Conservative Democratic Legislators Deserting ALEC

Looks like we helped stir up a little storm last month by pointing out that the anti-democracy corporate lobbying group, ALEC, has more than a few right-wing, corrupt Democrats as members and associates. I mean it's overwhelmingly a Republican Party front operation but, where is the DCCC and the Blue Dogs and New Dems going to find reliable new members if there are no Democrats in ALEC? Now that they've been exposed, the DCCC and Blue Dogs are panicking and they even forced their extreme right shill candidate for the SC seventh congressional district, state Rep. Ted Vick, to resign. You gotta give Steve Israel and Joe Crowley credit, though. It's not easy coming up with such blatantly anti-worker, anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-consumer candidates who call themselves Democrats and who want to run for Congress!

State Rep. Ted Vick (D-Chesterfield) has gotten a lot of good press this week for publicly resigning from the shadowy special interest group ALEC, which uses corporate money to push right-wing legislation through statehouses across the country. But Vick’s Democratic opponent in the race for South Carolina’s new congressional seat is asking why it took so long for Vick to leave the group, calling the move “too little, too late.”

Vick, who’s running in the Democratic primary for SC-7 in the Pee Dee area, has been a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council since being elected to the State House in 2004. The congressional candidate said his reason for leaving ALEC this week is that the group has become “too partisan and too extreme,” citing a recent keynote speech by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal which attacked President Obama and the Democratic Party.

But ALEC has been openly partisan for much longer than that, which Vick’s opponent says doesn’t seem to have troubled Vick until he began running for higher office. “Now that Ted Vick is running in a Democratic primary, he is following the pack and renouncing his membership to ALEC,” commented attorney Preston Brittain, Vick’s Democratic opponent in the SC-7 race. “But this is too little, too late.”

Ethics reports show ALEC gave Vick $1,360 in travel costs for an ALEC conference in Philadelphia back in 2007. According to a Cheraw Chronicle article (which reads remarkably like a copied-and-pasted press release) about Vick’s attendance at the conference, some of the featured speakers included former President George Bush, former Sen. Fred Thompson, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee.

In other words, this group which is only recently supposed to have drifted to the right held a conference five years ago featuring a Republican president, two 2008 GOP presidential candidates and a former Republican Speaker of the House. Is there really any question which way ALEC was leaning even then?

Be sure to keep contributing to the DCCC-- if you want a complete takeover of the Democratic Party by corrupt corporate conservatives like Vick. Of course, as we noted last month, Vick is far from the only scumbag Democrat who joined ALEC. Now that a bright light is being pointed in their direction, though, they're fleeing like cockroaches when someone turns the light on them! As of Friday Zaid Jilani of Republic Report was pointing to nearly two dozen Democratic legislators who had already left this month aside from Vick. Among the reactionary Democrats who are trying to disassociate themselves from ALEC are Georgia state Senator Nan Orrock, who claims she was just in it to, essentially, spy on them, Missouri state Senator Mike Colona, New Mexico state Sen. George Muñoz, Nebraska state Senators Danielle Conrad, Health Mello and Jeremy Norquist, and a bunch of state Reps, including 11 just from Texas-- Alma Allen, Armando Martinez, Dawnna Dukes, Hubert Vo, Harold Dutton, Chente, Quintanilla, Eddie Rodriguez, José Menéndez, Ruth Jones McClendon, Eric Johnson, Tracy King, and Ryan Guillen. Other conservative Democrats who want out are Rep. Kevin Van De Wege (WA), Rep. Harry Readshaw (PA) and Rep. Jennifer Selig (UT). I wonder why none of them didn't just resign from the Democratic Party and reveal themselves as Republicans.

Meanwhile the DCCC was actually boasting about how fabulous it is that Vick left... while never addressing questions about why a Democrat would be in such a fascist-oriented organization to begin with-- or why they would be pushing his congressional candidacy while he was still a member in good standing! See the candidates on this page? That's the anti-ALEC candidates' page.