Labor & Employment Law

Chamber Lobbyist Spins its 2?1 Advantage in Political Spending

By aflcioblogger

Chamber pot.

The Huffington Post adds up what the groups on the right have pledged to spend on the 2010 election and comes up with at least $200 million committed so far. No surprise, but the biggest chunk is from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which last week promised to spend at least $75 million on congressional elections.

Not to be outdone, the Chamber released its own table, and as most things on the Chamber blog, it?s a wildly misleading product of an active imagination.

Down for $30 million on the Chamber?s hit list is ActBlue, which doesn?t actually spend any money, but rather is a website that ?allows individuals, groups, and campaigns to build a community of fundraisers for their candidate or their cause.? In short, ActBlue raises its money by activating small donors rather than shaking down big corporations, as Chamber President Tom Donohue and the Chamber are fond of doing, according to the Washington Monthly magazine. 

Conservatives could do the same thing as ActBlue. They?ve tried, but failed miserably.  Two of their sites: http://www.rightroots.com/ and http://www.slatecard.com/ are currently on hiatus. So, the right is stuck building its campaigns on unlimited amounts of money from corporations that would rather not let you know what they are up to.

Most importantly, however, the Chamber ignores the key phrase in the article it uses to back up its numbers:

About two-thirds of the expected group expenditures compiled by The Washington Post will come from conservative-leaning groups. 

 Only with the Chamber?s fuzzy math can somehow manage to point to a two-to-one advantage and claim they?re being outspent.

The fact is, our strength has never been in the dollars. It?s in our people?whether it?s the working families who turn out for candidates who support good jobs at good wages or the million-plus grassroots donors who give through ActBlue. As AFL-CIO Political Director Karen Ackerman told Huffington Post:

[Money] is not the strength of the labor movement. Our greatest strength is union members and their families. 

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on July 08, 2010 (boomark / email).