CONSTRUCTING THE CAUSE: THE ROLE OF THIRD-PARTY FUNDERS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEXICAN AMERICAN INTEREST GROUP ADVOCACY by Devin Fernandes A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY © Devin Fernandes 2018 All rights reserved ABSTRACT For the last 25 years, scholars have raised alarms over the disappearance of local civic membership organizations since the 1960s and a concomitant explosion of third-party-funded, staff-dominated, professional advocacy organizations. This change is said to contribute to long- term declines in civic and political participation, particularly among minorities and low income Americans, and by extension, diminished electoral fortunes of the Democratic Party. Rather than mobilize mass publics and encourage their political participation, the new, largely progressive advocacy groups finance themselves independently through foundation grant money and do most of their work in Washington where they seek behind the scenes influence with unelected branches of government. However, in seeking to understand this transition “from membership to advocacy,” most current scholarship focuses on the socio-political factors that made it possible. We have little understanding of the internal dynamics sustaining individual organizations themselves to account for why outside-funded groups are able to emerge and thrive or the ways in which dependence on external subsidies alters their operating incentives. To address this hole in the literature, the dissertation engages in a theory-building effort through a case study analysis of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), founded in 1968. Drawing on archival materials from MALDEF and its primary benefactor, the Ford Foundation, the dissertation opens the black box of internal decision-making to understand in real time how resource dependence on non-beneficiaries shaped the maintenance calculus of its leaders and in turn, group behavior. Traditional interest group scholarship focuses on fundraising as the sole maintenance challenge facing their leaders, one fulfilled by recruiting dues-paying members. The dissertation, however, shows how fundraising ii from third-parties weakens their representational claim, creating a new maintenance challenge. The grievances of ostensible constituents are all too capable generating controversies over an organization’s legitimacy. Thus, as a matter of survival, leaders are incentivized to limit their exposure to nominal constituents in order to avoid legitimacy challenges. In so doing, groups are drawn ever closer to norms and expectations of foundation patrons and both the professional and party networks in which they operate. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is the product of innumerable debts. As much as I would like to honor all of those whose support has nourished me over the years both leading up to and during the writing process, I know I will leave many out. Most immediately, I’d like to thank my adviser, Steve Teles who made the excellent suggestion that I go scope out the Ford Foundations records on MALDEF which had just become available at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Steve and my other primary readers, Adam Sheingate and Emily Zackin, provided comments and helpful advice on the dissertation in its various draft forms throughout my time at Johns Hopkins. I also wish to thank my co-Americanist grad student colleagues, David Dagan and Lauren Foley (and their families!), for their intellectual and moral support which helped me make it through the often trying experiences of graduate school. Of course, I would not even have made it to graduate school without the intervention of many individuals whose presence in my life I have been all too fortunate to have. I thank Peter Skerry and Marth Bayles for giving me the encouragement to pursue an academic career and for their frequent counsel along the way. Finding my way to Peter’s employ as a research assistant after graduating college has been one of the greatest strokes of luck in my life. Likewise, I cannot even begin to fathom where I would be today without my best friend Chandler Bennett and his parents Katherine and Ed. Since kindergarten, they have nurtured my intellectual curiosity in more ways than I will ever be able to articulate whether they know it or not. Lastly, I am grateful to have had the love and support of a family that has shown me nothing but encouragement throughout my life. My parents, Debbie and Dave, made innumerable sacrifices to support me and my development over the years. I remain in awe of my iv mom’s toughness and her commitment to ensuring that my sister and I would achieve the education she wished for herself. In addition to my parents, I also enjoyed the enormous benefit of growing up not just with two sets of grandparents—itself a rarity among most of my peers— but two sets of great-grandparents as well. This was made all the more special given that all my grandparents lived nearby and were able to play significant roles in raising me. By the time I entered graduate school, I was fortunate enough to have two of my grandparents, Kay and Bud, still there to support me. Over the next several years, they would pester me with the same question: “When can we call you ‘Dr. Devin’?” Unfortunately, my grandmother was not able to realize their shared dream, passing away suddenly one month before my defense. I dedicate this dissertation to both of them and to her memory. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Chapter 1 Explaining the Subsidization of Progressive Advocacy 21 Chapter 2 Origins: Ford, the Rise of Cause Lawyering, & the Founding of MALDEF 43 Chapter 3 Mexican Americans Legal Activism 81 Chapter 4 The Founding & the First Two Years 113 Chapter 5 The 1970s 149 Chapter 6 Conclusions 194 Bibliography Archival Documents 203 Works Cited 212 vi PREFACE In March of 1970, the San Antonio-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) convened its annual board of directors meeting in Washington, DC. The meeting had been sold as a mutual “getting-to-know-you” session for the staff and board members of the not quite two-year-old organization with various national policymakers. The meetings had been arranged with the help of program officers at the Ford Foundation, the civil rights litigation firm’s primary benefactor, with the intent of raising its Washington profile while helping MALDEF leaders network with federal officials. Most board members were Mexican American attorneys who lived in the Southwest and had little Washington experience. More familiarity with the agencies and people MALDEF staff sought both to influence and collaborate with would provide the board members a better perspective to fulfill their governance responsibilities, Ford officers suggested. Thus, MALDEF staff helped arrange three days of presentations and meet-and-greet sessions for board members with officials at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, Health, Education and Welfare, among others (“MALDEF Washington Conference Agenda, March 12-14, 1970” 1970). The timing for such a meeting, however, proved awkward given the bombshell news Ford officials planned to deliver to the board members. In the fall of 1967, Ford brass unhappy with the direction of MALDEF convened a three-person review panel which recently concluded. The resulting recommendations amounted to nothing less than a full reorganization of MALDEF. First, the review team proposed eliminating the position of executive director and vesting its responsibilities in the current “General Counsel” position. This suggestion amounted to no mere 1 organizational reshuffling, but rather a thinly disguised call to fire MALDEF’s current executive director and founder, Pete Tijerina.1 Second, the review panel called for pulling the organization’s headquarters out of San Antonio, suggesting that it be relocated to Washington, DC “or some other important central city” and kept out of either of “the two main centers of [the] Mexican-American population,” disqualifying Los Angeles as well. Third, they called for a rebalancing of the board. They noted that it was “comprised almost exclusively of Mexican- American attorneys, mainly from Texas” and needed more geographic and occupational diversity. More astonishingly, they advised that it should be “reconstituted to include at least one-third non Mexican-American membership with attention being given to Anglo-membership” (Campbell, Pincus, and Stewart 1970).2 Ford Foundation leaders adopted the set of recommendations and now program officer, Christopher Edley, was set to announce them to attendees on the middle night of the three-day Washington summit. On the night of March 13 as the meeting was called to order, board president Albert Armendariz announced a suspension in the order of business so that Edley could address a stunned audience. After delivering the recommendations, Edley requested to leave the meeting, but Armendariz insisted that he stay to give the incredulous attendees an opportunity to ask questions, though he remained less than candid in his answers. Two things floored members the most: the calls to relocate MALDEF’s headquarters and to fire Tijerina (who had excused himself from Edley’s presentation, having been briefed just beforehand). The implicit ultimatum embedded in Edley’s remarks—accept these terms or lose your funding—only