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Mercury Public Affairs has won the competitive pitch to handle outreach and PR for the California 2020 census.
Issued March 15, the RFP called for a shop to focus on geographic areas and demographic populations that are “least likely to respond” to census canvassers.
In addition, Mercury is expected to develop an overall campaign to encourage all Californians to be counted in 2020.
California’s lawmakers approved a $90M budget to fund overall census promotion, while Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2019-2020 budget proposed an increase of $50M.
The California Complete Count office, which issued the RFP, has allocated $16.1M for outreach & PR. That figure has the potential to expand to $46.1M, pending budget approval.
The 2020 census will determine the number of seats that California will hold in Congress and funding formulas for federal disaster relief, education and health and human services programs.
Mercury will officially land the account 5 PM (PST) July 15, which is the deadline to protest the award to the Omnicom unit.
Erik Hotmire has rejoined the Securities and Exchange Commission as chief external affairs officer and director of the Office of Public Affairs.
California seeks a firm to handle a $3.5M marketing/ad program to promote awareness of, and increase sign-ups in, its job corps program. 
The National Highway Safety Administration has awarded its public education to Stratacomm following a competitive re-compete process.
Congress wants the FTC to probe whether TikTok violated child privacy laws when it launched a last-ditch lobbying blitz to defeat the bill requiring its owner, ByteDance, to divest it.
Jeffrey Nesbit, who served as communications director for former vice president Dan Quayle, is named assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services.
