Influencing Congress: Defenders’ Effective Offense

It’s a deceptively simple political strategy but it works for the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife. Rather than trying to elect dozens of friendly lawmakers, it’s been concentrating its money on just a few high-profile races and flooding them with money and volunteers. It was this strategy in 2006 that allowed the group to help defeat Richard W. Pombo, the California Republican who at the time chaired the House Natural Resources Committee. Armed with $60,000 worth of polling that suggested Pombo was vulnerable, the group spent $1.7 million through two political funds and fielded canvassers across his district with the message that Pombo was “America’s No. 1 wildlife villain” for helping developers, miners, and the oil and gas industry. A Web site called PomboInTheirPocket.org posted more information. Pombo lost to Democrat Jerry McNerney by 13,000 votes. The Washington-based wildlife group, founded in 1947 primarily to fight fur trapping, still mainly focuses on the welfare of predators such as wolves and coyotes. And it’s become an example of a shift in the direction of advocacy groups away from general issue campaigns and toward targeted efforts against individual politicians, while at the same time shielding the identity of political contributors. This new wave of groups, organized under section 501(c)4 of the tax code as “ideological education” groups, spent nearly $200 million in the 2007-2008 election cycle, more than each party’s congressional campaign committees, according to a study by the Campaign Finance Institute, an academic research group affiliated with George Washington University. The Defenders in 2006 were involved in 26 races...CQ