It’s almost June as we are writing this article—which means the NAEDA Government Affairs team is shifting some of their focus.
The majority of state legislative sessions are at an end, with only 18 still in session and nine of those ending by early July. That means a shift from non-stop bill tracking, calls, emails, meetings, and hearings to a time to reflect and analyze what is happening across the political landscape. Here are how things look from our perspective.
From an industry standpoint, the legislative developments are not alarming. Two Right to Repair bills have been successfully passed and signed into law. In Colorado, the ag-specific bill, initially passed in 2023, has been expanded in 2024 to include electronic consumer goods. However, no changes have been made to the equipment portions that would raise concerns for NAEDA members. Similarly, the second bill signed into law in Oregon relates to consumer electronics and contains exemption language provided by NAEDA and our industry partners. This means that in 2024, there are no new Right to Repair mandates for equipment dealers to navigate.
There were a few intriguing trends for those interested in public policy and politics. Across the nation, 58 active bills aimed to establish Right to Repair mandates – down from 71 last year. Notably, ag-specific bills, for the first time, comprised the largest portion of bills introduced with 22 active this session – up from 19 in 2023. Those were followed by two groups – consumer electronics and broad-based bills– with ten bills each, and six wheelchair-specific bills. A novel development was the introduction of attempts to mandate “repairability scores” for the first time, requiring manufacturers and retailers to disclose how easily a product can be repaired. This could potentially be similar to Energy Star ratings.
Despite fewer bills being introduced, we saw an increase in bill sponsorship. In 2024 there were 471 total primary and co-sponsors of legislation, up from 427 in 2023. And, as we had predicted earlier this year in our legislative priorities webinar, there was a slight increase in sponsorship from Democrats, with 81% in 2024, compared to 77% in 2023. Moving the Right to Repair towards being a more partisan issue.
In observing the sponsorship trends, Colorado stood out as an interesting case. Their ag-specific bill passed in 2023 had four sponsors—three Democrats and one Republican. The White House even held up this bill as an example of the bipartisan nature of this issue in a call coordinated in the fall of 2023. However, the Colorado bill extending mandates to consumer electronics that passed in 2024 had a surge of support, totaling 38 sponsors, all of whom were Democrats.
Of course, NAEDA’s purpose isn’t to bring you interesting political statistics and factoids; per our three core competencies, our purpose is to Advocate, Elevate, and Educate. So, how effective is our advocacy? We did great from the perspective of no new Right to Repair mandates affecting our members. But we can’t rest on our laurels.
I’m sure we at NAEDA, along with any of you reading this, hope and pray that Right to Repair will not be the all-consuming issue it has been for some years. Regardless, we always seek to improve and refine our effectiveness as advocates for our members, which means looking at things strategically. We must put our finite resources towards actions matching our ultimate objective of creating positive public policy outcomes for successful dealers. And our priority is increasing dealers’ opportunity to engage with their elected officials.
We have repeatedly seen that dealers’ sharing their perspectives with elected officials has an outsized impact. Similarly, when dealers regularly engage with their elected officials, that relationship increases the likelihood of our industry’s perspectives and considerations being included in policy deliberations.
We like to call this “setting the table,” and it is critical to have a seat at the table once you need to advocate for or against policy. Dealer engagement with elected representatives is critical and will be our primary focus, but it will probably not always be enough to succeed in our advocacy efforts. Why do I say that? Looking at state legislators who sponsored Right to Repair bills in 2024, we find that very few had NAEDA member locations in their districts – only 19%.
NAEDA members are constituents of far more Federal legislators, with 64% of Right to Repair sponsors having dealerships in their districts. However, most of those dealerships were in Republican districts—81%. These numbers present us with two challenges: Many state elected officials do not have our members in their districts, and dealerships are predominantly located in Republican districts at the federal level—of course, this last piece can change from election to election. How do we plan for effective advocacy knowing these facts?
First, we must intentionally work with members from both political parties. To maximize our effectiveness, we must cultivate working relationships with elected officials who share dealers’ values regardless of political party.
Second, we must recognize that most state elected officials do not have NAEDA members as constituents. Dealer engagement still goes a long way with those officials. We seek to augment that by building and participating in coalitions and partnerships across industries and interest groups. One example of this already exists and has multiplied our efforts – the Coalition Against Illegal Tampering.
The Coalition Against Illegal Tampering is an informal group of 27 regional and national organizations that came together out of concern over Right to Repair mandates on their respective industries and businesses. Since the formation of NAEDA, we have hosted a monthly call for coalition members to share information about Right to Repair legislation they are tracking and its status in the legislative process. These relationships and continued participation by coalition members have proven invaluable in amplifying our position on the issue. Thank you to any coalition members who may read this article.
Back to the point, NAEDA’s advocacy success will certainly rely on our ability to find like-minded partners and build coalitions. That, alongside our primary focus of increasing dealer engagement with their elected officials, is how we will achieve our goal of defeating misguided and unnecessary legislation like Right to Repair.
If you would like to know more about how you can get involved in NAEDA’s advocacy efforts, please get in touch with NAEDA’s Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Eric Wareham, at ewareham@naeda.com, or Director of Government Affairs, Kipp McGuire, at kmcguire@naeda.com.
KIPP McGUIRE is the director of government affairs for NAEDA. He comes from the consulting world, where he was an advisor to the U.S. Navy’s Commander of Pacific Fleet as a member of the Commander’s Action Group and Government Affairs and Outreach teams. Prior to his time as a consultant, he was an Advance Officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which took him across the globe coordinating nation-to-nation engagements. He has extensive experience in the legislative and policy fields, and has previously worked for state and federal legislators, as well as an advisor on several political campaigns. His military service includes five years enlisted with the Marine Corps and is presently an Intelligence Officer with the Navy Reserves. He has degrees from the University of Montana and the Institute of World Politics.
