Ms. Nelson, whom ALEC hired as its CEO in 2014, recalls thinking that “I needed to keep making the case that, as a company, we could not be put in a position where we could be told who we could work with.” Her boss agreed. Visa kept on with its ALEC donations. At least for a time.
The Trayvon Martin shooting was a new way for progressives to go after ALEC. They had long despised the group, but attacking ALEC took on a new urgency after the 2010 midterm elections, when voters had revolted against unpopular liberal policies and programs. Democrats sustained staggering losses on the federal and state levels. Republicans had unprecedented control over state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and a new ability to green-light reforms that ALEC proposed.
In an interview with Bloomberg in May 2012, Common Cause spokeswoman Mary Boyle explained that her group had been waiting for months for the right moment to file a complaint with the IRS to strip ALEC of its nonprofit status. “The Trayvon Martin thing was like a gift,” she said, in an extraordinary, if horrifying, moment of honesty.
Within weeks of the shooting in February 2012, a liberal coalition had mobilized against ALEC, elevating an organization few Americans had ever heard of to the status of national pariah, responsible for laws that the left now refers to as “kill at will” statutes. A rogues’ gallery of left-wing groups, including MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and Color of Change, demanded that ALEC make its funding sources public.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member