. And the result? Well, that can be a distorted picture of community opinion. Campaign HQ argues that project advocates need to identify supporters rather than relying primarily on traditional tactics like endorsements, advertising, and open public meetings. Schillinger says her firm's experience with land use and energy campaigns shows the value of mapping supporters, opponents, and genuinely undecided residents before deciding who receives information and who should be mobilized. And she also points to telephone town halls as one way to engage broader audiences and says campaigns should activate confirmed supporters rather than simply generating an rather than just generating as much activity as possible. So why does all this matter? Well, data centres aren't likely to be the only issue where this dynamic appears. Energy projects, housing developments, and other infrastructure proposals face many of the same challenges that we're talking about here. So for public affairs professionals, the lesson is that Community engagement can't begin after opposition has already defined the issue. Research, stakeholder identification, and early engagement are increasingly part of the campaign itself. And we will be digging much deeper into this topic very soon because Nicole Schillinger will be joining us here on Public Affairs Trends to discuss her insights on data centres, infrastructure campaigns, and what today's public affairs professionals can learn from these increasingly high-profile local battles. But the monthly takeaway— if we take all this information, this month's stories all point to one larger trend, and that is public affairs is becoming more proactive. Crisis teams are being asked to prepare before a crisis begins. Corporate public affairs functions are being brought into strategic decision-making earlier, and government affairs professionals are modelling political scenarios before election outcomes are even known, and infrastructure advocates are identifying stakeholders before opposition takes control of the debate. So in each case, the advantage becomes from preparing earlier rather than reacting faster. So looking ahead, one thing we will be watching in the coming months is how organisations prepare for the final stretch of the 2026 election cycle. The headlines, they will naturally focus on individual races. For public affairs professionals though, the more important questions might be about what different combinations of election outcomes would mean for congressional leadership, committee control, regulatory priorities, and the policy environment as we prepare to head into 2027. And that, my friends, is this month's First Friday briefing. Our reporting this month drew from DC Newsline, GovBusinessReview, and the Public Affairs Council and Campaign HQ. You will find links to the original articles in today's show notes, but that is it for today's episode. I'm Neil Hughes. Thanks for listening to Public Affairs Trends. I'll be back next week with an interview. Thanks for listening. Bye for now. Bye for now.