by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Michael “Mickey” Jacob, AIA, is the chair of ArchiPAC, the AIA’s political action committee, and a director on the national AIA Board of Directors for the Florida/Caribbean region. Jacob also is the founding partner and director of business development for Urban Studio Architects in Tampa.

Education: I got my bachelor of science in architecture and a BArch from the University of Detroit, which is now the University of Detroit Mercy, a small Jesuit school in the urban core of Detroit. I went there on a golf scholarship, so I was juggling the academic requirements of architecture school with the athletic department’s requirements of being a scholarship athlete. It was quite an adventure.

Hobbies: My wife would suggest that I only practice architecture to support my golf habit. It’s my release. It’s what I do to get away from the world. My other hobby would be driving my son around to wherever he needs to be. I have one son still in high school and he is quite a musician. He’s in the marching band, the jazz band, and the performance band at school. He plays the trombone and he’s quite talented, actually. He’s also on the cross country and track teams, so I spend an awful lot of time going to his events and sitting in bleachers or auditoriums watching him do his thing.

Current read: I’m just finishing a wonderful book called Nature Girl by Carl Hiassen. He’s a columnist with the Miami Herald and he writes humorous novels about the strangest people and occurrences, typically in Florida. I do so much reading during the day and I’m so involved with everything that when I sit down to read a book, I want to spend a little time relaxing and have a fun book that I can enjoy.

Role models: There are really two of them. My father was my first role model. He taught me my work ethic, how to treat people, and how to dedicate yourself to what you’re doing to be the best that you can be. He only had a high school education, but he was very successful in management at Chrysler for 35 years. That was because of his work ethic and how he held himself and did his job.

My wife Diane has been my mentor for the past 20 years. She is an amazing person who has been and continues to be involved in the community with charity and leadership programs. She has helped guide me through my adventures with the AIA. She challenges me on the things I do there and stresses that being a leader within your own profession and the community is very important to position us to talk about advocacy and get our message out to the public.

Political aspirations: I’d love to run for the state house seat here in Florida in my district, one day, once [my son] Philip is out of the house and I’m done tracking through leadership with the AIA. I think it’s something I would really enjoy. I enjoy the political process. We’re very involved here locally with candidates in our district and obviously through the AIA. I have that political bug and if the timing were right and the seat available, I would certainly consider taking a run at it in the future.

Special interests, or community beneficence?: We’re a special interest group, like others, but our policy and the kinds of legislation that we’re trying to achieve tend to be for the good of the whole. It affects everybody positively, not just architects. Our community and built environment benefit from it—national resources, energy; all of those things that we’re advocating now are for the good of the whole. I think that makes our opinions much more valuable to legislators. It’s a matter of building relationships with our elected representatives at the state, federal, and local levels. Perception is reality, and if we’re perceived as leaders on these issues, then we will be the leaders on these issues, and they will come to us for our opinions and advice.

Architects in the political arena: I think it’s absolutely critical for us to be more active politically, from supporting candidates to running for office. I think that is the number one priority that we should have in following with our citizen architect program, which is being developed right now through the AIA’s government advocacy department. I can’t stress enough to architects how important that is.

When you become involved in politics, you become a voice for your profession. We become the voice that helps to shape policy and legislation that are for the good of the profession and benefit the community and the built environment. If we don’t get involved, those decisions will be made by non-architects, and, in all likelihood, we’re not going to like those decisions. So it’s critically important that we become more engaged in the process.

Becoming politically engaged: To get involved in politics, architects need to go to their local planning meetings. They need to get appointed to planning boards. Lots of architects already do that. I think the misperception is that we’re not doing anything. We just have to do it to a bigger degree.

It’s being engaged. It’s getting involved with ArchiPAC. It’s getting involved with your state PAC. It’s holding fundraisers for candidates you like and believe in. It’s going out and helping the candidates when they’re running for office and spending a Sunday afternoon walking a neighborhood with them or working one of their phone banks. The political equity that you build with a candidate just by spending a Sunday wearing one of their t-shirts and going door-to-door with fliers helping them campaign is invaluable. It doesn’t take a whole lot, but the benefits you reap from that in the relationships you build—not just with the candidate, but with all of the people involved with that candidate—are invaluable to moving forward in what we’re trying to do.

ArchiPAC has always been viewed as asking our members for money and spending it on campaign contributions, which is true, but now we want to give our members return on their ArchiPAC investment. Our goal is for all of the ArchiPAC checks to be delivered by AIA members back in their home district. They’re not going to be delivered by our lobbying team in Washington. We want our members to be engaged with that because when our members go to their candidates or representatives in Congress with that check, they’re building the relationship, and that’s what we need to have happen.

The most successful ArchiPAC initiative?: The Breakfast of Champions program, by far. We initiated the Breakfast of Champions here in Tampa and brought it statewide. It’s a wonderful program that gets architects engaged. It’s pretty simple: We invite a candidate or legislator to breakfast with 10 to 15 architects, who each brings a personal campaign contribution. Then we deliver a PAC check as well. We have a legislator or congressperson all to ourselves for an hour to an hour-and-a-half—and the legislators love it because it’s informal. They get to meet a lot of people, discuss issues in a conversational format, and build relationships. Every person there meets and interacts with the legislator.

It’s a program that our members have embraced and continue to be very eager to participate in, but, even better, we’ve got candidates and legislators now calling us asking if we can do a Breakfast of Champions for them. We’ve been using the program in Florida for several years and it’s made incredible inroads for us up in Tallahassee. Legislators know the [issues] that we think are important, and the amount of participation that we’ve been able to get on issues through our legislators has been amazing.

We’re starting to formulate strategy here on how we’re going to approach the next election cycle with our Breakfasts of Champions and now we’re bringing it to the national level. My goal would be to do at least one Breakfast of Champions in every state in the next election cycle before the 2008 election. It’s easy to do. All you have to do is get somebody who can make a few phone calls and find somewhere to have breakfast. You will be amazed at how eager the candidates and legislators are to participate in this. Quite honestly, if everybody brings a campaign contribution and has a PAC check, that’s a nice fundraiser for a very small amount of time.

As much as we all dislike it, money has to be raised to run campaigns, so holding fundraisers with your friends or colleagues is an important part of our strategy to build relationships. I really hope that all of our members continue to embrace the concept that ArchiPAC is there for them as a tool to be more engaged in the political process and for us to meet our goals. It doesn’t work unless people participate.