Democrats Hold Trifecta Power in Over a Dozen States. Will They Actually Use It?

ALEC has existed since the 1970s but rose to prominence in the Obama era for drafting model bills that were increasingly being introduced — sometimes verbatim — in Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country. The organization’s imprint has been clear: In 2015, the progressive Center for Media and Democracy revealed that Wisconsin’s ​”right-to-work” bill was almost a word-for-word copy of ALEC’s model ​”Right to Work Act,” containing only a few stylistic edits. Copycat measures were introduced in many other state capitals as well. In 2001, Oklahoma passed an anti-labor constitutional amendment using language that was almost identical to ALEC’s model legislation at the time, and, in 2012, a conservative trifecta in Michigan adopted a ​”right-to-work” law that included language which closely tracked ALEC’s model legislation.