Business Booms For Left-Wing Think Tanks Liberals Are Busy Monitoring Right-Wing And Extremist Movements

Nothing’s better for left-wing think tanks than a right-wing resurgence.

The rise of the Christian Coalition, last year’s Republican election victories and the bombing in Oklahoma City have thrust this liberal crowd into the limelight.

Business hasn’t been this good since former Secretary of Interior James Watt and President Reagan roiled liberal waters.

Some are busy tracking far-right and extremist movements, such as the militia and Aryan Nations. Others are staking out the wise-use and property-rights turf. Still others are following the anti-gay-rights movements and the growing Christian Coalition.

The think tanks - typically financed through grants and donations, publication sales and member dues - often lump these divergent political movements under the banner of the right wing.

“There’s a sort of a growth industry in organizations monitoring the right wing,” said Tarso Ramos of the non-partisan Western States Center in Portland.

Ramos and others throughout the Northwest who make their livings tracking the right are used to toiling in near obscurity and beating down the doors of reporters who don’t take conservative and far-right activists seriously.

Not anymore.

The power and presence of causes and groups across the conservative spectrum have grown since the 1980s, along with the media’s attention to them.

Then came the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building last April.

Two men linked to the anti-government militia movement have been charged in the bombing, and experts such as Ramos suddenly have found themselves besieged by packs of reporters.

“I’d been banging on the doors of reporters for years, and suddenly I’m able to get somewhere,” Ramos said. “It’s hard to know how long it will last, but we’ve gotten bombarded.”

It’s a bittersweet feeling for someone devoted to defeating the far right.

“We are in demand, but it doesn’t mean we are better off for it. The situation politically is quite bad. It’s like being called in to do damage control on the tail end,” he said.

“By the time there’s this much attention being paid, it’s because a lot of damage has been done.”

Dan Junas, a Seattle-based researcher who tracks the far right, said he usually gets about two calls a month from reporters. But after the Oklahoma City bombing, he did 11 interviews in one day, usually with another reporter parked on Call Waiting as he talked.

“I was besieged.”

But Junas has been through media fads before. He broke ground as a researcher on the Moonie organization “back when it was hot.” He even got a book together on the religious group, as well as a publisher.

Now the book’s on hold. “They are not hot at all,” Junas said of the Moonies. “I’ve managed to reposition myself. I’ve got an across-the-board portfolio - the militia movement, the religious right, anti-tax groups. I can handle a lot of those areas.”

Since 1994, the state and national Democratic parties have featured Junas as a speaker, hired to share his expertise on the far right at major party events.

“It’s nice to have an issue once in a while that’s hot rather than something that’s totally obscure,” he said.

Bill Wassmuth of the Coalition Against Malicious Harassment would love to work his way out of his job, but he’s not holding his breath.

“One of the heartbreaks of this kind of work is, of course, you don’t want an Oklahoma City to happen, but when it does, we have to take advantage of it,” he said.

“It opens doors for us that nothing else does. You feel like an ambulance-chaser - using a tragedy to get some good done.”

Wassmuth fielded an avalanche of press calls after the bombing. Sometimes he felt he got the complicated story of the far-right ideology across. But not always.

“Some reporters wanted numbers, and if we didn’t have those, they figured we didn’t have anything to say.

“If we wanted to get to the underlying philosophy, to talk about it at the level of why this was happening, forget it.”

Johnathan Mozzochi of the Coalition for Human Dignity, a Portland think tank, said he’s used to superficial coverage.

After the bombing, reporters called for quick, sensational quotes about militia extremists, hoping to move on and feed the media beast another kibble another day.

“I expect that of the mainstream media, so I’m not really disappointed. Part of it’s structural. You’re talking to someone who’s been on the beat for maybe six months and they don’t have a clue.

“I mean, it’s like they would go up to John Trochmann of the Militia of Montana and say, ‘Are you an anti-Semite?’ and that’s it.”

Mozzochi finds “grim vindication” in the growing attention.

“We released a report on the Christian Coalition in 1992, and few people believed they would be a powerful, credible force in the West. Now there’s no debate about that, … but it’s what we’ve been saying all along.”

Meanwhile, the Coalition for Human Dignity has opened a Seattle office, expanded its staff and doubled its budget in the past year to $200,000.

Wassmuth said he’s in demand as a speaker, with requests from groups ranging from Rotary clubs to Idaho prosecutors.

He started the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment in 1987, with no money, in a spare bedroom in his apartment.

The coalition’s budget has grown to $300,000 a year. Wassmuth now has a staff of four in two states as well as a downtown Seattle office serving 250 members throughout the Pacific Northwest.

But nobody goes into political research for the money, Junas said. “Strictly as an economic calculation, you’d be better off with temp work.”

, DataTimes