Group uses fortune cookies to deliver messages to lawmakers

Feeding legislators is a key strategy for many interest groups hoping to get the lawmakers' attention and support for the agenda they are pushing.

One group took it a step further Wednesday – putting messages in the food they served Iowa legislators in hopes of starting a dialogue with them.

“It helps open the conversation,” Mark Davis, area director for the North Central States Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, said about messages tucked inside fortune cookies the group served with lunch.

He had just finished talking to Gov. Terry Branstad about someone the governor knew who has MS, Davis said.

The messages were light-hearted, but with a definite legislative flavor.

“When the chairman of the committee opens the hearing on your bill by saying ‘This won't take long' it ain't good,” one message read.

“You decisions will affect the safety, education, health and welfare of all people in your state – don't blow it,” was another.

Lawmakers seemed to enjoy the messages, laughing as they shared them with one another.

The MS Society served about 500 fortune cookies to about 300 people at the Capitol Wednesday, according to Ellie Highstreet, the group's director of engagement. She and her colleagues wrote about 10 different messages that Hy-Vee put in the cookies. It's the second year MS used the fortune cookie messages to engage lawmakers, she said.

“We're here to one day have a world free of MS,” Davis said, “and the more we make people aware, the more likely that day will come.”

Other messages included:

• “Education is learning something new. Maturing is understanding why you shouldn't have signed to sponsor a bill everyone else avoided.”
• “There are many goofy things in the law – all of them done on purpose.”
• “Not everyone who votes with you is a friend, not everyone who votes against you is an enemy and lobbyists are usually both.”
• “The worst part of serving here is that folks back home think you're on vacation.”

For more on the MS Society, visit

www.myMSsociety.org