Dream team

February 13. 2012 3:00AM

Florio values sportsmanship in building a lobbying winner

When Dale F. Florio talks about the group he has assembled at Princeton Public Affairs Group over the past 25 years, he uses the word "team."

His firm employs at least four former college basketball players, as well as former collegiate baseball and football players in addition to Florio himself, who ran college track and coaches West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North's boys' basketball team.

The mindset of teamwork and competitiveness has carried forward to Princeton Public Affairs, which has strung together a legislative win-loss record that is the envy of Trenton as it celebrates its 25th anniversary this month.

"If you're fortunate enough to play athletics, you develop a keen sense of competition, and I've always felt that that athletic competitiveness is easily translatable to whatever you do in life," Florio said.

It's a message that's resonated since Florio and Peter J. McDonough Jr. launched Princeton Public Affairs on Feb. 1, 1987, with assets of just a single computer and a dot-matrix printer.

"We went into the office and waited for the phone to ring," Florio said.

The then-little-known lobbying duo decided to keep their names off of the firm, instead naming it after the town where it was first based, after McDonough's father-in-law, William Sword, had offered them office space there.

Princeton Public Affairs has grown to become the largest lobbying force in Trenton, receiving $7.78 million in lobbying receipts in 2010.

Florio's background at Philip Morris helped pave the way for this growth. He learned from Bernie Robinson, his mentor at the tobacco giant, that no job is too menial when it needs to be accomplished.

"Bernie worked harder than anyone around him — even those who worked for him," Florio said.

Florio said he decided to launch the firm with McDonough because he knew that the only way he could advance his career at Phillip Morris would be to become a manager, taking him away from hands-on lobbying with legislative staff and lawmakers — and "I really wanted to get back to the front lines."

Getting to learn what drives lawmakers and legislative staffers is a favorite part of what Florio said is his dream job.

"Everyone has a sincere interest in representing the people they work for, so if they're a staff person, it's interesting to watch the loyalty of the person they work for, or if they're a legislator, it's always interesting to see how hard they work for" their constituents, he said. "We take for granted the impact we can have on the system and the positive effects that we can have."

Florio brought some new approaches to the front lines of lobbying, said David A. Smith, a principal at the firm who calls Florio an innovator in the state in engaging all of the tools that can influence lawmakers, from working with news media to advertising to grassroots campaigns.

"It wasn't simple lobbying anymore, where you could just go up and educate legislators," Smith said.

Among the changes in Trenton over the past 25 years, Florio cited the impact of online media as particularly powerful in how state government works. The pressure to respond instantly to political attacks has limited the ability of partisan opponents to sit down and work out differences, he said, which has only made personal relationships more vital.

"Electronic communication certainly can be timely, but building that foundation through a personal relationship will always be very important in this business," he said.

As the firm has grown, it's added new services, including a Washington, D.C., office; a boutique education consulting firm, School House Strategies; a grassroots consulting business, Front Porch Strategies; and a partnership with public-relations firm Winning Strategies.

McDonough said he hasn't been surprised by the firm's growth, noting that it was already one of the top three lobbying firms in the state when he left in 1991 to again work in government. He now heads public affairs for Rutgers University.

"Clients literally beat a path to our door because we didn't sell the idea that we had connections to this person or that person, we sold the fact that we were experienced and responsible," and understood the legislative process, McDonough said.

"They're winners when it comes to issues that they help clients with," said Ed Collins, vice president and assistant general counsel at Allstate Corp., which has worked with Princeton Public Affairs for nearly all its history. Unlike other national firms with which Collins has worked, "they're political scientists, they're public policy professionals," at Princeton Public Affairs. "They have kind of a think-tank approach. They come up with solutions."

Collins said the firm's hand in auto insurance reform, by working to increase competition and lower rates, was remarkable.

"They were absolutely essential in helping not just Allstate, but really policymakers and consumer groups to finally help fix the New Jersey auto insurance system," Collins said.

Florio said the firm's growth has been due to more than just hiring good, hard-working employees.

"Good people have to be able to all work together and work well together, and I think that's something that also comes from playing sports and being part of a team," Florio said.

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