Taking the hike to the Hill, credit union leaders advocated for not subjecting credit unions to the federal corporate income tax and in favor of maintaining an independent regulator in the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), among other issues during last week’s GAC. While credit unions can cultivate friends in Washington, it’s helpful to support their campaigns before they even get elected.
At GAC 2025, Head of Political Affairs at America’s Credit Unions Trey Hawkins talked with SVP of Advocacy at Carolinas Credit Union League Billy Boylston, SVP, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel at Wings Credit Union Greg Higgins, and Vice President of Community and Government Relations at Veridian Credit Union Kim Fettkether talked about how credit unions can engage with members to help elect pro-credit union members of Congress. And as politics can always be a touchy subject, the panel talked about how they avoided getting too political and aggravating members.
An automated transcript is below the video.
Electing a Pro-Credit Union Congress
Kim Fettkether 00:00
I first like to thank America’s credit unions for the great work that they do. They do a lot of the leg work and looking at these congressional races across the country, you know, before we they even get to the place of reaching out to the leagues and the credit unions to engage in in these campaigns. And so, you know, it was last summer that Trey had worked at the Iowa Credit Union League, and as they reached out to the credit unions in Congressman Zach Nunn’s district, looking for engagement. And Zach, he’s just in his second term, re-elected to a second term in November, and he’s a great friend of credit unions, and he is a supporter. He was in the Senate and the House in Iowa before, so we’d had an opportunity to build a relationship with him before he even got to Washington, DC, he proudly boasts about being a Veridian Credit Union member, and so it just makes sense for us that we would participate in this. And so not only were we one of the credit unions that provided our member information, but we also hosted him in one of one of our offices in his district, and so it was a great opportunity to continue to build that relationship with him as a member. And we had great experience providing employees an opportunity to be a part of those ads. And if you look at the statistics, he only won by 15,000 votes. And so I truly believe that participating made a difference in this election.
Greg Higgins 01:45
The district that Angie runs in is roughly 5058 years ago, she lost by few 100 votes, came back in the midterms to win, and it’s truly been a credit union champion since she’s been in office, willing to go to bat for us on pieces. Coming into this last election, this was one of the top races in the country. I don’t think it quite ended up that way. She pulled away fairly significantly by the end, but this was our first foray into this. We’ve previously been asked to share a membership base and information and held back on it. But this time, we felt that we really needed to support our friend. This is our home district, and so we won a credit union champion representing our district. Most of our employees live in the district. Very easy project, and one that we went into, not quite knowing exactly what it was going to be, but it got everything set up on the front end. Really an easy process. And one that we played, played an active role in, and Trey works through. He and his team worked through scripts, ideas, and those would come to me for review and sign off. Had a couple questions on a few pieces, and some changes were made to them. So we felt like we were allowed to not only have input into the messages that were going out to but also control over them. Yeah, no. Really impact from our members perspective, I think out of our members trade, how many did we send out? Nearly 50,000 members out there. And there were a handful of mailers that went out. We had one call, and the one call was, I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’m getting a mailer from the credit union network saying that Angie Craig is a friend of credit unions. Yes, okay, yes, she is. She’s a good friend of credit unions, and we support her. And that was it. That was the only member feedback we had from them. We had coached call center on what to say, the branches on what to say. We were again, first time through. We were treading lightly in this one and no member feedback whatsoever. One thing Kim mentioned that they did quite a bit with Zach and take pictures and offices and do those pieces. Our offices are somewhat unique for our district, quite a bit of technology in them. We were concerned that our members would tie it back to us on this one, and so it’s we did the other pieces with her in the offices of the credit union network. So Trey and team did a great job working with us to find our comfort level and the piece at which it was customized for our folks, having different messages going out in Iowa, in Minnesota, but equally successful. I mean,
Billy Boylston 04:52
as you mentioned, Congressman Timmons is old financial services, and when we say a friend of credit unions, he is a real friend, and really one that’s. Really. I mean, he has stuck his neck out corporate unions, against the bankers, against the merchants. Most recently, he signed on the legislation for interchange and some stuff that was happening with the Federal Reserve. So he’s been on the record opposing the merchants, supporting us at interchange, all while in a competitive primary in South Carolina. We’re very red state, and there is not really much of a general election. Our elections happen in the primaries. So if you’re not willing to step up in the primary by the time you get to the general, you really don’t have a choice. So as Trey was saying, we had a friend, you know, put the bat for us. Our credit unions were really saying, How can we do more? There’s always back contributions. They can do that are appreciated. But when we talk to members of Congress or senators, and we say, you know, we have 200,000 credit union members in your district, they think about that as voters. Well, this is a way that we show that we communicate with those constituents, with those voters on who was supportive of us and not to jump ahead. I’m sure Trey is going to get into undo this as we get along, but that’s kind of really what got us involved in Congress and Tim and trace, yeah, and
Trey Hawkins 06:12
just to put the postscript by Congressman Tennessee won by and to look it up, because it was one of the plus 2264 votes, less than 2% and we had nearly 10,000 credit union members of two different credit unions that were engaged in this. So it has an impact in every one of these races. I.