A leading corporate backer of the American Legislative Exchange Council rebuffed an inquiry by a leading Democratic senator into the nature of its support for the organization.
Telecom giant AT&T told Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) in a recent letter that his questions about the company’s support for ALEC, a free market group that writes model legislation in conjunction with state legislators and private stakeholders, appear political in nature.
Critics have suggested that Durbin’s inquiry is designed to intimidate companies into ceasing their support for the group.
It is "inescapable that any response to your request will be used by those interests whose purpose is to pressure corporations to de-fund organizations and political speech with which they disagree," wrote senior vice president James Cicconi.
AT&T has already been subject to such pressure campaigns, led by the group Color of Change. That group and others have attempted to tie "stand your ground" laws to the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin and subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman, the shooter.
ALEC detractors say the group is responsible for stand your ground laws through its model legislation and hence culpable for the Martin shooting.
Florida, where the shooting took place, adopted its stand your ground law before ALEC approved its model legislation. Zimmerman’s defense did not invoke the law.
Durbin has followed the lead of Color of Change and other anti-ALEC groups despite the lack of a connection between ALEC and Florida’s stand your ground law. His ALEC inquiry was to be explored at a Tuesday hearing on stand your ground laws, though that hearing was postponed in light of Monday’s shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard.
In advance of the hearing, he sent a letter to dozens of companies and nonprofit groups asking about their support for ALEC. A number of the nonprofits publicly rebuffed his questions, saying they amounted to political intimidation.
AT&T expressed similar concerns in a recent letter, excerpts of which were published in a Tuesday editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
AT&T, Cicconi wrote, "support[s] healthy and respectful political dialogue and well-informed, well-debated public policies." Durbin’s line of questioning, he added, "risks weakening the political processes and institutions on which our democracy depends."
Anti-ALEC groups, he noted, are "driven by a differing political ideology. And while outside groups are certainly free to engage in such activity as part of their free speech rights, companies like AT&T must also be free to make our own decisions on such matters as part of our free speech rights."
Other groups have been more explicit in their rejection of Durbin’s campaign. The Illinois Policy Institute responded with a Russian translation of "request denied," citing Durbin’s "Soviet-style tactics."