In recent weeks, one of the strongest (and yet least known about) pillars of the conservative business lobby infrastructure, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has suddenly been thrust into the light. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin murder and the subsequent scrutiny of the "Stand Your Ground" law under which George Zimmerman claims to have acted, progressive activists turned their attentions to ALEC, which has played a key role in pushing such legislation nationwide. In taking on ALEC, groups such as Colorofchange (an online civil rights group that has spearheaded this work) began targeting corporations who pay dues as part of a membership to ALEC. The effort continues to move forward, having succeeded in winning the exit from ALEC of major companies such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, Kraft and McDonalds.This is not the first time progressives have turned their eyes towards ALEC. During the fight in Wisconsin in early 2011 activists raised ALEC's profile and were joined in this effort by eminent UW-Madison historian William Cronon who wrote an excellent piece - and one that got him into a fair bit of trouble - that included some historical background on ALEC. Yet, there remains very little about the organization's past compared with other mainstays of the conservative movement such as the Heritage Foundation.
In investigating this, I went through the Washington Post's archives, along with a long historical paper from DC Vote and found that, at least in their pages, ALEC first major national foray came in the late 1970s, when it took the lead in fighting to prevent Washington, D.C. from gaining national legislative representation. In 1978 the U.S. House and Senate (flush with Democrats at the time) passed overwhelmingly an amendment to the constitution, the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment, which would have given D.C. the status of a state with two senators and one house member.
The rising conservative movement of the 1970s soon sprang into action, with ALEC at the head. ALEC quickly produced a fourteen page report for state legislators outlining its opposition and then spent roughly $30,000 (in 1978 dollars) to mail the booklet to every state legislator in the country. In late 1978 ALEC expended another $15,000 to bring fifty state legislators to D.C. to strategize on defeating the amendment.
The right-wing critique of the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment rode along two main thrusts. Some of the critique came wrapped in traditional constitutional arguments, stating that the law simply countermanded the intention of the Constitution that D.C. not possess the same political rights as a state. At the same time, ALEC and conservatives responded to the strong civil rights messaging of the pro-amendment side (who argued that lack of voting rights for D.C. was a civil rights issue, considering the city was majority African-American). Using rhetoric that has increasingly become a mainstay for conservatives (including famously used by figures such as George Wallace), opponents of D.C. voting rights accused supporters of employing reverse racism. ALEC head and Arizona state representative Donna Carlson stated that amendment backers were employing "the basest, indeed racist, tactics in order to railroad the amendment," further adding that critics of the amendment were "being branded as redneck racists and enemies of black Americans."
ALEC members also devised a key aspect of the legislative strategy for defeating the amendment. It called upon conservative legislators in states that did not ratify the amendment to send to the federal government "formal resolutions of disapproval" which ALEC stated "could not be rescinded, and thus would bind a state permanently against the amendment." ALEC's plan was put into motion first in Arizona (where its head was a state representative). In doing so, ALEC also took a firm stance in the ongoing conflict between moderates and the right within the Republican Party. Many Republicans backed D.C. voting rights, including Senators Robert Dole and Barry Goldwater. Meanwhile, New Right figures such as Senator Orrin Hatch and conservative intellectual Michael Novack, along with the Heritage Foundation and ALEC actively opposed.
It is important to note ALEC alone did not kill D.C. voting rights. The campaign in favor was often poorly run and the civil rights messaging proved less powerful in the states than the national level. The racial politics cut in varying ways, with United Latin American Citizens, the main Mexican-American civil rights group opposing based on fears the new (almost certainly) black representatives would "give blacks a disproportionate in lobbying for federal jobs and programs over Hispanics." Still, much of the general opposition was turned into actionable steps in good part by ALEC's efforts. By 1985 the amendment had only passed in sixteen states and the time frame for its passage had expired.
As the campaign against ALEC moves forward, it is helpful to illuminate how, for decades, the new conservative infrastructure built particularly in the 1970s has and continues to profoundly shape our politics.