For more than 50 years, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has moved a right-wing and pro-corporate Republican agenda of legislation in states across the country — all while posing as a nonpartisan, tax-exempt charity.
The pay-to-play organization brings together corporate lobbyists and conservative state legislators who meet behind closed doors to draft and promote an endless stream of model bills that reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.
One key to ALEC’s far-reaching influence: More than 70 legislators affiliated with the group now hold leadership positions in 35 states.
For a more detailed description of state legislators’ ties to ALEC, see ALEC Exposed.
ALEC has an especially strong head start in moving its model bills in the 28 state legislatures where Republicans are in the majority. In 24 of those, 40 ALEC members hold at least one of the party’s top leadership positions — speaker, president, majority leader, minority leader, president pro tem, or speaker pro tem.
ALEC members hold all of the top leadership positions in seven states where Republicans control both legislative chambers: Alabama, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, and Wisconsin, giving them effective control over the entire legislature — or at least over which bills get heard and voted on.
In 11 states where Democrats control one or both legislative bodies, ALEC relies on members who are minority leaders of the Senate or House.
Speakers or presidents of a legislative body are the primary leaders of that body. Typically the leader of a state Senate is called “president,” while the leader of its House or Assembly is the “speaker.” The designation “pro tem” after the leadership post refers to the person who runs the legislature when it is in session but the speaker or president is absent.
Speakers or presidents serve as the chief spokespeople for their chambers, preside over legislative sessions, direct the legislative process, and perform additional administrative and procedural duties. Together with the majority leader, each president or speaker determines which legislation is brought to the body’s floor for a vote.
The president or speaker, with input from the majority leader, also appoints various committee chairs along with individual lawmakers to serve on these committees.
The majority leader acts as the principal “whip” responsible for delivering his or her party’s vote in the chamber. In states where Republicans don’t control the chamber, the minority leader works to persuade enough Democrats to vote with Republicans to create a working majority.
Having ALEC members in control of so many leadership positions definitely pays off for the organization. A 2019 investigation by USA Today and The Arizona Republic found that “bills based on ALEC models were introduced nearly 2,900 times, in all 50 states and the U.S. Congress, from 2010 through 2018, with more than 600 becoming law.”
“With a success rate [of] more than 20%, I would say that ALEC is a good investment,” its then-Executive Director Samuel Brunelli boasted in 1995. “Nowhere else can you get a return that high.”
That description is apt given ALEC’s business plan, which states that its “product is policy, and its customers are state legislators and private sector supporters.”
Thirteen ALEC members in state legislative leadership positions also serve as ALEC leaders, either as state chairs, on task forces that develop and draft model bills, or as national board members or officers.
Setting the Agenda
ALEC members who hold leadership positions in both the organization and their state legislatures are better positioned to promote ALEC’s right-wing agenda and model bills, which in turn shape public debates and outcomes that impact millions of Americans.
Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who was ALEC’s 2024 national chair, has used his position to keep Kansas among only 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid by raising the income limit for eligibility, as allowed under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
ALEC has opposed Medicaid expansion since it first took effect with the passage of the ACA in 2014, providing state legislatures with a model bill that requires legislative approval before states raise the income limit for receiving Medicaid benefits.
Medicaid expansion in the 40 other states and the District of Columbia has led to lower mortality rates and improved outcomes among people with a number of chronic diseases, along with better outcomes in sexual, reproductive, and behavioral health.
In Wisconsin, ALEC member and Speaker of the House Robin Vos successfully led the effort against Medicaid expansion in that state. He is also blocking an effort to extend postpartum care under Medicaid from the state’s current 60 days to one year, as is allowed in every other state except for Wisconsin and Arkansas.
ALEC has also used its leadership connections to push its culture war agenda. In Iowa, the “Freedom from Indoctrination Act” (House File 269) is based on ALEC’s model anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) legislation. Both seek to prohibit colleges and universities from requiring students to take courses relating to DEI or critical race theory.
The Iowa bill is sponsored by the Assembly’s Committee on Higher Education, a committee that includes Speaker Pro Tem John Wills, who also serves as ALEC’s Iowa state chair and sits on a number of ALEC task forces.
Another bill that appears to be based on the same ALEC model anti-DEI legislation is Georgia’s Senate Bill 120, which prohibits local education agencies and postsecondary institutions from “promoting, supporting, or maintaining any programs or activities that advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion” and withholds state funding from any that do. Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, ALEC’s Georgia state chair, is one of the sponsors of SB 120.
In addition, ALEC has long used its influence to push legislation designed to weaken unions and undermine collective bargaining rights. Its long-held opposition to project labor agreements is reflected in the “Open Contracting Act” model bill first adopted in 1996 as well as in the more recently adopted “Taxpayer Dollars Protect Workers Act.”
The latter, which essentially blacklists any employer that voluntarily recognizes a union to keep them from receiving state economic development incentives, was repurposed and successfully signed into law in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee during the last legislative session. ALEC members including Georgia’s Senator Gooch sponsored all three of these bills.
ALEC is also behind legislation sponsored in response to widespread protests of oil and gas infrastructure, defined as “critical infrastructure.” Several of these protests have captured national attention, such as the indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota and in Iowa against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
ALEC’s model “critical infrastructure” anti-protest bills allow prosecutors to impose large fines and felonies not only on individuals who are arrested, but on organizations that are deemed to be supporting those individuals.
Ohio is one of the seven states where ALEC members control all four legislative leadership positions. In 2020, three of these Ohio ALEC members — including the heads of both the House, Representative Matt Huffman, and Senate, Senator Robert McColley — co-sponsored Senate Bill 33, which became law. Like the ALEC model bill behind it, the legislation calls for many acts of protest that are currently considered misdemeanors to instead be dealt with as felonies and to increase penalties for offenders.
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