WASHINGTON (February 1, 2007)  – A coalition of special-interest groups, funded in large part by liberal foundations, is working with the new Democratic leadership in Congress to enact laws that would restrict what they call "grassroots lobbying" – by which they mean organized efforts to motivate members of the public to communicate with their congressional representatives about pending legislation.

Pro-life and pro-family leaders warn that under the proposed new laws, many genuine grassroots organizations – including state-level pro-life and pro-family organizations – would be saddled with burdensome new registration, record keeping, and reporting requirements.

NRLC and many other grassroots organizations are fighting the proposals.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is also urging Congress to reject such regulations as infringements on rights protected by the First Amendment.

NRLC and its allies won an initial victory in the U.S. Senate on January 18, when the Senate voted 55-43 to strip provisions to regulate "grassroots lobbying" from an omnibus "ethics reform" bill.

However, pro-regulation groups such as Democracy 21(headed by veteran liberal activist Fred Wertheimer) and OMB Watch (controlled by representatives of labor unions and certain industries) are redoubling their efforts.  They are pushing the leaders of the newly installed Democratic House majority to restore "grassroots lobbying" provisions when the House considers "ethics reform" legislation soon.

The House Democratic leadership is expected to unveil its own version of "ethics reform" legislation around mid-February, and most observers expect that restrictions on "grassroots lobbying" will be part of their package.

Senate Fight

In the Senate, the issue came up during debate on an omnibus "ethics reform" bill (S. 1) which, among other things, would enact many new restrictions on gift-giving, meal-buying, and other practices associated with some Washington-based lobbyists.  The bill's sponsors say that one of its purposes is to tighten up regulation of lobbyists who work in Washington, D.C., in response to certain lobbying scandals of the past several years, including those associated with Jack Abramoff and his associates.

However, the bill also contained a section (Section 220) dealing with "grassroots lobbying," which the bill defined as "the voluntary efforts of members of the general public to communicate their own views on an issue to Federal officials or to encourage other members of the general public to do the same."

Under Section 220, a group or individual who engaged in "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" would have been forced to register with Congress as a federal lobbyist or even as a "grassroots lobbying firm," and to file complicated quarterly reports with Congress.  This requirement would have applied, for example, to some paid staff members of state right-to-life organizations, and many other citizen activists across the political spectrum.

Violation of the bill's requirements would be punishable by a civil fine of up to $200,000 per infraction.  "Corrupt" violations would also be punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison – with the determination of whether a given violation was considered  "corrupt" to be made by a U.S. attorney, a federal political appointee.

(To read NRLC's five-page letter sent to senators on January 16, explaining the far-reaching problems that would be created by such a law, click here.)

In a January 16 legislative alert issued by NRLC to its affiliates, NRLC said that under the bill, "activity that is at the heart of the representative system of government implicitly would be regarded as a suspect activity, subject to complex regulations, coupled with severe penalties for failure to abide by the regulations.  If this provision is enacted, many ordinary citizens will get less and less information from pro-life groups and other issue-oriented organizations about what is going on in Congress.  Churches and church leaders may also be deterred from speaking to the broader public about important legislative issues.  These effects may be among the goals intended by the special-interest groups that are pushing this destructive legislation."

Bennett Amendment

In order to defend the First Amendment rights of citizen groups, pro-life Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah) offered an amendment to simply strip the entire "grassroots lobbying" section from the bill.  The Bennett Amendment was strongly supported by a broad spectrum of advocacy groups, including NRLC, the Family Research Council, the National Rifle Association, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Free Speech Coalition, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

On January 18, the Bennett Amendment was adopted 55-43.  Led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a strong defender of free speech rights, every Republican senator who was present voted for the Bennett Amendment.  They were joined by seven Democrats. 

(The Senate roll call on the Bennett Amendment appears in the NRLC Senate scorecard for 2007.)

The Bennett Amendment got a boost when it was endorsed by Senator John McCain (R-Az.).  McCain, the prime sponsor of a 2002 "campaign reform" law that placed restrictions on some communications to the public about those who hold or seek federal office, had himself sponsored legislation in 2005 that would have regulated "grassroots lobbying."  But on January 18, McCain told the Senate that he had concluded that Section 220 "could seriously impact legitimate communications between public interest organizations and their members," and "would negatively impact the legitimate, constitutionally protected activities of small citizen groups and their members."

Pro-regulation Interest Groups

The coalition of liberal "government reform" groups that advocate heavy regulation of political speech lobbied hard against the Bennett Amendment.  This coalition includes about nine nonprofit organizations, including Democracy 21, Common Cause, OMB Watch, and Public Citizen.

In communications to the Senate and the news media, these groups argued that the bill was necessary to regulate what they called "Astroturf," a term they have coined to refer to organized efforts to encourage citizens to contact their federal representatives.  In a January 17 letter, they defined "Astroturf" lobbying as any "lobbying campaigns [that] involve paid media, phone bank, direct mail and other paid public communication campaigns to urge the public to lobby Congress on legislation."  [italics in original]

"These groups assert that they are trying to diminish ‘special interest' influence, but in reality, they serve as fronts for special interests that are far more elitist, and less accountable, than the grassroots organizations that they are trying to cripple," commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

Two days after the Senate vote, Bradley Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who now serves as chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, strongly criticized the pro-restriction coalition in an essay posted on the Center's blog (www.campaignfreedom.org/blog), titled "The Real ‘Astroturf' Lobbyists."

Smith noted that Democracy 21 "has no members," is headed by a registered lobbyist (Wertheimer), and that "the bulk of Democracy 21's funding comes from the Pew, Carnegie, Joyce and Open Society (George Soros) Foundations, which themselves have no broad membership to whom to be accountable, and which operate with no accountability to the general public . . . . [Yet, they] go around Capitol Hill ridiculing Congress's constituents as ‘fake' and ‘astroturf' while claiming to speak for ‘the American people.'"

Likewise, Mark Fitzgibbons, an attorney associated with the Free Speech Coalition (an umbrella group formed to defend the rights of nonprofit organizations), posted on http://www.grassrootsfreedom.com/ a revealing essay about OMB Watch, a group that has claimed an active role in shaping the "grassroots lobbying" provisions under consideration in Congress:

Fitzgibbons wrote;  "OMB Watch is no grassroots organization. . . .OMB Watch appears from its own graphs on its website to get about only one percent of its funding from individual donors . . . and approximately 90 percent from foundations. . . . OMB Watch lists its sources of funds from foundations in this order: 1. Anonymous I, 2. Anonymous II, 3. Bauman Foundation, 4. Beldon Fund, 5. Carnegie Corporation of New York, 6. Ford Foundation, 7. Fund for Constitutional Government, 8. HKH Foundation, 9. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 10. Open Society Institute, 11. Pacific Life, 12. Rockefeller Brothers Fund, 13. The Scherman Foundation, and 14. Sunlight Foundation."

Fitzgibbons also noted that the 15-member OMB Watch board is dominated by representatives of big labor unions and a few big corporations, and by veteran liberal activists such as John Podesta, previously a top advisor to President Clinton.

Fitzgibbons concluded:  "OMB Watch, both through its sources of funding and the makeup of its own board, represents big corporate and labor union interests, and is nearly as far as one can get in Washington from representing grassroots causes. In fact, OMB Watch is much closer to being 'Astroturf', those artificial, industry created causes that purport to, but don't, represent citizens, than to legitimate nonprofit and other grassroots causes."

NRLC's Douglas Johnson commented, "The current campaign to restrict so-called ‘grassroots lobbying' is another attempt by certain well-funded liberal elites to cripple genuine grassroots political movements, such as the pro-life movement, in order to increase their already powerful influence over officeholders.  They want to enhance their own form of political influence, which depends heavily on the demonstrated willingness of many elements of the institutional news to relentlessly propagandize on behalf of every so-called ‘reform' pushed by these special-interest groups.  While the speech-regulation groups claim they want to make Congress less beholden to ‘special interests,' in fact they push constantly for laws that would make officeholders more insulated from real constituents and more dependent on liberal elites, including the fat-cat foundation bosses who fund these groups and their allies in the news media."

What Next?

Johnson warned, "Despite the favorable vote in the Senate, a great deal of work needs to be done to persuade House members to also reject this attack on grassroots activism – and it needs to be done quickly.  The House might vote on the issue before the end of February."

The pro-regulation lobby seemed to regard the Senate's adoption of the Bennett Amendment as an unexpected but temporary setback.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, told National Journal, "They succeeded narrowly in getting it [grassroots provision] removed in the Senate, but we are going to get it back in the House."

Take Action Now

For guidance on how to contact the office of your representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, in order to urge him or her to vote against restrictions on "grassroots lobbying," visit the NRLC  Legislative Action Center at http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/home/  and follow the instructions there.

To see more documents about congressional attempts to restrict "grassroots lobbying," go to www.nrlc.org/FreeSpeech/index.html  

To return to the Free Speech Index, click here.