The Sins of a 'Citizen Lobby'
JACOBY, MARY
The Sins of a Self-styled Citizen Lobby By Mary Jacoby Tom Andrews, national program director for the "watchdog" group Citizen Action, stood on a platform at a Washington hotel last March...
...Passing itself off as a non-partisan consumer group, it has been a conduit for union Mary Jacoby is a Washington freelance writer...
...Citizen Action's proposed go-slow approach was, curiously, the same position as that of the big utilities and nuclear facilities...
...They found that Citizen Action proposed joining a national coalition on energy deregulation that included a California-based organization with close ties to the electric-utility industry...
...The answer is simple: support from what appears to be an outside, independent consumer movement for their public-policy goals...
...Federal prosecutors in New York alleged that a Washington, D.C., political consultant named Martin Davis helped launder prohibited Teamsters money back into the reelection of Teamsters president Carey last November...
...But in the case of Citizen Action, the organization has so pushed the normal boundaries that even some of its former allies on the left have thrown up their hands in disgust...
...Citizen Action has taken at least $1.3 million from unions since 1990...
...Under a banner that read "Campaign for Clean Elections," the former Democratic congressman from Maine unveiled for reporters Citizen Action's reform plan to "stop the endless and out-of-control money chase of office holders for private special-interest money...
...The reports have caught the eye of investigators on Sen...
...As for the allegations that Citizen Action helped launder money to the Carey campaign, the union said in a statement that it is "doing and will continue to do everything possible to assist in the government's efforts to ascertain the facts...
...Yet it was the rare news article on these issues that portrayed Citizen Action as anything but an independent, grass-roots consumer group...
...The national Citizen Action was "unilaterally reversing longstanding positions of the organization and going against the interests of the members of the organization for cash...
...Much of their campaign was conducted through Citizen Action...
...it apparently kicked back only $75,000 to Carey out of a whopping $475,000 it got from the Teamsters in October 1996...
...The address listed for the coalition was the same as Citizen Action's Chicago office...
...Reached at home in Washington, Ira Arlook, Citizen Action's executive director, referred all inquiries to Citizen Action spokesman Ed Rothschild, who did not return repeated phone calls...
...That's called being at the trough," Ryder said...
...Arlook said the grant had been for $96,000 in 1995, according to Williams and Ryder...
...Fred Thompson's probe of campaign-finance abuses, which in a second phase of hearings will explore the role of soft money and outside organizations in politics...
...Citizen Action could start the process by opening its own books to public inspection...
...Okay, so duplicity and money-grubbing are nothing new in Washington...
...In reality, however, Citizen Action and Ansara used portions of the Teamsters contract money to reimburse Ansara's wife, Barbara Arnold, for two contributions totaling $95,000 she made to a pro-Carey fund named "Teamsters for a Corruption-Free Union," the complaint says...
...That trial lawyers are giving money to Citizen Action in order to influence elections is apparent from state filings in Illinois...
...These unions, in turn, were the moneybags behind an attempt to throw out the newly elected Republican Congress called "Project '95...
...The Ohio chapter disaffiliated with Citizen Action in November 1996...
...Activists associated with Citizen Action don't see any problem with taking money from unions, trial lawyers, or any other group with deep pockets—as long as their interests mesh...
...To this day, he thinks Arlook knew the donor but refused to identify it because the money was tied to the electric-utility industry...
...The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees kicked in $5,000...
...The revelations about the Teamsters prompted independent Citizen Action state affiliates in Ohio and Indiana to call for "dissolution of the scandal-wracked national" Citizen Action...
...The [Teamsters] views any misuse of Teamster funds as a matter of utmost gravity...
...And they're certainly not confined to one side of the ideological spectrum...
...But in June, Citizen Action's ties to the largest of all the unions, the Teamsters, crossed the line into scandal...
...Among the recipients of trial-lawyer-association largess, as filtered through Citizen Action, was Illinois state legislative candidate Mike Salvi...
...And you don't take money from the utility companies...
...But it ended the year more than $2 million in the red, returns show...
...And trial-lawyer groups have anted up, giving Citizen Action at least $330,000 since 1990, tax records show...
...During the debate over universal health care in 199394, Citizen Action fought against proposed excise taxes on cigarettes, arguing they were regressive...
...Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in New York have implicated Citizen Action in an alleged scheme to launder money from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters back into the reelection campaign of union president Ron Carey, who won a narrow victory over James Hoffa last year...
...It was not the position of the state affiliates, which had spent two decades fighting for deregulation as a means of lowering consumer prices and encouraging the use of more environment-friendly energy sources...
...But federal tax law does not require Citizen Action, a non-profit 501 (c) 4 organization, to reveal the source of its funds or itemize contributions of less than $5,000...
...In 1995, the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association PAC gave at least $28,875 to Citizen Action's state affiliate...
...It's never been a secret that Citizen Action is sympathetic to unions...
...Yet judging by the reluctance of Andrews and other Citizen Action officials to return phone calls, it looks as if they don't want to face certain issues, either...
...Making a couple of awkward swipes with the broom at a laundry bag stuffed with fake dollars, Andrews declared: "This organization is committed to sweeping this system clean...
...That's okay, Andrews said, because such organizations use the money to conduct "issues" campaigns that are vital to democracy...
...In 1995, for example, records show that the AFL-CIO—where Citizen Action director Arlook's wife, Karen Nussbaum, directs a women's labor project— gave the group $45,000...
...because the public and most reporters don't know that unions are funding Citizen Action, the connection between their political activities is rarely made...
...So we started to research it...
...Also in 1995, Citizen Action and unions joined together to form the "Save America's Families Coalition" to defeat the House GOP's budget plan...
...In all, Citizen Action raised nearly $3 million in 1995, the last year for which tax information is available...
...The Indiana chapter followed suit in January 1997...
...The scheme worked this way, according to a federal complaint: The Teamsters and Davis steered contracts to an organization (later identified as Citizen Action) and a consultant (later identified as Michael Ansara, a Citizen Action charter member who owns a political telemarketing firm in Massachusetts), ostensibly for advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in connection with the 1996 elections...
...Trial lawyers, too, have worked closely with Citizen Action...
...The state affiliates supported higher cigarette taxes as a means of discouraging smoking...
...The trial lawyers' PAC then went on to itemize exactly what the money was for: It listed dollar amounts for "consulting" performed by Citizen Action next to the names of legislative and other local candidates...
...What do the unions get in return for their money...
...To me that's all a lot of crap...
...And Citizen Action and unions have long lobbied together for a universal health-care plan...
...Although much of its money has come from interests traditionally allied with the Left—unions and trial lawyers—the group has also accepted largess from a pro-tobacco coalition...
...The actual amount is undoubtedly much higher...
...With brazen hypocrisy, the self-styled consumer group has raked in hundreds of thousands—and possibly millions—of dollars from the very same "special interests" it purports to oppose, interviews and documents show...
...In exchange, Citizen Action has lobbied for public-policy positions supported by its donors: against tort reform and cigarette taxes and for universal health care...
...We kind of gasped...
...Arlook claimed he did not know the identity of the donor, according to Ryder and Chris Williams, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana...
...The whole story sounded fishy to Williams...
...He's the brother of unsuccessful 1996 Illinois GOP Senate nominee Al Salvi, himself a plaintiff's attorney...
...In the spring of 1996, Citizen Action officials in Washington began circulating a memo among state affiliates announcing a campaign on electric-utility deregulation...
...At the campaign-finance-reform press conference in March, Tom Andrews called for placing spending limits on individual candidates—a proposal that is anathema to traditionally more flush Republicans...
...Somebody on the Washington staff said, 'What are you getting upset about this for...
...The Sins of a Self-styled Citizen Lobby By Mary Jacoby Tom Andrews, national program director for the "watchdog" group Citizen Action, stood on a platform at a Washington hotel last March brandishing a broom...
...At that point, Arlook admitted that the national Citizen Action had been taking money from a tobacco-funded group called the Tobacco Industry Labor-Management Committee...
...money spent to defeat Republican candidates for federal office...
...The trial-lawyers association gave another $2,000 to a nice-sounding organization called the Coalition for Consumer Rights for polling on Mike Salvi's behalf...
...I know there are some in politics that hate the idea that candidates have to face real issues when they're campaigning," Andrews said, shaking his broom for emphasis...
...Teamsters spokeswoman Nancy Stella says the $475,000 "was for a lot of activities that Citizen Action carried out for us in the federal elections," including get-out-the-vote activities and advertising...
...We thought, 'What's going on here?'" says Paul Ryder, communications director for Ohio Citizen Action...
...Arlook "tried to make the argument you take money where you can get it, strange bedfellows and all that...
...The group and its state affiliates have long opposed tort reform, on the state and national levels...
...The $1.3 million figure for union contributions was calculated using these lists and Teamsters documents from 1996...
...All of this adds up to some pretty deep trouble for Citizen Action, which claims more than 2 million members and bills itself as the nation's largest consumer organization...
...Tensions worsened when Arlook came to Ohio for a meeting in the fall of 1996 to discuss the growing controversy...
...Another $50,000 came that year from the United Auto Workers, and Local 1199 of the Drug, Hospital and Health Care Employees union gave $25,000...
...Then, Citizen Action in Washington circulated a draft of a proposed newspaper advertisement that—again—pushed the position of the large utilities...
...But what's less well known is how extensively unions fund this supposedly independent "consumer" group...
...Neither did Tom Andrews, the broom-wielding former congressman...
...The last but not least of Citizen Action's troubles is a number of published reports that it spent $7 million to defeat GOP congressional candidates in the 1995-96 election cycle...
...But they may be forced to, if federal investigators in New York get to the bottom of the Teamsters affair and Fred Thompson's committee decides to start asking questions...
...But leaders of the Ohio and Indiana state chapters recently severed ties with the national organization when it began taking money from interests diametrically opposed to the group's mission...
...Simply being in bed with the unions—or any other special interest—is no shocker...
...The only year for which information could not be obtained was 1993...
...But he admitted that Citizen Action's proposals would do nothing to regulate the flow of special-interest money into tax-exempt organizations, such as Citizen Action...
...However, The Weekly Standard obtained lists of large contributors to Citizen Action between 1990 and 1995...
...We've been taking money from the tobacco industry for years,'" Ryder recalled...
...They're the enemies," Williams said...
...The founder of the organization's flagship state chapter in Illinois, meanwhile, recently resigned after federal investigators questioned him about a possible $1 million check-kiting scheme involving the organization's accounts...
...When pressed, Arlook, national Citizen Action's executive director, told the state affiliates that an anonymous donor had given the organization $50,000 to work on electric-utility deregulation...
...The charade is easy to carry off...
...Citizen Action, meanwhile, appeared to make out like a bandit in the transaction...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 45
