PUBLIC AFFAIRS STRATEGY
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Every project, initiative, and organization faces a unique landscape of opportunities, challenges, stakeholders, and decision-makers. Mahr Strategies helps clients assess that landscape and chart a path forward through coordinated communications, stakeholder engagement, and government relations strategies.
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Whether pursuing funding, advancing a project, managing a public issue, or building support for a priority, we help clients identify key audiences, build productive relationships, and take strategic action to achieve results.
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STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
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We help clients develop clear messaging, identify key audiences, and coordinate communications across internal and external stakeholders, ensuring leaders, staff, partners, and advocates are aligned around consistent messages and priorities.
Services include communications planning, message development, media relations, public outreach, executive communications, and stakeholder engagement.
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
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We represent clients with federal, state, and local governments, helping to navigate legislative, regulatory, and funding processes. Drawing on experience in Congress, state government, local government, and political campaigns, we help clients secure funding, advance policy priorities, and build productive relationships with decision-makers.​
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Federal Affairs | Congress, federal agencies, discretionary grant programs, appropriations, permitting, and regulatory engagement.
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State Affairs | Legislative advocacy, agency engagement, state funding programs, regulatory strategy, and coalition building.
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Local Affairs | Local government relations, community partnerships, economic development initiatives, stakeholder coordination, and regional coalition building.
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OUR APPROACH
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ACCESSIBLE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS | We are accessible and available to our clients, for questions big and small. We work to integrate into your organization by attending your events, board meetings, retreats, and community functions. Representing our clients starts with knowing our clients.
BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS | We map your stakeholders and do the intentional work of cultivating relationships with local leaders, elected officials, and organizations. Help your partners understand your mission, your challenges, and your agenda – and understand theirs – ideally before there’s an ask.
A STATE-BASED APPROACH | Good representation starts at home. We live and work in Hood River, Oregon and travel extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest to serve our clients and better understand our region. Local understanding brings important perspective to policy debates, in addition to time strategically spent in Washington D.C.
ABOUT DAN
Dan has spent more than twenty years helping organizations, communities, and elected leaders navigate complex challenges and move projects forward. Before founding Mahr Strategies, he spent seven years on the staff of U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, where he worked on infrastructure, project funding, environmental issues, labor relations, and assisting local governments and community organizations with a wide range of federal issues.
Earlier in his career, Dan managed and advised political campaigns in Oregon and across the country.
Raised in a small farming community in rural Iowa, Dan has called Oregon home since 2009. He is an active member of the Hood River Crag Rats, the oldest mountain rescue organization in North America.