On December 12, 2001, several hundred state legislators from around the country gathered in Washington, D.C., for a three-day conference that, from all outward appearances, pretty much resembled any number of good-government meetings. The conference, organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council and promoted as the “States and Nation Policy Summit,” was designed, according to a brochure for the event, to give the lawmakers an opportunity to “share their knowledge and experiences with each other, as well as hear from national leaders and renowned policy experts.” The get-together featured all the usual trappings of ordinary conventions: seminars, taskforce sessions, ballroom banquets with keynote speakers, receptions and hospitality suites, an exhibit hall, and, for the spouses and children of attendees, a jam-packed schedule of sightseeing, shopping, and recreational events in the nation’s capital.

On August 7, 2002, the scene will be repeated, on a much larger and grander scale, when more than a thousand state legislators from around the country are expected to gather in Orlando, Florida — home of Disney World — for ALEC’s 29th annual meeting. ALEC calls its five-day annual meeting “one of the nation’s most prestigious state-level conferences,” describing it as an opportunity for state legislators “to
discuss issues and develop policy.”

But ALEC’s annual meetings and other highprofile get-togethers tend to be mostly window dressing for a panoply of policy decisions made either within the organization’s offices in Washington, D.C., or in closed consultations with its major funders.

The lawmakers will almost certainly be outnumbered, as they are at nearly all ALEC meetings, by the legions of lobbyists, corporate executives, and representatives of trade and professional associations who give tens of thousands of dollars each to ALEC. In return, ALEC gives these corporate interests the opportunity to wine and dine state lawmakers, who then may become more willing to introduce ALEC’s “model” bills when they go home. 

In virtually all its promotional materials, ALEC calls itself “the nation’s largest bipartisan, individual membership association of state legislators.” This description, however, is misleading in almost every way. For starters, ALEC appears to be only nominally “bipartisan.” It declines to make its membership list public, but in a current publication titled “Leaders in the States,” ALEC lists 209 of its members who are in “senior leadership positions” (including its own state chairs) in the 50 state legislatures. The publication does not denote the party affiliations of these state legislators, perhaps because the “bipartisan” breakdown is so lopsided: 177 are Republicans (84.7 percent), 29 are Democrats (13.9 percent) and three others from Nebraska are officially designated as Non-Partisan (1.4 percent). Only three of ALEC’s state chairs — those in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas — are Democrats.

Here is the state-by-state breakdown:

A look at the state legislators who sit on ALEC’s board of directors reveals an even starker partisan imbalance: All of ALEC’s officers are Republicans, and only one of its 29 directors is a Democrat.

ALEC’s six officers in 2001—all of them Republicans—were: Tennessee Representative Steve K. McDaniel, National Chairman; Oklahoma Senator James J. Dunlap, First Vice Chairman; Louisiana Representative Donald Ray Kennard, Second Vice Chairman; Michigan Senator Philip E. Hoffman, Treasurer; Kansas City Susan Wagle, Secretary; California Senator Raymond N. Hayes, Immediate Past Chairman.

The only Democrat on ALEC’s board of directors is Iowa Representative Dolores Mertz. The other members of the board are: Tennessee Representative James F. “Jim” Boyer, a Republican; North Carolina Representative Harold J. Brubaker, a Republican; Arizona Senator Brenda Burns, a Republican; Texas Representative Bill Gene Carter, a Republican; Georgia Representative Earl D. Ehrhart, a Republican; Nebraska Senator Leo Patrick Engel, who is officially designated as nonpartisan; Connecticut Senator George L. “Doc” Gunter, a Republican; Mississippi Senator William G. “Billy” Hewes III, a Republican; New York Senator Owen H. Johnson, a Republican; Iowa Representative Dolores M. Mertz, a Democrat; Colorado Senator David Turner “Dave” Owen, a Repubican; Nevada Senators William J. Raggio and Dean A. Rhoads, both Republicans; New York Assemblyman Robert A. Straniere, a Republican; and Wisconsin Senator Robert T. “Bob” Welch, a Republican.

What’s more, ALEC isn’t really a membership association of state legislators. The dues paid by state lawmakers (or paid by state legislatures on their behalf), in fact, make up only a negligible portion of its total revenues. ALEC’s dues structure — state legislators pay just $25 a year, either two years or four years at a time, to be members — seems designed mainly to boost its total “membership” numbers and help it maintain its thin but seemingly durable facade as a voluntary association of state legislators—an organization on a par with, say, the National Conference of State Legislatures or the National Governors’ Association, which are — unlike ALEC — bona fide organizations representing the nation’s state legislators and governors.

Using ALEC’s own membership numbers, it’s clear that the organization receives only about $60,000 a year in dues from state lawmakers (2,400 x $25). ALEC’s tax return for the year 2000, for example, shows that it collected a total of $56,126 in “membership dues and assessments” from legislators that year – less than one percent of its total revenues of nearly $5.7 million. This ratio has shown only minor variations from year to year:
 

ALEC’s multimillion-dollar annual budget is partly spent directly on the state legislators who choose to join — about 2,400 in all, by ALEC’s count. Its “legislator members” can avail themselves of taxpayer-financed trips to prime tourist destinations in the United States, free or heavily subsidized vacations for their spouses and children, and an assortment of other fringe benefits that range from no-cost child care and medical tests to free Broadway theater tickets and dinners at expensive restaurants. Most of them can even pass along the nominal membership fee to taxpayers in their states.

Each year, ALEC invites new state legislators to its December meeting in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the conference is to bring them into ALEC’s fold and introduce them to the many benefits of membership. The meeting, which in previous years ALEC has more accurately billed as a “National Orientation Conference,” is just one of many events at which its “legislator members” mingle with — and receive the recommendations of — the organization’s “private-sector members.”

ALEC’s Unified Registration Statement (URS) for Charitable Organizations describes its activities in this arena as follows: “Membership manages the programs for the recruitment and retention of ALEC state legislator members. This includes liaison with the ALEC state chairs, private-sector state chairs, and six state leadership teams. In addition, membership provides assistance to ALEC state chairs in raising state scholarship funds [and] tracking the expenditures of these funds.”

A careful reading of ALEC’s corporate bylaws suggests that it reserves the right to reject the membership applications of state legislators who are judged to be ideologically or philosophically incompatible with its mission. Under a “Qualifications for Membership” section, the bylaws read: “Full membership shall be open to persons dedicated to the preservation of individual liberty, basic American values and institutions, productive free enterprise, and limited representative government, who support the purposes of ALEC, and who serve, or formerly served, as members of a state or territorial legislature, the United States Congress, or similar bodies outside the United States of America.”