Citizen Action Stands By Tainted Parent State Chapter Says It Will Help Fix Problems Of National Organization From Within
One of the state’s largest citizen lobbying groups will stick with its embattled parent organization, saying it’s easier to fix problems from the inside.
Citizen Action is under fire from two dissident state chapters for accepting money from groups connected to long-time foes - the tobacco and nuclear industries. It is also under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York for allegedly funneling money into the election for the national president of the Teamsters union.
Washington Citizen Action, which has 55,000 members statewide, will remain a chapter of the national organization after changes were approved by the national governing board.
“We don’t always think the national organization is perfect,” said David West, executive director for Washington Citizen Action. “It was our feeling if mistakes had been made at a national level … it was our job to fix them.”
Last month, representatives of Washington Citizen Action and other state chapters voted to hire an attorney experienced in corporate investigations to help restructure the national group.
Washington Citizen Action, like most of the chapters around the country, lobbies for health care reform, environmental causes, consumer issues and campaign finance reform. It raises money and signs up members by soliciting contributions door-to-door.
The state chapters and their national organization historically have had close ties to organized labor and often support liberal candidates and causes.
The last year has been a contentious one for the national organization. One national leader, Michael Ansara, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to funnel illegal contributions to the re-election campaign of Teamsters President Ron Carey. State chapters in Indiana and Ohio dropped their affiliations after accusing the national group of selling out after it accepted contributions from the tobacco industry and nuclear power interests.
“Once you take any corporate money, in my estimation, you’re compromising yourself,” said Paul Ryder, executive director of Indiana Citizen Action. He called the national group “a rogue operation” in the nation’s capital.
The tobacco industry has fought Citizen Action chapters on health care reform, and the nuclear industry has opposed it on consumer energy issues, Ryder said.
But West said the national group had not taken any stands on issues that are different from the Washington state chapter.
Both still support higher taxes on cigarettes to pay for national health insurance if Congress refuses to levy an income tax for universal medical care, he said. They still oppose nuclear power plants and will fight any attempt to force residential and small business customers to pay an unfair burden for those plants under utility deregulation.
“We do not have the kind of money to be pure about where the contributions come from … as long as it comes from a legal source,” he said.
Last year, the national organization provided its Washington state chapter with money for a series of campaign ads against Rep. George Nethercutt of Spokane and other congressional Republicans who had voted for changes in Medicare.
The state group spent more than $240,000 on campaign ads in six races, with about three-fourths of the money coming from the national organization, which also produced the ads, West said.
For some of the campaigns, the national money came from private donors. For others, from labor unions.
That prompted a longtime political adversary, the Building Industry Association of Washington, to accuse Washington Citizen Action of hypocrisy in its latest push for campaign reform.
The group is pushing a ban on the type of campaigning - called independent expenditures, because they don’t go directly to a candidate - that it used in 1996, complained Tom McCabe of the building association. The congressional campaign, dubbed “Mediscare” by its critics, was a way to funnel union money into campaigns against Republicans.
The building association itself is the subject of a complaint for its state campaign tactics. State labor organizations are accusing builders of hiding money by setting up a series of committees in individual legislative races.
West contends the congressional ads are more defensible than the building industry campaigns.
“We’ve always been up front in our advertising,” he said. “We’ve never tried to hide our agenda.”
But West sees no conflict in calling for an end to independent expenditures, even though Citizen Action has used them.
“We’ve been exposed to it from both sides,” he said. “To the extent that both of us have tried to influence voters with this tactic, we’re all part of the problem.”
, DataTimes