EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MICHAEL J. MALBIN TRUSTEES F. CHRISTOPHER ARTERTON JEFFREY BELL J. KENNETH BLACKWELL WILLIAM E. BROCK BECKY CAIN New Interest Group Strategies -- ROD CHANDLER DAVID COHEN ANTHONY CORRADO VIC FAZIO A Preview of Post McCain-Feingold Politics? GEORGE GOULD C. BOYDEN GRAY KENNETH A. GROSS Theoretical Structure and RUTH JONES PHIL NOBLE A Preliminary Report On 2000 TREVOR POTTER From the CFI Interest Group Project

ACADEMIC ADVISORS JANET BOX-STEFFENSMEIER JAMES CAMPBELL ANTHONY CORRADO DIANA DWYRE JOHN C. GREEN Michael J. Malbin GARY C. JACOBSON ROBIN KOLODNY The Campaign Finance Institute and RAY LA RAJA University at Albany, SUNY THOMAS E. MANN [email protected] MARK J. ROZELL CLYDE WILCOX Clyde Wilcox Georgetown University [email protected]

Mark J. Rozell The Catholic University of America [email protected]

Richard Skinner The Campaign Finance Institute [email protected]

www.CFInst.org

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Contents

Introduction 1

Theoretical Frameworks 3 Historical Overview: When Laws Change, So Do Groups’ 4 Strategies Organizational Adaptation to Environmental Change 8 Incentives: The Polarized Political-Legislative Environment 9 Organizational Learning 10 Diffusion of Innovation 12

Interest Group Tactics in 2000 14 Back to the Basics – Mobilizing Voters 15 Labor 16 NAACP 18 NARAL 19 BIPAC 20 US Chamber of Commerce 21 Citizens for a Sound Economy 21 National Rifle Association 22 Taking It to the Airwaves 23 League of Conservation Voters 23 Planned Parenthood 23 Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence 24 (Handgun Control) Business Issue Ads by Newly Created Groups -- Citizens for 25 Better Medicare and Americans for Job Security Internet Campaigns 26

What Have We Found? 28 Innovation and Diffusion of Learning in 2000 28 Partisanship and Strategy – Future Research Questions 29 Conclusions and Implications 30

Bibliography 34 Index of Organizations 39

INTRODUCTION

One of the fundamental premises of any system of legal regulation is that laws alter behavior -- either by direct prohibition or by altering the incentives for voluntary action. The assumption behind any campaign finance reform proposal is that changing the law will make a predictable difference. But the assumption is not self-evident. One common counterargument sees no predictable connection between campaign finance laws and their consequences. The so-called “hydraulic theory” says that laws will divert rather than restrain behavior because money, like water, will always find a way.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) is a good test case for these two sets of assumptions. This new statute is the most significant change to federal campaign finance law since 1974. Its prohibition of “soft money” contributions to national parties, and its constraints on broadcast “electioneering,” will surely send interest groups scrambling to The so-called “hydraulic figure out what they should do. Within days of theory” says that laws will its passage, speculation was rampant about divert rather than restrain which groups the new rules would favor. Some behavior because money, thought it would favor groups that could collect like water, will always find and “bundle” “hard money” contributions. a way.

Others thought the law would push groups into direct mail, phones banks, voter mobilization, and other activities that would continue to be unregulated and undisclosed. Within two years, we surely will be reading about how the law led many powerful organizations to discover and exploit new “loopholes” of one kind or another. At least some of those stories are bound to be right.

Yet, if our information in two years is based only on after-the-fact observations, our conclusions are just as likely as not to be wrong. There are likely to be huge changes in interest group strategies over the next two election cycles. We may assume these will follow paths that are legal under the new law. However, many of the changes might well have taken place even without the new law; indeed, some have already started. If we want to understand the law’s effect more precisely, we need to sort out its effects from those caused by changes in the political and technological realm that would have taken place anyway. And we need to do this knowing is likely that different groups, with different resources and internal constraints, will react differently to the same sets of opportunities and political incentives.

To prepare us for looking at the effects of the new law in two years, the Campaign Finance Institute has started a baseline study to help us sort

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out the motivations and mechanisms for change in the years just gone by. The roles played by interest groups and political parties in U.S. elections have been sharply transformed over the past decade. The growth before the BCRA in soft money contributions to political parties opened the door to financial participation by donors to whatever extent their checkbooks might allow. Candidate-specific issue advertising – over the airwaves, on the telephone, through the mails, over the Internet and face to face – have further opened the door to unlimited participation by those interest groups whose organizational characteristics let them do more than just give. For many groups, these changes have involved more than just an increased activity level, as they have undergone major shifts in their strategy and tactics, including a willingness to take greater risks to achieve higher-stake goals.

For scholars of interest groups, these well-documented developments raise at least four sets of questions.

· First, at the individual group level, how can we understand why individual decision makers have decided to change their group’s strategies or tactics?

· Second, among the reasons for change, how important have been the incentives, disincentives, constraints and opportunities created by new laws, regulations or legal interpretations?

· Third, are some groups better able than others to react to specific incentives and disincentives and, if so, how does this alter the mix and influence of different types of organizations in the political arena?

· Finally, what are the system-wide implications of a new mix of activities and organizations, if a new mix indeed is found to exist?

This paper grapples primarily with the first of these questions. The larger project of which this paper is part will look at all four, with an eye toward tracing the effects of any new changes that appear as the new law takes effect.

Much of the information for this baseline study was derived from two private roundtable dinners held at the Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, DC in 2001 – one with business and conservative groups, and another with labor and liberal organizations – followed by interviews with interest group strategists. The round table participants and interview subjects were chosen largely because of a general impression that these groups were among the more innovative in the 2000 elections. What follows, therefore, does not purport to be representative of all interest group activity. We were trying in this initial phase to probe the reasoning that led people to change. We plan to follow this up with repeated interviews with these and other groups over the next two to three years to trace the evolution in their thinking as conditions change, and as the new law takes effect.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS Political scientists, sociologists, and economists who study interest group activity in elections generally have assumed that groups make standing decisions about whether to be involved, the level of their involvement, their general strategic position, and the specific tactics to employ. Electoral activity has It is obvious that a been viewed as an extension of lobbying efforts; the number of groups have decision to be active in elections and the extent of changed their election that activity was seen as a rational calculation activities, in some cases dramatically. based on the policy agenda of the group and the The changes are not political environment (Hansen, 1991; Gais, 1996). merely random. Groups were thought to adopt a general strategic stance – whether to ally themselves with one party or to support candidates of both, for example, or whether to support incumbents or to attempt to change the composition of government. They were also thought to maintain that stance over time, making relatively marginal adjustments to marginal changes in the political environment. Even the specific tactics of the groups were thought to be relatively stable.

It is obvious, however, that a number of groups have changed their election activities over the past few cycles, in some cases dramatically. The changes are not merely random, with the decisions of single groups canceling each other out. The overall contour of group involvement has also changed, with direct contributions constituting a diminishing portion of total activity, while issue advocacy, voter mobilization efforts, and other tactics have become more prominent. These changes suggest a need to rethink our assumptions about individual groups, and to consider the importance of the aggregate changes in strategy and tactics to the political system.

The magnitude of the changes by some groups in the 2000 campaign was remarkable.

· Planned Parenthood had in 1998 resurrected its PAC and contacted its members by phone and mail on behalf of congressional candidates. In 2000, the organization spent more than $12 million on politically relevant activity through its PAC, 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation and “527” political committee, including $7 million in issue advertising on the presidential race.

· The AFL-CIO, which in 1996 had spent about two-thirds of a special $35 million assessment on issue advertising in targeted congressional districts, focused in 2000 on mobilizing its members through person- to-person contact.

· The National Rifle Association spent more money campaigning for Republicans in 2000 than it had in 1996 and 1998 combined, quadrupled its contributions to parties (including significant soft money

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contributions), and mounted an ambitious voter mobilization effort that is credited with helping George Bush carry West Virginia.

· The NAACP formed the National Voter Fund, and spent $11 million on efforts to boost the registration and turnout of African Americans.

· Americans for Job Security, an organization that formed in 1997 with the assistance of the American Insurance Association but that does not disclose the sources of its funding, spent millions on issue advertising in several key Senate races.

· Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), an established if once sedate lead PAC for the business community, developed a program that encouraged employers to make direct contacts with their employees, providing information that often differed from that provided by unions.

In each case, these organizations increased the magnitude of their efforts. In most cases, they also dramatically changed tactics. Unions decreased their spending over the airwaves in favor of personal contact. In contrast, Planned Parenthood significantly increased its issue advertising. How can we begin to understand these rapid changes in interest group activities? In this paper:

· We first examine the conventional understanding of group resources as well as the regulatory context that structures the way those resources are used in campaigns.

· Next, we consider reasons to expect that group involvement in elections is more dynamic than previously believed -- because groups must adapt to a changed political environment and because there are networks of groups that disseminate innovations quickly, sometimes using carefully designed programs that allow groups to learn from their behavior.

· Finally, in the longest section of the paper, we describe the patterns of change in group activity in 2000.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW:

WHEN LAWS CHANGE, SO DO GROUPS’ STRATEGIES

The political science literature on interest group involvement in elections is vast. Comparatively little attention has been paid, however, to explaining groups’ strategic choices. In general, scholars have assumed these decisions to be based on the resources available to the group, the regulations that restrict and channel group activity, and the political environment (Baumgartner and Leech, 1998; Rozell and Wilcox, 1998). It

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was assumed that resources were relatively fixed, while regulations and the political environment were seen as more variable.

Groups have many resources with which to influence elections. Among these:

· Financial resources have received the most attention, because American elections are expensive and candidates and parties regularly solicit groups for contributions. Financial resources come from groups treasuries, from wealthy donors, and from regular contributions of group members.

· Group membership is another resource. Most groups have regular channels to communicate with their members and some groups have activist members who can help out on campaigns.

· Sometimes, a group’s favorable reputation can be a resource, allowing its endorsements to bestow legitimacy on candidates, at least among some voters.

The comprehensive 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act sought to channel interest group activity through political action committees (PACs). Groups with sizable treasuries could use those funds to help sponsor Because the maximum a PAC but could not give that money directly to PAC contribution to a candidate was $5,000, candidates. PACs raised their money from their there was a limit to any members in contributions of limited size, thereby one group’s ability to preventing groups with a few wealthy patrons focus its attention on a from efficiently directing those funds into few key elections. elections. PAC members could also contribute directly to candidates in coordination with the PAC, thereby expanding the scope of a PAC’s efforts. But because the maximum PAC contribution to a candidate was $5,000 per candidate per election, there was a limit to any one group’s ability to focus its attention on a few key elections, unless the PAC was willing to engage independent expenditures.

PACs became the focus of a great deal of research by political scientists, economists, and sociologists – in part because relatively clean data on interest group allocations were available for the first time. Although groups continued to use other tactics in elections – including contacting members, endorsing candidates, issuing voter guides, or urging their members to volunteer to aid campaigns – PAC money was treated as the major form of group activity.

The PAC system seemed at this time to be ideally suited to corporations and trade associations, who could more easily mobilize individual contributions from executives, who understood the collective benefits of contributing and who might face additional, personal incentives to

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contribute. By the mid 1980s, there were more than 1800 corporate PACs on the FEC books. Unions were key players in the PAC system also, primarily because of their large membership totals. Citizens’ groups were able to mobilize money, using the resources of the parent organization to pay for the PAC’s overhead. The rapid development of direct mail techniques allowed some ideological groups to form as PACs, although the high overhead costs of running a PAC coupled with the inefficiencies of direct-mail fundraising meant that little of the money raised by these groups actually made it to candidate coffers (Brownstein, 1985).

The studies of PACs often distinguished between pragmatic PACs that gave to incumbents of both parties in order to gain particularized benefits in legislation, and ideological or issue groups that sought to influence the party balance in government. Most corporate and trade association PACs followed pragmatic strategies, giving to key committee members and party leaders of both parties. These pragmatic PACs had little incentive to alter their behavior so long as their contributions helped gain access to policymakers (Handler and Mulkern, 1982).

In contrast, some groups sought policies that could best be provided by one of the political parties. Among these were ideological groups, labor unions, issue groups and a few business organizations. These groups sought to influence the composition of Congress by recruiting candidates to run for office, providing help to candidates in intra-party primaries, and targeting their assistance to those party candidates who had the most to gain. Eismeier and Pollock (1988) showed that some of these PACs operated as “strategic actors,” backing vulnerable incumbents from their preferred party when the election fortunes favored their opponents, and backing challengers and open seat candidates in elections that favored their party. Labor PACs and certain non-connected, ideological committees also shifted their giving between incumbents and non-incumbents of their preferred party, to help the party maximize its seats (Wilcox, 1989).

In the late 1970s, changes in regulations allowed groups to contribute treasury funds directly to parties in the form of “soft money” contributions. The amount of soft money exploded in the mid-1990s, as parties began using soft money to pay for television advertising. This growth advantaged groups with large treasuries Growth in Party Soft Money and fewer members, such as large 300 corporations, but was 250 also useful for labor 200 unions, which could 150 convert union dues 100 c Millions of Dollars into political funds. 50 Although there have 0 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 been fewer studies of group decisions to Dem Rep Source: Federal Election Commission

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give soft money, it has generally been assumed that much of the corporate soft money was a pragmatic effort to gain access to incumbents; indeed, many corporations gave soft money to both parties. For corporations and trade associations, soft money was a simple extension of PAC contributions, allowing them to use a larger resource pool. Unions also gave significant soft money, although it often comprised a smaller share of their overall activity and was given only after state party committees had presented viable electoral plans (Wilcox, 1994). Democratic party committees receive more corporate and trade association soft money than from unions (Biersack and Holt, forthcoming). Issue groups were not major players in party soft money. Although they shared with the parties an interest in partisan control of Congress, their key resources lay more in their members than in their treasury funds. Moreover, pro-choice, pro-life, environmental, gun control and gun rights groups sought greater control over campaign messages than soft money permitted.

A shift in the legal landscape in the late 1990s made possible new avenues of campaign support. Court decisions allowed groups to spend unlimited amounts of treasury funds to advocate issues through communications that do not explicitly call for the election or defeat of specific federal candidates. This “issue advocacy” could mention candidates by name, feature their pictures, and send strong signals of support or opposition, creating messages which voters found indistinguishable from campaign ads (Magleby, 2001).

Although independent expenditures had been allowed for PACs since the Buckley decision in 1976 and NCPAC in 1985 (Federal Election Commission v. National Conservative Political Action Committee, 470 U.S. 480), issue advocacy could be funded from the organization’s treasury, while independent expenditures could not. Issue ads thus permitted corporate profits, union dues, and other group revenues to be marshaled for political action. Moreover, independent expenditures conducted through PACs were limited by the PACs’ ability to raise money under the FECA’s contribution limits. Issue ads were not governed by those limits. A number of new groups were organized in the late 1990s to mount issue advocacy campaigns, often with names that did little to alert observers to the groups’ financial bases.

Issue advocacy appealed to ideological and single-issue groups for several reasons. First, groups could direct significant sums toward a handful of close races, thereby maximizing the electoral effect of their involvement. Second, because the funding for issue ads need not come from individuals subject to FECA limits, citizen groups can minimize the collective action problem by relying on contributions from a smaller group of wealthy donors. Finally, issue advocacy gave groups a chance to define the debate in close races and to elevate their issues in the public’s eye.

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Issue advocacy was also an attractive avenue for unions, which sought to raise public awareness of workers’ issues and to hold candidates responsible for anti-labor votes. In 1996 the AFL-CIO spent approximately $35 million on a set of targeted races (Francia, 2000). About two-thirds of this was said by labor union representatives to have been spent on issue ads.

Issue advocacy is less attractive for individual corporations; few companies want their names associated with the vigorous negative content that is common in these campaigns. Research has shown that viewers dislike negative advertising, and their negative feelings toward political advertising has a “spillover” effect on commercial advertising (Iyengar and Prior, 2001). Moreover, many voters are likely to be suspicious of advertising on issues that seems to be clearly in the economic interest of a company. Clearly, any issue advertising campaigns mounted by corporations must find a way to surmount the problem of attribution.

Clearly, therefore, past changes in regulations—or in the interpretations of existing regulations or a growing awareness of the possibilities inherent in existing rules – have permitted groups to mobilize new resources and to use this money in new ways. Moreover different rules, and interpretations of rules, have favored different groups. Most of the literature on groups in elections paints these groups as adopting standing decisions on strategy and tactics that do not change over time. Yet there are other reasons to think that group involvement may be more dynamic than the literature implies.

ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Despite the prevalence of assumptions about stable behavior, scholars have long known that organizations adapt to changes in their environments (Simon, 1976; Woods and Waterman, 1994). For example, interest groups adapted to the FECA regulatory regime fairly rapidly, with corporations, membership organizations, and ideological groups quickly forming PACs. (Sabato, 1984; Cantor, 1986.) In 1974 there were 89 corporate PACs and 318 associated with membership organizations; by 1978 there were 784 corporate PACs and 451 membership organization PACs. Although some corporations appear to have created PACs without careful thought (Sabato, 1984; Biersack, Herrnson, and Wilcox, 1994), the growth of these committees was concentrated in particular sectors of the corporate world (Gais, 1996), suggesting a likely connection between an organization’s goals, policy environments and standing strategic decisions.

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Number of Registered Political Action Committees, 1974-2000

Committee Type 1974 1978 1988 2000 Corporate 89 784 1,816 1,545 Labor 201 217 354 317 Trade/membership/health 318 451 786 860 Nonconnected - 165 1,115 1,026 Cooperative - 12 59 41 Corporation without stock - 24 138 118

Total 608 1,653 4,268 3,907

Note: The data are as of December 31 for every year. Source: Federal Election Commission

Moreover, evidence from case studies has shown that even PACs with well-defined allocation rules can alter those rules in responses to changes in the policy agenda (Bedlington, 1999; Mutch, 1999). Finally, in the 1980s, some interest groups (especially unions and some companies) adapted to changes in the regulatory regime that permitted contributions of treasury funds to party committees in the form of “soft money.” Clearly, therefore, we know that interest groups can rapidly adapt their behavior to changes in their political environment or in the regulatory regime. Our questions are why, and to what effects. In our project, we focus on three factors that contribute to change:

(1) changes in the external environment that produce an incentive for organizations to change;

(2) a willingness and ability for organizations to learn; and

(3) teaching, or the diffusion of innovation among similar organizations facing similar problems and trying out different solutions.

Incentives: The Polarized Political-Legislative Environment

Even though the FECA did not change for years, the political environment did change in important ways during the 1990s, creating incentives for many groups to change their electoral involvement. First, the trend toward party polarization accelerated during the decade. The average ideological position of Republicans and Democrats diverged sharply and party unity scores increased (Fleisher and Bond, 2000; Jacobson, 2000). As the parties moved apart, voters seemed to respond to party cues, producing more congruence between policy preferences and partisanship (Jacobson,

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2000). Party polarization had important consequences for issue groups that had long sought to support candidates in both parties – especially pro-gun groups like the NRA, pro-life and pro-choice groups, and environmental groups (Thomas, 1999; Mundo, 1999; Patterson, 1999; Cantor, 1999). On abortion, for example, as the two parties diverged it became harder for pro- choice groups to find supportive Republicans, and for pro-life groups to find sympathetic Democrats. Moreover, the constituencies for these groups became increasingly partisan (Adams, 1997).

Party Unity 100 90 80 Score 70 House Dem House Rep 60 Senate Dem 50 1970 1980 1990 2000 Senate Rep Year

Source: Vital Statistics on Congress, 2001-2002. N. Ornstein, T. Mann , M.Malbin. Washington, DC. AEI Press. 2002. P. 173. Note: Data show the percentage of members voting with a majority of their party on party unity votes. Party Unity votes are those roll calls on which a majority of a party votes on one side of the issue and a majority of the other party votes on the other side. By definition the minimum average is 50.

The growing party polarization led to difficulties in the conventional legislative process and an increase in unconventional policymaking (Sinclair, 2000). Legislative activity that could benefit or harm particular groups was often rolled into continuing resolutions, inserted during conference negotiations, or inserted during bargaining between party leaders and the president. Party leaders were conditionally given a larger role in crafting final legislation (Aldrich and Rohde, 2001).

These changes took on additional import when the Democrats captured control of the White House in 1992 and then the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. In both cases, those interest groups with agendas best realized by one or the other party came to recognize the importance of maintaining control of the policy agenda by controlling political institutions (Gais, 1996). When groups with strong ties to Democrats were effectively exiled from the new majority’s leadership offices on Capitol Hill (Gimpel, 1996), many reacted by increasing the level of their electoral involvement (Biersack, Herrnson, and Wilcox, 1999). In each election cycle

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after 1994, Democrats narrowed the GOP majority in the House. In 2000, the presidential, Senate and House elections were virtual ties.

Increasing partisanship coupled with narrow party margins created a very different set of incentives for groups engaged in the electoral process than had the relative stability of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Ideological and issue groups that once sought to support candidates of both parties had to rethink their strategy because a single seat could change the majority. There was a greater incentive for these groups to concentrate their resources on those few seats that might decide control of Congress, or on the presidential election.

This same logic did not apply to “pragmatic” groups, such as corporations and trade associations, which had always provided support to incumbents of both parties. Although GOP leaders increasingly pressured these groups to be more active and more partisan, there were clear costs to such activity should the Democrats win control of the House and maintain control of the presidency. If anything, the new political climate created even stronger incentives for pragmatic groups to give to incumbents of both parties.

Organizational Learning

For incentives to alter behavior, groups may have to learn in ways that run counter to long-standing decision rules and styles. It is not excessively anthropomorphic to think about organizations “learning” in this way. Cyert and March (1963) suggested that organizations learn from experience and have a sort of memory (see also March and Olson, 1984). More recently, Suarez (2000) has argued that businesses adopt political strategies based on past experience, yet the lessons learned from past events may well be inappropriate for the new political environment. Suarez argues that firms learn most efficiently when a strategy fails, for firms will experiment in response to failure and perhaps adopt a new default strategy if the experiment succeeds.

Most of the literature on organizational learning draws on social learning theory, which posited passive organisms responding to stimuli, and acquiring responses that have reinforcing consequences. Yet it is possible to think of organizational learning in a more active sense. Cognitive psychologists have viewed learning as a more active process, in which individuals seek out information that is useful in building their schemata. In the electoral arena, information is often readily available; interest groups often have access to candidate and party polls, and may commission their own polling to monitor the effectiveness of their activities. Groups are embedded in networks that include others who are focused on learning what works, and sharing that information (Martin, 1995). Moreover, some groups

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have implemented quite systematic assessment strategies to determine which tactics work best, and which are less useful.

Of course, not all organizations will have an equal incentive to learn. Some will have little reason to innovate or to adopt innovations from other groups. Pragmatic corporations, for example, may find that PAC and soft money contributions to incumbents are sufficient to ensure that their arguments are heard during policy debates. Others may have found a perfect match between their available resources and their campaign tactics. But those groups whose agenda is best advanced by a particular party have reason to adopt the most effective tools to influence the outcome of elections. They also operate in a setting where learning can readily take place.

The Diffusion of Innovation

Organizational leaders are not isolated as they think through their options. Learning can occur rapidly across organizations when the system contains people and mechanisms that encourage cross-fertilization. Politics is filled with campaign The political world is entrepreneurs who work together with interest almost ideally suited for innovations to group representatives in networks that seem diffuse rapidly. almost ideally suited to spread information. (For a general discussion of entrepreneurs and diffusion of innovation, see Mintrom, 2000). Electoral campaigns are rich in innovation, for many reasons. First, very large sums are spent on consultants whose fortunes hinge critically on winning and who therefore work hard to come up with new techniques to convince voters. Second, campaigns attract large numbers of young, educated workers who are also intensely committed to winning, willing to devote long hours to the cause, networking with their allies in a common venture. Finally, because campaigns center on communicating with voters, rapid advances in telecommunications have made it imperative for campaign professionals to keep up with what’s new.

As a result, the political world is almost ideally suited for innovations to diffuse rapidly. Within ideological coalitions, there is significant exchange of personnel. Informal networks based on friendship, ideology, and professional interest also help the spread of new campaign tools (Martin, 1995). Campaign finance disclosure laws, coupled with consultants who monitor advertising buys and other activity, enable groups to copy innovations made by other groups that may be outside of their own coalition. For all of these reasons, any new innovation in interest group tactics is likely to be quickly copied by other groups.

One example of such diffusion of innovation is the recruiting and bundling activities of EMILY’s List, a PAC that seeks to recruit and support

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pro-choice, Democratic women candidates. EMILY’s List is best known for its bundling of small contributions by its members to candidates it has endorsed (Nelson, 1994). These tactics were learned from such organizations as the Council for a Livable World, which developed the idea in 1962, long before the FECA, but spoke about the tactic freely and publicly as a device other issue groups might want to consider to expand their influence under the FECA while adhering to contribution limits (Thomas, 1980). The tactic then diffused -- first among organizations sympathetic to EMILY’s list, such as the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and WISH List (Rimmerman, 1994), and later to groups as diverse as the pro-business Club for Growth and such Christian Right groups as the Madison Project and Susan B. Anthony Fund.

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INTEREST GROUP TACTICS IN 2000

The broad contours of group activity in the 2000 elections were quite different from those of 1996. Most importantly, regular PAC contributions and independent expenditures made up a significantly smaller portion of overall group activity in 2000 than four years before. Direct PAC contributions to candidates increased from $204 million to $248 million over this period, and contributions to party committees by PACs also increased, from $31 million to $59 million. Soft money contributions to parties, most of which came from interest groups or interest group members, increased from $261 million to almost $500 PAC Contributions as a Percentage of million. And All Interest Groups' Hard and Soft Money candidate-specific Contributions and Broadcast Issue Ads issue advocacy spending on 50% television increased from perhaps $50 40% million in 1996 to at 30% least three times as 20% much in 2000. In 10% sum, direct PAC Percent of Total 0% activity in 1996 1996 2000 constituted about Election Cycle 40% of all interest Source: The Campaign Finance Institute groups’ spending on hard and soft money contributions, independent expenditures and broadcast issue ads. By 2000 the figure was roughly 25%. None of these numbers includes the vast amount spent on direct mail, telephone, internal communication and other direct voter mobilization techniques. As we shall see, the growth in these activities has been highly significant and is poised to become more so.

For the sake of our analysis, we shall return to the distinction between pragmatic versus partisan or ideological groups – if only to explain why the pragmatic groups will not be our focus in the report. Much of the growth in hard money PAC contributions, and in political party soft money, did come from donors whose contribution goals were pragmatic. As suggested earlier, we would not expect the polarized partisan politics, or high stakes, of the 2000 election to have had a great impact on the decision calculations of these pragmatic groups. Indeed, most pragmatic PACs behaved in 2000 much as they had in 1996. Smaller PACs often gave to the same candidates and did not generally increase the level of their activity or the distribution of their resources. Some larger pragmatic groups increased their soft money giving noticeably, in response to party solicitations, but their soft money giving generally mirrored the partisan split of their hard money contributions. For example, AT&T increased its soft money giving from just over $1 million in 1998 to more than 3.8 million in 2000, but it retained the overall 60%

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GOP share of its PAC’s contributions. Other pragmatic groups actually increased slightly the percentage of their funds going to Democrats. Lockheed Martin increased its soft money giving by nearly $1.2 million, and the 42% of these funds that went to Democratic Party committees lowered the company’s GOP portion from 67% to 60%. Nearly all large pragmatic corporate and trade groups increased their soft money contributions or began to give soft money (e.g., the National Association of Realtors), but the decision to give more money was not generally accompanied by a broader rethinking of the pragmatic givers’ approach toward elections – with the exception of a few companies, such as Microsoft, that went from being non- players to players because of their newly discovered, large and particularized reasons for pragmatic giving.

The situation was different for those groups whose policy agenda is best achieved if one party controls government. For these groups, the 2000 campaign was the ultimate case of an election in which everything was at stake. A few seats could switch party control of the House, and the presidential election was forecast to be very close. Ironically, given the results, the Senate was seen before the elections as a safer GOP bet, but a few prescient observers thought it possible that the Democrats might even win in that chamber. With the parties adopting increasingly divergent policy agendas, much was at stake for groups on both sides of abortion, for environmental groups, and for both sides of the health care debate. In an especially close election, turnout was seen as a critical factor, and a handful of House and Senate seats were seen as controlling the balance of each chamber.

With high stakes and a rapidly changing political context, groups with a high interest in party control will have an incentive to change. However, it should be emphasized that organizational change does not necessarily call for inventive, new forms of political action. It did for some groups, as the explosion of televised “issue ads” will attest. But for others, organizational change meant a new emphasis on older techniques. Michael Baroody, executive vice president of National Association of

Manufacturers (NAM), observed: “Our view is that when things are moving that fast your recourse … is to go back to basics. Michael Baroody, Executive Vice Rather than try to keep following the changes, getting the President, NAM basics right will help you deal with and adapt to whatever the change is.”

BACK TO BASICS: MOBILIZING VOTERS

The most common tactical change by interest groups in 2000 was a shift toward greater voter mobilization efforts. This tactical emphasis was not unusual. When the NAM’s Baroody talked about “basics,” the example he

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used was an election in Kentucky’s sixth congressional district, in which freshman Republican Ernie Fletcher defeated former Rep. Scotty Baesler (D), who was seeking to regain his old seat. While a number of factors contributed, one Wall Street Journal article gave a great deal of the credit to a grassroots voter mobilization effort among business people. (Hamburger, 2000)

Business of course was not alone. A number of groups focused on expanding their voter lists, and some built networks to permit personal communication with the people whom they had identified. Political science research has shown that personal contact has a far greater impact on turnout than phone calls and mail (Gerber and Green, 2000. Note, however, that most of the research so far has focused on non-partisan messages.) Many activists share the perception that personal contact is important, and have adopted a “return to the grassroots” strategy. Many of them see broadcast issue advocacy as sometimes being counterproductive, activating a group’s opponents as well as its supporters. Service Employees’ International (Magleby, 2001). However, the return to the Union members mobilizing voters for grassroots, and skepticism about broadcast, the 2000 election. should not be confused with a Luddite view of technology. Many of the organizations in our study used highly sophisticated techniques, sometimes including the Internet, to target their audiences and to get their messages across.

Labor

Several groups concentrated the bulk of their efforts on reaching their own members and sympathizers, spending relatively less on advertising to the general public than they had in the past. The AFL-CIO emphasized voter mobilization in 2000, a major shift in emphasis away from the issue advocacy of 1996. There is some evidence that Labor’s issue advocacy in 1996 did reduce the victory margins of first term House Republicans (Jacobson, 2000), but few of the targeted members lost and many analysts concluded that the tactic was unsuccessful. In 1998, Labor reduced its emphasis on issue advocacy and instead focused on expanding new mobilization techniques that it had also first tried in 1996. Labor’s internal research shows these 1998 efforts to have been responsible for an increase in turnout among union households over the previous midterm election (1994), that outdistanced the shifts among other large voting blocs.

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In 2000, the AFL-CIO (www.aflcio.org) again focused heavily on mobilizing union voters. The AFL-CIO did give soft money to parties, and mounted a significant issue advertising campaign as well, but a majority of its resources went toward voter mobilization. Less than 25% of labor’s $40 million in 2000 was spent for television advertising (Biersack and Holt, forthcoming). The mobilization effort was impressive in the sheer number of paid staff and volunteers who were involved. The AFL-CIO deployed more than 1000 paid staff and many more volunteers to register voters and built networks of personal contacts.

The magnitude of the other resources in the “ground war” was also impressive. Organized labor reportedly made more than 8 million phone calls in the 2000 campaigns, and sent out more than 14 million pieces by mail, not including materials distributed in person by volunteers and paid staff (Biersack and Holt, forthcoming). Unions also used e-mail to send get- out-the-vote messages to 60,000 households, and provided fliers on-line for activists to download and print at home. The AFL-CIO claims that more than 2½ million forms were downloaded and distributed in this manner.

However, Labor has always been able to put up impressive numbers for these kinds of activities. According to labor union political directors, the more significant shifts involved personal, face to face contact. According to Steven Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, organized labor found -- after field tests and follow-up surveys – that their communications have been most effective when one union member talks directly to another, much as the old-style political party precinct captains would do in the past. He considers this approach to have been responsible for a significant increase in participation among Labor households at a time when turnout in general stayed flat. This increased the union household share of the electorate from 23 to 26 percent. But the program still needs improvement, Rosenthal said: too much of the political organization disappears after Election Day when local coordinators return to their normal jobs.

Labor unions also trained hundreds of members to run for public office in 2000, the first time that Labor had sought in a significant way to recruit candidates from within its ranks. Skip Roberts, legislative director of the Service Employees’ International Union, (www.seiu.org) singled out this strategy -- not only because it might elect people to office with strong labor sympathies, but also because the campaigns have energized local members to participate in elections. He cited examples of several state legislative campaigns in which his union’s members were Democratic Party nominees and “we just had, literally, hundreds of members as volunteers, because they weren’t voting for some politician. It was someone they knew.” He called this technique his “most exciting” effort for “getting membership involved.” The

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AFL-CIO’s president, John Sweeney, announced in December 2001 that Labor intends to expand this program in 2002.

For some groups, personal contacting is the most obvious approach given the nature of their daily work activities. The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) (www.nalc.org) is one such group. According to George Gould, Assistant to the President for Legislative and Political Affairs, about 96% of the letter carriers are members of the union and these individuals tend to be highly interested in political activity. Their major asset is a detailed knowledge of the communities in which they work. As Gould noted, “the letter carriers know their territory, so they’re very valuable in the campaign. And for a get out the vote operation, a letter carrier can walk in and say, ‘That map is ten years old, that building isn’t there any more’… [That will] save the campaign a great deal of effort and time…. They’re also very good on campaign phone banks. They’re comfortable with people.”

NAACP

Most groups, unlike Labor, focused their mobilization efforts outside their own membership, developing lists of potential voters who were likely to be sympathetic to their issues. The NAACP (www.naacp.org), for example, became involved in electoral mobilization for the first time in 2000, establishing a 501 c(4) organization – the NAACP Voter Fund. The NAACP recruited Heather Booth, a longtime group organizer and former director of the Women’s Campaign Fund to run the Voter Fund. The goal of the Voter Fund was to mobilize African American turnout in the 2000 elections. The Fund concentrated its efforts on infrequent voters – those who had voted two times or fewer in the past four elections. It hired a consulting firm to identify 3.8 million infrequent black voters in forty congressional districts that were either predominantly African- American or had substantial clusters of black voting-age citizens. The fund’s leaders believed that infrequent voters, who are not often targeted, could still be reached with communications of a type that have been losing effectiveness when used on over-saturated frequent voters. Although frequent voters may be annoyed by receiving too much junk Kweisi Mfume, mail, and too many marketing calls, infrequent voters were President, receptive to calls from an organization they were likely to NAACP trust. The fund made an effort to contact each of these potential voters as many as nineteen times – seven mailings, seven phone calls, and five door-to-door contacts. The phone calls included some by

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volunteers and some pre-recorded calls by celebrities including Bill Clinton. More than 40,000 volunteers were involved in the door-to-door canvassing. The group also initiated a re-enfranchisement campaign to register potential voters who were either serving time in jail or who had lost their franchise because of a previous conviction. Overall, this voter mobilization campaign cost more than $11 million, with a single, anonymous donor reportedly providing a significant amount of the funding.

The Voter Fund put organizers in the field in more than a dozen states where either the presidential election or a Senate election was expected to be close. It also aired commercials in coordination with other groups including the Sierra Club. The group ran more than 750 spots in the top 50 media markets, mostly attacking GOP Senate candidates. One controversial spot attacked George W. Bush for opposing an expanded definition of hate crimes, graphically suggesting that Bush’s position amounted to indifference over the brutal murder of James Byrd, Jr.

NARAL

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) (www.naral.org) also stepped up the level of its grass roots activity in 2000, devoting a large portion of its budget -- as much as 80%, according to its now former political director Gloria Totten -- to field operations and mobilization. A much smaller amount was spent in 2000 on media – perhaps only 20%. The group’s major focus was to build the National Pro-Choice voter files through a Pro-Choice identification project. (NARAL conducted this project in cooperation with Planned Parenthood and through a grant from the Turner Foundation). Totten said the effort added about one million people to the voter file, bringing it to 2.9 million people. She said that the organization spent a great deal of money and time to turn the file into a “workable tool . . . that our affiliates could access quickly. It was utilized in the educational and advocacy work, so by the time we got to the elections, it was really ready to go”.

According to one person on NARAL’s political staff, election 2000 was the first time the organization increased its communication toward a targeted audience specifically to move voters. After developing its voter file early, the organization later could target its efforts to competitive elections or regions in which the issue of abortion was projected potentially to affect the decisions of at least three percent of the voters. The group made independent expenditures in thirty-nine targeted congressional districts to help Democrats in tight races or open seats. NARAL also endorsed a presidential candidate in a primary battle for the first time, choosing Al Gore in his campaign against Bill Bradley. Perhaps most interestingly, NARAL targeted messages to

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supporters of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader to try to convince them that their support of his candidacy would ultimately help George Bush get elected.

BIPAC

One of the most remarkable tactical shifts came in the activities of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) (www.bipac.org). BIPAC had long been a cue-giver to business PACs, but in recent years had seemed somewhat staid – particularly when compared with the more aggressive tactics of the small business community (Nelson, 1994; Biersack and Nelson, 1998). In 2000, BIPAC commissioned a national poll to find out where voters received political information. It found that 17% of the respondents had heard something from a labor union regarding the elections, but only 7% had heard anything from their employer. Yet the poll also showed that 24% of workers thought their employers were their most credible source of political information, compared with only 17% who chose unions. This led BIPAC officials to believe that corporations could persuade employees, if only they would communicate with them in a meaningful way.

BIPAC’s assessment was based on a significant rethinking of how to act most effectively in a changing political environment. BIPAC’s President, Greg Casey, said that hard and soft money contributions typically were used to pay for mass communications that had lost much of their impact with modern voters. Specifically referring to organized labor’s recent adaptations, Casey said that he wanted to persuade individual business leaders to engage in “conversations” with their employees, and to provide them with tools that would make it easy for them to do so. This would be more effective than relying solely on large associations to carry business’s message. The aim was to use a messenger who had credibility with the workers, much as a union might do by using a shop steward. BIPAC encouraged print communications and peer-to-peer efforts, but its most effective device probably was the Internet program it developed for Project 2000.

Under this program, BIPAC developed a database on political issue information, including members’ roll call votes on a wide variety of issues. BIPAC would then work with a local business leader to help the leader pick issues that were important for his/her own company or community. These would form the basis for a tailored scorecard or information packet. They also would persuade the local business leader to “buy in” to the Greg Casey, concept BIPAC was offering. With the local business President, BIPAC leader’s direct involvement, the information would be

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mounted on the corporation’s own website, with that corporation’s “look” and “feel”. According to Casey, “the people who work at Randy’s Repair Shop don’t care about me or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What they care about is Randy.” The user would perceive what he or she was viewing as coming from the local business, but the local business could not have mounted the effort without BIPAC’s infrastructure.

In most corporations, the web sites were just the informational piece of a larger program of grassroots mobilization. Casey described the activities as “innovations” for BIPAC and its allies because the business community had ignored grass-roots level political activity for fifteen years in favor of simply making contributions. Today, he said, there is a recognition that elections can be won with grass-roots activity. The major impetus for this change in strategy was the recognition by people in the business community of “changing political paradigms”: close elections in which control of the Congress hinged on a few competitive races, and the likelihood that this would not change soon.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

The Chamber of Commerce (www.uschamber.org) also worked to strengthen its grassroots in 2000, although it continued to spend money on issue ads and reinvigorated its PAC. The Chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, R. Bruce Josten, noted that the Chamber sought to “take resources and maximize them in what we considered to be close races, if there was a defining philosophical difference between two candidates, and that if it was close enough where one could make a difference.” The Chamber sent out more than a million express advocacy mailings to members (of either the national organization or of local chapters) in twenty-five targeted House races and ten Senate contests. The organization also mailed thousands of voter tool kits to state and local Chambers as well as to businesses that wanted to participate in the effort. In addition, the Chamber expanded some of its existing programs, such as the “Meet and Greet” program in which state, local or national Chamber members meet with incumbent Congress members or aspiring candidates. Part of the purpose was fundraising and part was to build enthusiasm and support for members and candidates who were “friends” of the Chamber and involved in competitive races. The Chamber expanded these meetings from about 100 in 1998 to more than double that number in 2000.

Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE)

Citizens for a Sound Economy (www.cse.org) was formed in 1986 to support “free markets and limited government.” In 1996, CSE focused its electoral activity on television advertising. In 2000 the group had changed to emphasize grassroots politics. Vice President for Public Affairs Martin Reiser

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said that the reasons for the change were first, to build an effective and long-term grassroots network, second, to engage in activities that enabled the institution to grow. “We would run multi-million dollar campaigns, whether they be voter education or issue advocacy, and at the end of the day all that money had gone out the door and we hadn’t built anything.” After the 1996 cycle CSE decided to build a grassroots network of free-market advocates and began to open state chapters throughout the country. For the 2000 cycle the group focused on the twelve states where it had state offices. According to Reiser, the group ultimately sent two million pieces of mail, made one million phone calls, and numerous precinct walks. In Florida alone the group had about 500 volunteers and did door-to-door visits in about 20,000 neighborhoods.

National Rifle Association

In each of the previous cases, a group changed its tactics to place more of an emphasis on grassroots communications. The National Rifle Association (NRA) (www.nra.org) had always focused on direct voter contacts. In 2000 it increased the magnitude of its efforts and the targeting of its communications. This was part of a larger campaign that also featured significant media buys and efforts to attract free media. In 1999, the NRA aired a series of infomercials in the Midwest and in battleground states, urging gun owners to join the organization. In the spring of 2000, the NRA ran a series of issue ads trying to refocus the gun control debate and draw momentum away from the Million Mom March.

During the fall campaigns, Charlton Heston did a highly publicized tour in six key states, stumping for GOP Senate candidates. The NRA aired issue ads in key states, and increased its contribution to party committees while giving money to candidates in most House districts. But its major effort was in contacting voters. The NRA’s “Vote Freedom First” campaign was designed not only to mobilize gun enthusiasts, but also to persuade gun owners to vote gun rights instead of other issues. This was particularly aimed at members of labor unions who also owned guns.

The NRA worked to build a voter contact list that extended beyond its already considerable membership. It rented lists of hunting and fishing magazine subscribers and built a list of licensed hunters, gun club members, and others who might be sympathetic to the NRA agenda. As the election approached, the NRA contacted these potential voters through mail and by phone. The content of the messages varied by state and district. In many cases, the NRA sought to convince union voters to support Republican candidates. In several states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Illinois, there is little evidence that the NRA’s efforts did much to persuade

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union members, but in West Virginia the specially tailored messages may well have had an effect. A letter mailed to 30,000 members of the United Mine Workers of America in that state focused not only on Vice President Gore’s position on gun control but also on the environmental stances in Gore’s book Earth in the Balance (1993), which the NRA argued would cost West Virginia jobs in the coal industry. Many observers credit this campaign with George W. Bush’s narrow, surprising victory in the state. Gore and Bush tied among union members there, whereas pro-gun Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bob Wise swept the union vote in an easy victory.

TAKING TO THE AIRWAVES

League of Conservation Voters

Although many groups moved away from advertising and toward voter contacting in 2000, not all groups made this change. Some, like the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) (www.lcv.org), stuck with their approach from the recent past. Specifically, LCV continued using independent expenditures without moving significantly into issue advertising. In response to the GOP takeover in 1994, the League had adopted an independent expenditure strategy targeting the “Dirty Dozen.” It continued this effort in 2000, spending more than in past election cycles. The group added a program to identify Environmental Champions of both parties and to allow the candidates to use that label in their advertising. In general, LCV prefers independent expenditures to issue ads because it takes a large budget to run enough media issue ads to have an effect on a race. Deb Callahan President, Nevertheless, LCV has indicated that it may reevaluate its League of stance in future elections. Because independent spenders Conservation may not coordinate, or even talk to, the candidates about Voters strategy, LCV political staff members are beginning to wonder about the effectiveness of their choice.

Planned Parenthood

LCV’s tactical continuity was not normal for the groups in our study. Most interesting was the significant change in Planned Parenthood (www.plannedparenthood.org), which had established its PAC in the 1998 election cycle to go along with its 501(c)(4) tax- Gloria Feldt exempt nonprofit corporation. That year, the 501(c)(4) President, Planned organization is political activity mostly consisted of telephone Parenthood

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and direct mail communication with Planned Parenthood members on behalf of congressional candidates. In 2000, the group added a new focus to its previous activities, spending an estimated $12 million through its PAC, 501(c)(4) and “527” political committee, including $7 million on advertising about the presidential campaign in ten states. In late September through early October 2000, Planned Parenthood’s spending on advertising exceeded the Democratic National Committee’s, helping those who supported Vice President Gore to match the level of pro-GOP spending. One advertisement featured Republican women decrying Gov. Bush’s views on abortion; another featured a physician talking about the so-called “gag rule”.

Planned Parenthood was also active in “ground war” campaigns to support pro-choice House and Senate candidates in targeted districts. Among the key races were the Missouri Senate campaign, in which the organization sent out 90,000 voter guides. A joint Planned Parenthood / NARAL phone bank made 15,000 calls in Missouri late in the campaign. In the California 27th House district race, Planned Parenthood spent $100,000 on direct mail, $20,000 on voter identification, and did four mailings attacking the incumbent Republican, James Rogan. Nina Miller, Planned Parenthood’s former political director, said that tracking polls showed that in targeted districts and states the ad campaigns worked effectively to move Republican and Independent women toward Gore and toward other Democratic candidates further down on the ticket. Planned Parenthood actually was more successful at moving GOP women voters than was NARAL, which eventually switched to focus its effort on independent rather than Republican women.

The move toward heavily pro-Democratic behavior in the election was controversial for Planned Parenthood. Many in the organization were reluctant to become so strongly involved in partisan politics. Unlike NARAL, the group had a “brand name” that for much of the public suggested a non- partisan, public service type of organization. Some Republicans withdrew contributions to the organization, although the precise magnitude of this effect is difficult to estimate.

Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence (Handgun Control)

Handgun Control (www.bradycampaign.org) dramatically increased its level of activity in 2000. According to Joseph Dennison, director of state legislation, PAC spending

increased from $180,000 in 1996 to more Sarah Brady, than $2 million in 2000. Previously the group had focused on Chair of the Brady Campaign direct contributions to candidates. In 2000, Handgun Control to Prevent Gun spent most of its money on independent expenditures in Violence

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several targeted competitive Senate races as well as the presidential campaign. The other significant change was the decision to become involved much earlier in the election year in the use of issue advocacy. As Greg Macias, the associate director for political affairs, pointed out, the decision to focus on the airwaves reflected the group’s desire to promote its issue to a target audience of suburban mothers who were not part of its existing grassroots infrastructure. Interest groups evolve their electoral strategies in response to what they observe in the political environment. Handgun Control initially planned to run ads in May to establish the terms of the gun control debate, and then to back off from this activity as the elections drew close. Yet after observing the extent of activity of other groups and the likely closeness of the presidential and several Senate races, Handgun Control decided to run additional ads in early September.

Business’ Issue Ads by Newly Created Groups -- Citizens for Better Medicare and Americans for Job Security

The business community did use the airwaves, although most companies were reluctant to air issue advertising on their own. Peak associations such as the Chamber of Commerce aired more than $15 million in issue advertising in 2000, but the most interesting tactic of business appears to have been the creation and funding of other groups that could air issue advertisements without directly linking them to individual companies. Two groups attracted considerable attention for their spending – Citizens for Better Medicare, (www.bettermedicare.org) which was funded by the pharmaceutical industry in an effort to shape the debate on prescription medication and cost control, and Americans for Job Security, founded with the aid of the American Insurance Association. The precise identity of the donors to these organizations have not been revealed, but the Washington Post reported that major high-tech companies contributed to American For Job Security in 2000 at the strong behest of Trent Lott (Isikoff, 2000). Citizens for Better Medicare reportedly spent $50 million or more on issue advertising during 1999-2000, but much of that was spent for advertising early in the cycle that did not mention candidates (See CFI Issue Ad Report, A-8; Miller and Miller.) A CBM staff person estimated that perhaps $15 million was spent for candidate-specific advertising, much of it in districts where the message was meant to counter the AFL-CIO’s. Americans for Job Security spent approximately $10 million, all on issue ads, most of which attacked Democratic candidates and a few of which supported Republicans. The corporations who funded these groups apparently did not want their names on the ads’ bylines, but by creating new organizations (often called “shadow PACs”) businesses have found a way to channel their resources into issue advertising.

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INTERNET CAMPAIGNS

In 2000, many groups experimented with the use of the Internet and e-mail as part of their campaign efforts. Some groups established web sites that allowed visitors to contribute to the organization or its PAC, others placed voter guides and other persuasive materials on their web site for activists to download and distribute to friends and neighbors. Some groups contacted their members through e-mail, and several groups sought to build e-mail lists. The success of John McCain’s campaign in raising money through the Internet suggested to many that the medium has potential, and the low costs of Internet fundraising (especially compared with direct mail solicitations) are attractive to many citizens’ groups.

The Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org) made an extensive effort to communicate voter information through its own website as well as through banner ad spaces on voter.com and Lycos. The Sierra Club’s website featured its voter guide and the banner ads brought visitors directly to the website where they could easily access the guide. The voter education section on the website featured state-by-state voter charts so that visitors could “click” on their home states and access environmental political information relevant to state and local races. The organization also made available for the first time an e-mail version of the Presidential Voter Guide that could be sent out on request. Sierra Club also used the Internet to facilitate some of its other activities. One of the new activities in 2000 was the use of broadcast voter guides – taped commercials on particular environmental issues for targeted races. The ads featured a request for viewers to come to the Sierra Club website to review in more detail the environmental records of the candidates.

The NEA (www.nea.org) developed an email list of actual and potential supporters in twenty-seven targeted congressional districts. This was mostly an effort to keep sympathetic incumbents in office. The organization would collect email addresses of potential supporters (usually through direct mailings and phone calls) and then use the email lists to send education policy updates, emphasizing the incumbent member’s activities. This activity started months before the election. Closer to Election Day, the NEA sent emails with video clip attachments of the presidential candidates speaking on education issues.

BIPAC used the Internet as part of its outreach to business. As mentioned earlier, BIPAC created web pages for individual businesses, with the company’s logo. This let the companies to provide information to employees from BIPAC’s database of members’ roll call votes, after the each company decided which roll calls was important to its business or location. The company would appear as the source of the information sent out to

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employees over the company’s Intranet, but BIPAC established and maintain the underlying database that made the whole effort possible.

Perhaps the most Internet-intensive organization in the 2000 election cycle was MoveOn.Org, which grew out of an Internet campaign urging the Congress to abandon its effort to impeach and remove Bill Clinton from office. The organization started with contributions from individuals and foundations, but now solicits money on its web site. Move On regularly contacted its “members” via e- mail, and claims to have raised more than $2 million for Congressional races in 2000.

The National Rifle Association’s Web site also allowed that organization to collect contributions, and included streaming videos of Charlton Heston’s exhortations. Research on Internet giving suggests that the NRA has done especially well in this medium (Powell, Powell, and Wilcox, 2001).

Internet and e-mail campaigning is still in its infancy, and many groups are innovating in this area. They are monitoring the efforts of other groups, tracking their successes and failures. For example, the Chamber of Commerce’s Internet strategy in 2000 was entirely a research and development effort, as the organization tried to understand the potential and limitations of this new tool. Many interest group leaders are skeptical of the medium, but they are also beginning to test its usefulness systematically.

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WHAT HAVE WE FOUND?

INNOVATION, DIFFUSION AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING IN 2000

The 2000 campaigns showed how quickly changes in tactics diffuse through the interest group community. The AFL-CIO’s focus on building its grassroots capabilities in 1998 was diffused, through a great deal of personal interaction, to other unions in 2000. NARAL’s focus on voter mobilization was also inspired in part by the Labor model. On the business side, BIPAC’s Greg Casey said that, “We came to the conclusion that organized labor had recognized before anyone else the changing nature of politics in this country and reacted correctly and put together a grass roots effort. If business was going to be successful, we had to do the same thing. Project 2000 was born”.

The way that supportive networks operate is clearest in the case of the NAACP. As the NAACP built its new political arm, it relied on advice and assistance from sympathetic organizations. Heather Booth, director of the NAACP’s National Voter Fund, noted that “Handgun Control was in the same building and we’d go upstairs and say, ‘Okay, is this how you did it’? ” The organization also consulted with the Letter Carriers to make maps to guide their contacting efforts, and partnered with the Sierra Club on some issue advocacy.

Many of the organizations we studied also made an effort to learn from their own experience, through formal evaluations. For example, the NAACP commissioned Donald Green and Alan Gerber – two Yale University political scientists who have published important experimental studies of the impact of various voter mobilization efforts – to determine which methods of contacting Donald Green and Alan Gerber at CFI voters worked best, and in what seminar. combination. It also commissioned polls, conducted focus groups, and received a precinct turnout analysis from the National Committee for an Effective Congress.

A number of groups do polling to determine the effects of their campaign efforts. The AFL-CIO, Club for Growth, Americans for Job Security, NEA, NARAL, Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, National Association of Letter Carriers, and others, conducted some type of polling – in some cases tracking polls to determine the impact of issue ads, exit polls to determine which issues moved votes, and polls of their members. Focus groups were also common, along with interviews of members, executives, and others.

The magnitude of these efforts varied from a few focus groups and a small survey to a series of surveys in various regions and at various points

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during the campaign. Groups that run issue ads test them and gauge their results in the same way as do party committees and candidates. More recent efforts at grassroots mobilization are sometimes studied by focusing on turnout in particular races or districts, and these studies vary in their level of sophistication. Yet it is clear that actual research informs the decisions of many groups, and that these organizations have formal mechanisms in place that enable them to learn from past successes and failures.

PARTISANSHIP AND STRATEGY – FUTURE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Everything we have discussed so far has been about the decisions groups make to increase the level of their activities and shift the modalities. Our initial impression was that the new activities were associated with a An alternative possibility is that heightened degree of partisanship individual groups have not become within the active groups, stimulated by more partisan, but the system has, the stakes involved in the close battle by increasing the importance of groups and activities that used to for majority control of the Senate and be less significant than they are House. At this stage of our research, now. we want to look further at whether the individual groups in fact have become more partisan. An alternative possibility is that individual groups have not become more partisan, but the system has, by increasing the importance of groups and activities that used to be less significant than they are now.

We plan to examine this issue in subsequent stages of this research. For now, we share some preliminary ideas. Many groups that seek policies most commonly associated with one political party have historically made an effort to give to candidates of both parties. Pro-choice and pro-life groups, groups that sought to protect the environment, to promote gun control or gun rights – all have sought out candidates of the “other” party to support, in some cases practicing “affirmative action” to find those candidates (Rozell and Wilcox, 1996). In an election with close partisan divisions, with parties increasingly polarized on many issues and perhaps group membership less bipartisan than in the past, it seems likely that many groups would decrease their bipartisanship. No matter how given members might vote on abortion or clean air or gun control, they vote their partisanship to organize the chamber, and that organizing vote has important consequences for each of the groups’ focal issues.

The overall allocation of PAC contributions and soft money by these groups does not show increased partisanship. NARAL directed 92% of its money in 1992 toward Democrats, and 94% in 2000. The National Right to Life Committee channeled 86% of its funds to Republicans in 1992, compared with 83% in 2000. Sierra Club gave Democrats 97% of its money in both election cycles, and League of Conservation Voters went from 93% to

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Democrats in 1992 to 87% in 2000. The NRA is the exception to this generalization, increasing from 64% to Republicans in 1992 to 92% in 2000.

Yet these PAC totals understate the change in two ways. First, many of these PACs occasionally supported vulnerable candidates from the other party in 1992 but in 2000 gave nearly all of their cross-party money to safe incumbents. More importantly, in many cases the only effort on behalf of candidates of the other party was a cash contribution from the PAC, whereas voter contacting, issue Paul Jacob, Senior Fellow, advocacy, and other efforts were heavily partisan. It does U.S. Term Limts not appear that the close margins and party polarization led these groups to abandon their token bipartisanship in 2000, but it does appear that the more partisan side of their activity was conducted at a far more intense level in 2000 than in years past. Of course, some single issue and ideological groups will tend to pursue a single-party strategy no matter how competitive the electoral environment. In some cases, such as U.S. Term Limits, groups will focus much of their effort on party primary nomination battles to try to help the more ideologically compatible candidates. Paul Jacob of U.S. Term Limits noted that the organization moved heavily in 2000 in spending on primaries (about 70% of all group spending) and plans to increase its primary nominations activity again in 2002.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

In the 2000 campaign, a number of organizations dramatically changed the nature and level of their activity. A great deal was at stake, and many groups perceived that a small increase in turnout, or a shift in preferences among undecided voters, could decide party control of the House, Senate, and the presidency. Many groups, perhaps inspired by organized labor’s tactics in 1998, shifted from a focus on advertising to one of grassroots mobilization and networking. Others favored large issue advertising campaigns. Some also experimented with the Internet and other new technologies, although the future of these tools remains unclear.

The move toward grassroots networking and voter contact appears to have been due to several factors. Many activists believed that advertising was costly and that the payoff for their scarce resources would be better at the grassroots. The elections of 1994, 1996, and 1998 showed that turnout was critical to party fortunes. Voter mobilization was therefore especially attractive in an election that was forecast to be close. Yet other groups increased their issue advocacy, in part because this tool helps to mold the public debate, and persuade undecided voters.

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Little in the political science literature can help us understand why similar groups might choose different tactics. In general, organizations that emphasized grassroots operations had strong membership bases, while some that focused on issue advertising had “members” who essentially were contributors. But there is more to the story. The contrast between NARAL (which did some independent spending but focused on voter contacting) and Planned Parenthood (which moved from voter contacting to issue advocacy) is interesting. The explanation for these different strategic decisions is not immediately obvious. It may be that this reflects only the preferences, skills, or idiosyncratic characteristics of group strategists. But it is also possible that these decisions reflect the difference between NARAL’s and Planned Parenthood’s resource bases. NARAL has a long history of political involvement. It therefore perhaps has less of a non-partisan “brand name” and therefore may be less effective in mass advertising to convince Republican pro-choice voters to defect. Planned Parenthood may well have spent some of its reputation resource in the 2000 campaigns, and may be perceived as more partisan in future elections.

A more important lesson from these cases is that campaign finance rules and interpretations alter the types of resources that can be brought to bear in electoral campaigns. The PAC system advantaged corporations, which could more readily surmount the collective action dilemma than issue groups, but it also limited the ability of companies and unions to use treasury funds in politics. Soft money allows wealthy organizations to give to the parties, either to gain access to policymakers or to bolster party fortunes, but it does not allow ideological groups to define the debate. Issue advocacy allows ideological groups to gather money from foundations or wealthy donors, and to channel that money into messages that shape the policy debate. This helps citizen groups avoid the “free rider” problem, because a few important members can make a difference in the policy outcome and thus have an incentive to participate (Olson, 1965).

Now, the legal framework has changed once again. The election of 2004 will be conducted under new rules for political party contributions and issue advocacy. This Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was the biggest change to federal campaign finance law in more than twenty-eight years. The law is bound to have a powerful effect on interest group campaign strategies and tactics. The Campaign Finance Institute intends to study the way groups react to the new law, as well as how they react to other important changes as they occur.

Our guess is that the effect of the law will vary with different types of groups.

· Pragmatic groups will probably put less money into federal races than they have in the past. Executives will face some pressure to increase their hard money contributions. However, to the extent that corporate treasury money was being given in

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response to requests, to preserve access, at least some of that money will stay on the sidelines. Contrary to the “hydraulic theory,” this is a place where the law is likely to make a difference.

· In contrast, we expect groups with partisan or intense policy agendas to stay involved. The BCRA appears on first reading to be pushing those groups away from broadcast electioneering, but many of the larger groups in our study were moving in that direction anyway. The big question is about groups that were using broadcast advertising to a significant degree. The affects will vary, depending on a group’s characteristics.

o Groups that have small membership bases cannot readily convert to voter mobilization activities. If they rely on corporate or labor union money, they will have to shift from radio and television to direct mail or telephone. Alternatively, they could use ads to try to define an election early, before the 60 day window, or else run advertisements later that do not use a candidate’s name or likeness.

o Labor and business organizations funded from treasury money will face the same media restrictions and opportunities, but they can do electioneering through PACs and are also well positioned to continue working on voter mobilization.

o Larger issue groups will have a range of choices. One option, not stressed but well known to the law’s sponsors and to election attorneys, is that a group might spin off an unincorporated association. As long as this association can raise money (in any amount, without limit) from individuals who are willing to accept disclosure, and avoid any indirect corporate or labor support, it will be able to buy exactly the same messages (naming candidates within 60 days of an election) as it could under the old law. That is because all of the electioneering prohibitions in the BCRA build on the basic corporate and labor restrictions in current law.

Predicting the tactical choice specific groups will make is difficult, particularly if the groups have a large membership bases, such as NARAL or the NRA. They could continue electioneering by setting up unincorporated entities, funded entirely by individual contributors, to buy TV ads. The same organizations could, however, decide they wanted to emphasize targeted communications, as the NRA does. (Corporate and labor contributions are permitted for these, as they are for broadcast ads that do not meet the law’s

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definition of “electioneering.”) We predict that any specific group’s choices will be based on its assessment of the political environment and its resources, including its ability to shift individual contributions into a new association. The law will not be a major impediment for these kinds of organizations.

Of course, predictions may go wrong. We cannot be sure what will happen, or why, until it does. That is why we are engaged in this project. The current paper may therefore be seen as a baseline study. It is meant to document some groups’ decisions to change during one of the last two elections before the new law takes effect. The full project will take at least two more elections to finish – one final election under the old system and the first election under a new one. CFI will report regularly on the results from this ongoing study, as they become available.

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Index of Organizations Mentioned

American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL- CIO): 3,8,16-18, 25,28

Americans for Job Security: 4,25,28

American Insurance Association: 4,25

AT&T: 14

Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC): 4,20,21,26,27

Citizens for Better Medicare: 25

Citizens for a Sound Economy: 21-22

Club for Growth: 13,28

Council for a Livable World: 13

Emily’s List: 13

Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund: 13

Handgun Control: 24-25,28

League of Conservation Voters (LCV): 23,29

Lockheed Martin: 15

Madison Project: 13

Microsoft: 15

MoveOn.Org: 27

National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL): 19,24,28-29,31-32,35

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): 4,18,28

National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC): 18, 28

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM): 15

National Association of Realtors (NAR): 15

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National Education Association (NEA): 26,28

National Rifle Association (NRA): 3,10,22-23,26-28,30,32

Planned Parenthood: 3-4,19,23-24,28,31

Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU): 17

Sierra Club: 18,26,28-29,31

Susan B. Anthony Fund: 13

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: 21,25,27

U.S. Term Limits: 30

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