ALEC Too Toxic For McDonalds

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ALEC Too Toxic For McDonalds
Conservative legislation-mill the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) lost yet another corporate backer as McDonalds announced it had also abandoned the organization. In fact, McDonalds was so anxious to distance itself from ALEC it announced it had preemptively left the group in March.

The news came after online advocacy group Color of Change publicly called on McDonalds to withdraw due to ALEC’s involvement with drafting and pushing “stand your ground” and Voter ID laws.

And it comes just after McDonalds had publicly defended its membership in the group in a letter to Color of Change dated February 29, 2012.

“McDonald’s is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),” it reads. “It is important to note that while McDonald’s is a member of ALEC’s Commerce Committee, we are not a member of ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board which recently passed the “Voter ID” model legislation.”

Whether the McDonalds left in March or April doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they left and that the pressure campaign is working.

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation became the latest high profile backer of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council to withdraw financial support after pressure from groups opposed to ALEC’s support of “stand your ground” laws and Voter ID.

Roll Call reports that a foundation spokesperson said it does not plan to make any future grants to the organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed more than $375,000 to ALEC in the past two years.

“We have made a single grant, narrowly and specifically focused on providing information to ALEC-affiliated state legislators on teacher effectiveness and school finance,” said Chris Williams, the spokesman, noting that the foundation was never a dues-paying member. The foundation advocates for global health initiatives and efforts to reduce poverty.

The Foundation joins Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Intuit as sponsors leaving after pressure from groups intensifies and shows no signs of slowing. AT&T is the latest target. Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson said the group is using Internet appeals to pressure companies that have made explicit efforts to build a strong relationship with African-American customers. “Our goal is to ensure that these companies can’t have it both ways,” he said. “AT&T touts its support of civil rights groups and unions, which ALEC works to weaken.”

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Is this the beginning of the end of the ALEC overreach?

Two of America’s best known companies, Coca Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their membership in the conservative lobbying group behind just about every bad Republican initiatives including union-busting, reclamation of public lands, Voter ID, and “stand your ground” gun laws.

Coca-Cola was the first to announce it was leaving the group after civil rights group ColorOfChange.org launched an online drive calling on Coca-Cola to stop underwriting the ALEC agenda on voter ID laws sweeping the nation. Civil rights activists claim the laws are discriminatory and intended to suppress minority voter turnout.

PepsiCo soon followed, telling ColorOfChange that it would not be renewing its membership for 2012.

Progressive groups and shareholder activists want to drive a wedge between ALEC and its corporate members as a way to fight back on the group’s seemingly endless resources and bad model legislation. “There was no real downside because there was no public accountability. There was no transparency,” said Doug Clopp, deputy director of programs with Common Cause. “Everything up until now had been done behind closed doors, and these memberships were not known to the American people.”

It’s not just the advocacy groups calling on this kind of change and transparency. Tim Smith is a vice president with Walden Asset Management, which does what it calls socially responsible investing. He says corporate boards and top management are paying closer attention now. “They’re scrutinizing their trade association memberships, their relationships with controversial institutes,” said Smith. “And certainly I think that companies are scrutinizing their ALEC relationship more carefully, too.”

This is great news, especially if we can get more companies to follow Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s lead.