State Policy Network: The Stealth Network Dramatically Influencing State Law

The State Policy Network (SPN), a web of pressure groups in all 50 states that call themselves “think tanks” while dramatically influencing state law, is a powerful and stealthy ally of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) detailed in the recent report, “EXPOSED: The State Policy Network: The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government.” That report is part of a new initiative with Progress Now called “StinkTanks.org,” which includes additional research and reports on these groups in each state.

Case Study: Michigan’s Mackinac Center and “Right to Work”

A powerful example of how certain SPN affiliates work directly to change state law without reporting any lobbying to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — which requires such disclosures of direct and grassroots lobbying by 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations such as the SPN state affiliates — is that of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s efforts to make Michigan a “right to work” state.

On December 11, 2012, governor Rick Snyder signed into law a “right to work” bill, which undermines collective bargaining by allowing workers to freeload off the benefits of union negotiations without paying the costs of union representation. The Mackinac Center and its funders, such as the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway fortune, had been coordinating behind close doors to effect this change “for 25 years,” as a Mackinac blog post boasted after the bill passed, going on to call the passage of the bill “a classic example of the Overton Window of what’s politically possible moving in the proper direction. Mackinac Center experts have been pushing that window toward right-to-work since 1990.”

In fact, SPN singled out the Mackinac Center’s president, Joseph Lehman, for its highest award at its 2013 annual meeting, the “Roe Award” named after SPN founder and building materials supply magnate Thomas Roe. Why? For “the passage of a right-to-work law in Michigan,” another blog post boasted. Betsy DeVos presented the award to Lehman, and Dick DeVos was recognized as well.

Mackinac created or helped create two new online publications — called Michigan Capital Confidential and Watchdog Wire Michigan (a project of the Franklin Center, of which Mackinac is a “partner”) — to communicate its claims, gain public support, and put pressure on the governor to adopt its “right to work” changes to state law.

In audio released in early 2013 by Progress Michigan, Mackinac Director of Labor Policy F. Vincent Vernuccio was recorded as telling supporters at an Americans for Prosperity “Citizen Watchdog Training” that he had met with Michigan lawmakers to make a plan for ramming “right to work” laws through the state legislature. And in a series of 2011 emails between Mackinac staffers and Michigan Rep. Tom McMillin about a different piece of legislation, Mackinac’s Jack McHugh told McMillin, “Our goal is outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA” (Michigan Education Association, the state’s teachers union). In another email, McMillin told Mackinac staffers, “my ability to impact this decision could be assisted by hearing your thoughts…soon (and again, this is off the record – ok?)”

Based on these email exchanges and other evidence, U.S. Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) asked the IRS to investigate Mackinac and “take appropriate actions to ensure that the Mackinac Center is in full compliance with federal tax law.”

In March 2012, ALEC member legislator Rep. Steve Drazkowski (MN R-21B), who sponsored a “right to work” constitutional amendment in nearby Minnesota, told Minnesota Public Radio that he had gotten the text of the amendment not from ALEC — which had been pushing its “Right to Work Act” since at least 1979, as CMD has reported, and which historical documents show may have founded SPN — but from the Mackinac Center, as reported by the blog “Bluestem Prairie.”

But, despite all its efforts to achieve major legal changes such as “right to work” in Michigan and elsewhere, and despite its own admission that it had been pushing the change and communicating with state legislators about it, the Mackinac Center reported no lobbying to the IRS in 2012, 2011, or 2010.

SPN Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

“Right to work” is an ALEC “model” bill, approved by its board before 1995. The Mackinac Center is deeply involved with ALEC, sitting on at least five task forces, including as the “Private Sector Chair” of the “Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee” of ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force as of October 2013. The relationship goes both ways, with Mackinac pushing ALEC legislation in Michigan and ALEC helping Mackinac push its agenda to other states.

Mackinac is not the only SPN affiliate to have ties to ALEC, moreover. At least 35 of SPN’s 64 affiliates have direct ties to ALEC — such as task force membership — according to a review by CMD, and these groups are among ALEC’s most active members, as CMD has reported.

* Individual sources for each think tank’s ALEC ties are cited in the article on that specific think tank linked in the table. Please follow the links in the chart or see the full list of SPN member think tanks for more.

This article has been updated (December 16, 2013) to add more information about the Mackinac Center’s political activities.