From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Fri Jul 17 2009 - 20:34:00 EDT
Exclusive: Conservative group offers support for $2M
Mike Allen Mike Allen Fri Jul 17, 6:07 am ET
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to
$3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative
dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx
refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included:
“Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene
and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr.
Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”
The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of
the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was
contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking
stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters
might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.
In the three-page letter asking for money on June 30, the conservative
group backed FedEx. After FedEx says it rejected the offer, Keene signed
onto a two-page July 15 letter backing UPS. Keene did not return a message
left on his cell phone.
Maury Lane, FedEx’s director of corporate communications, said:
“Clearly, the ACU shopped their beliefs and UPS bought.”
ACU's executive vice president, Dennis Whitfield, said that neither the
group nor David Keene, the chairman, took any money from UPS. Whitfield
said the group has never received a response to its original proposal to
FedEx. He said Keene endorsed the second letter as an individual, even
though the letter bore the logo of ACU.
"Our position hasn't changed," said Whitfield, who was a deputy secretary
of labor in the Reagan administration. "It won't change. I am
fundamentally, philosophically opposed to doing what the Obama
administration wants to do [to FedEx], and so is our organization."
FedEx and UPS, fierce competitors in the package delivery business, are at
war over a provision under consideration in Congress that would expand
union power at FedEx.
FedEx currently has one U.S. union contract for its entire express
business. Under a change passed by the House and awaiting action in the
Senate, FedEx — like UPS — would have to negotiate union contracts for
individual locations, which FedEx claims would make it much more difficult
to promise worldwide regularity for deliveries.
The American Conservative Union, which calls itself “the nation's oldest
and largest grass-roots conservative lobbying organization,” took UPS’s
side on Wednesday as part of a conservative consortium that accused FedEx
of “misleading the public and legislators.” ACU's logo is at the top of
the letter, along with those of six other conservative groups.
Just two weeks earlier, ACU had offered its endorsement to FedEx, saying in
a letter to the company: “We stand with FedEx in opposition to this
legislation.”
But there was a catch — an expensive one. ACU asked FedEx to pay as much
as $3.4 million for e-mail and other services for “an aggressive
grass-roots campaign to stop the legislation in the Senate.”
“For the activist contact portion of the plan, we will contact over
150,000 people per state multiple times at a cost of $1.39 per name or
$2,147,550 to implement the entire program,” the letter says. “If we
incorporate the targeted, senator-personalized radio effort into the plan,
you can figure an additional $125,000 on average, per state” for an
estimated 10 states. The total would be $3,397,550.”
The letter shows one reason why activists get so much junk mail, both on
paper and electronically: Some groups that send it charge handsomely for
the service.
Under the grass-roots program ACU proposed, “Each person will be
contacted a total of seven times totaling nearly 11 million contacts total
in the 10 targeted states.” “Within 72 hours of an agreement on the
whole plan, we can have the data sets delivered and the first round of
e-mail ready for delivery,” the offer states. “Within seven days, the
mail can be in the USPS system and the phone call delivered.”
Lane, the FedEx official, said the offer was refused. "The proposal
didn’t fit with our strategy of taking a straightforward approach to
discussing the issue,” he said.
After the rebuff, American Conservative Union changed sides. ACU Chairman
David A. Keene was one of eight conservative leaders who signed a letter to
FedEx Chairman Frederick W. Smith, a champion of capitalism who in the past
has been a favorite of conservatives.
The letter accuses FedEx of “falsely and disingenuously” labeling the
rules change a “bailout” for UPS, since FedEx would become subject to
the same arduous union structure.
The letter is also signed by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for
Tax Reform, who is also on ACU’s board. FedEx is pushing its case with a
website called www.BrownBailout.com.
The letter signed by the conservative leaders concludes: “To paraphrase
the words of Ronald Reagan, ‘Mr. Smith, tear down this website.’”
Among the services ACU had offered to provide for the $2 million-plus price
tag:
—Acquiring data of known conservatives in the targeted states (to be
determined by FedEx), matching that data to an e-mail database and then
incorporating those e-mail addresses with the current ACU e-mail database
to create one targeted database of all potential activists.
—Sending a piece of targeted direct mail to these potential activists to
ensure that they are well-educated prior to their contact with their
senators.
—E-mailing the identified voter activists, in five rounds, in order to
educate them on the issue(s) and to urge them to call their senators based
on key dates. The ACU would include the phone number of their personal
senators directly in the correspondence.
—Conducting targeted phone call campaign that will contact all voter
activists to urge them to make a personal call to their senators. Each
state would have a specialized message just for that state.
—Encouraging activists who live within 30 miles of a senator’s district
office to consider making a personal visit to register their concerns at
the office. ACU has proved that we can turn out well-informed, quality
voters who present a good image to represent our concerns.
—As the vote for the legislation nears, distributing ACTION ALERT
e-mails, and after the vote has taken place, distributing MegaVote e-mails
to ACU’s members letting them know how their senators vote.
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