Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, doesn’t like labels. ” We don’t characterize people by labels,” she says. “I think that’s part of the problem of taking the issues and saying if you’re one way or another, you are therefore in this category.” Known primarily as the sponsor of candidate debates in elections around the country, the League of Women Voters carefully cultivates its image as the non-partisan arbiter of good government and civic participation. How closely does the League guard its reputation for non- partisanship? Last year Democrats in the California state assembly offered a resolution praising the “non-partisan” League on the 75th anniversary of its founding. Republicans were more than happy to agree to bestow the honor — just so long as the word “non-partisan” was dropped from the resolution. The suggestion was not well received: The ensuing row quickly descended into a parliamentary freeflor-all. Then-speaker Willie Brown withdrew the resolution rather than let the term “non-partisan” be stripped.
The Republicans had a point. The League frequently pops up in places you would not expect to see an organization that uses “non-partisan” as a mantra. Take the Emergency Campaign to Protect America’s Children, Parents and Families. As the budget battle crested in December, Marian Wright Edelman — president of the Children’s Defense Fund and den mother of the liberal pack — formed a coalition of organizations dedicated to thwarting any budget deal. The Emergency Campaign ran advertisements, organized a barrage of calls and letters to lawmakers, and staged a candlelight vigil at the Capitol. “It is unjust to destroy vital laws investing in our children,” proclaimed Mrs. Edelman, announcing the campaign. “It is morally indefensible for some to claim that this destruction of our children’s safety net is being carried out to “protect” them.” Joining Mrs. Edelman’s crusade was a veritable A-list of liberal activist groups — and the League of Women Voters of the United States. The League was in the thick of the most partisan fight Washington has seen in decades.
“Non-partisan” does not mean “non-political,” Cain is quick to point out. ” Issues have never been partisan to us,” she says. “There are several ways to get people involved in the process. We do think that advocating for your position is valid.” But, says Cain, the League does not operate the way other lobbies do: Unlike groups that start with a point of view and sign up the like-minded, the League educates its members by giving them pro-and-con materials explaining the issues of the day, and then lets them decide the group’s agenda.
That is not to say that the grass-roots membership of the League was polled on whether to join the Emergency Campaign. No, becoming part of the coalition was an executive decision. Nor was this the only such decision made in recent years by the national leadership of the League. Lawyers from the League took the lead in litigation challenging congressional term-limits laws in Arkansas and Washington state, In poll after poll, some 75 percent of the American public supports term limits. It is the rare issue that cuts across all ports term limits. IT is the rare issue that cuts across all of the normal demographic divides: Regardless of gender, race, income, or region, some three-fourths of those polled reliably voice their support for term limits. How is it, then, that an organization ostensibly committed to acting on its members’ druthers came up with a term-limits agenda so at odds with general grass-roots sentiment? Was the League able to convince — or rather, educate – – its members about the evils of term limits before asking them to reach consensus? Hardly. According to Robin Seaborn, who served on the national board of the League of Women Voters from 1990 to 1994, the attack on term limits was executed not only without the consensus of League members, but over their objections as well. “There was no consensus process on term limits, ” Seaborn says. “The local League chapters did not even know that the League was behind the legal challenges.” As soon as members found out, “there was a lot of backlash.”
“To us, it’s a basic good-government concern,” Cain says, defending her end run around the membership. “Even if this is a very popular issue,” she lectures, term limits are “not the legal way to handle it.”
When the League does undertake its elaborate rituals of education and consensus-building, the results are almost uniformly endorsements of the liberal welfare state. The League lobbies Congress for public funding of elections, stricter environmental regulations, gun control, increased funding for the United Nations, and socialized medicine. The League opposes congressional Republicans” efforts at regulatory reform and has repeatedly fought the Balanced Budget Amendment. The group was involved in the passage of both the Family Leave Act and the so-called Motor-Voter law. When it comes to the current budget impasse, the League has a solution at the ready: “The responsible route to serious, long-term deficit reduction,” according to a policy statement in the League’s National Voter magazine, “is through selective cuts in defense spending and increased revenue through a broad- based and progressive tax system.”
Beyond the League’s support for free trade, Cain has to make a rubber- limbed stretch to find another example of the supposedly non-partisan group’s boosting a GOP-favored policy. “When Richard Nixon — pretty sure a Republican — suggested the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, we had a position that said we ought to have some federal government regulation of the environment,” Cain offers. “We supported him 100 percent in his creation of that organization.”
One reason the League is able to arrive so consistently at policy prescriptions favoring the expansion of the federal role and responsibilities is that the membership of the organization is disposed to smile upon the growth of government. But it isn’t the only reason. According to Seaborn, members are not so much educated by the League as they are indocrinated by it. “We didn’t really look at all sides of issues,” she says of the bias in the League’s educational materials. “We would run the gamut from liberal to moderate, at best.” For example, in the League’s educational package on health-care financing, the option of medical savings accounts is conspicuously absent.
In the League’s health-care study, conducted from 1990 through 1993, members were given study guides and reading lists before sitting down for their discussion groups. The discussion groups then reached their various opinions and mailed them to the national headquarters where the results were tallied. The results became the League’s official position on health care, a position for which Cain and the national League apparatus furiously lobbied. Not only did they lobby relentlessly, they did so from the moral high ground – – when Cain went up to Capitol Hill, she made it clear she was not representing the grunts of a frightened and confused lumpenproletariat, but the enlightened decisions of a comprehensively informed citizenry. ” League members across the country carefully examined the problems and considered solutions to the health-care crisis. After thousands of hours of grassroots debate, League members reached consensus on health-care reform. That consensus is the basis for my testimony today.”
That was nonsense. In truth, the very structure of the League’s inquiry into health-care reform was designed to arrive at an outcome favoring socialized medicine. To get a flavor of the League’s health-care primer, consider the discussion group “Leader’s Guide.” The first section of the guide asks for the discussion groups to determine what the goals should be for the U.S. health-care system. Several possible goals are suggested, among them the “equitable distribution of health care services,” and a “minimum basic level of care.” But these are, it turns out, not just options: The next section assumes they are the only appropriate goals, as opposed to, say, concerns about how much all this might cost. Those are dealt with, but in the most perfunctory fashion. Consider the treatment of whether dental care should be included in the minimum basic package:
Regular dental care plays an important role in the prevention and maintenance of good health. The condition of one’s teeth and gums has a direct effect upon the health of the body. Dental care benefits are not included in all private health benefit plans, and Medicaid dental benefits vary from state to state. Dental care, like all possible components of a minimum basic level of care, requires funding, and if one chooses to include this criterion, one must realize that additional revenues need to be allocated to finance this benefit.
This is, of course, a lovely and oblique euphemism for a tax hike. One wonders how eager the members of the League discussion groups would have been to pile on every suggested benefit, as they did, if each question had included an estimate of how many dollars it might cost each of the participants.
Cain went to Capitol Hill, study in hand, to voice the League’s support for President Clinton’s healthcare plan — though she made it clear that ClintonCare was merely a first step in the right direction. The League’s lobbyists, led by Lloyd Leonard, also scuffled through the tiled halls of Congress doing their part for a federal takeover of health care. Given all this activity and the League’s commitment to pushing for as large a governmental role as possible in health care, it was only natural that the League soon expanded its efforts with a television ad campaign. What was strange — indeed, astonishing — was the premise of the campaign: that the League of Women Voters was merely a disinterested source supplying unbiased information.
“We’re not backing any particular plan,” said a disembodied voice to the accompaniment of a worried piano at the outset of each commercial. “We want decisions to be based on facts.” What an odd claim, given that the League not only very much had a plan of its own, but was also fiercely lobbying for the legislation drawn up by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health-care task force. But it was a perfectly reasonable claim, according to Cain. “We have two different organizations,” she says without embarrassment. The League of Women Voters of the United States, you see, is not to be confused with the League of Women Voters Education Fund. It was the League U.S. that lobbied for socialized medicine. The League Education Fund, by contrast, supposedly did no such thing — it merely provided disinterested information.
It is not uncommon for Washington interest groups and activists to have so- called sister organizations-tax-exempt charitable outfits created to do the groups” non-political work. But few organizations pull the old 501(c)3 bait- and-switch with more alacrity than the League of Women Voters. The group’s Education Fund has a separate staff from the League U.S., according to Cain. But the two organizations share the same office and much more: Not only is Cain both the chair of the League Education Fund and the president of the League U.S., the boards of the two groups are identical. Indeed, the board of the Education Fund is chosen by the board of the League U.S. — that is, the League board chooses to choose itself. And who’s to know the difference? When looking at the League’s materials, one has to search for the small print under the big League of Women Voters logo to see whether they are products of the Education Fund or the League U.S.
Having the tax-exempt Education Fund not only allows the League to tap into corporate foundation cash, it also clears the way to the federal trough. Between 1993 and 1994, the League’s Education Fund took in more than $ 1 million in federal grant dollars, most of which was used by the League to conduct its famously unbiased and non-partisan environmental seminars on nuclear waste, groundwater contamination, clean air, and recycling.
Perhaps even more important than opening up the money pipeline, the act of maintaining two organizations allows the League to persist in its claims that it has no interest in any particular political outcome. When the League holds candidate debates or puts out voter guides, it is done under the umbrella of the Education Fund. The disinterested good-government image cultivated through the Education Fund lends a crucial sheen to the League’s lobbying efforts.
Even so, the Education Fund’s health-care ad campaign was perfectly legitimate, says Cain, because unlike the League U.S., the Education Fund had no position on health-care legislation and did no lobbying: “When we do voter education, we do not in any way connect it to our advocacy work.”
Nonsense, replies Seaborn, who during the advertising campaign was the secretary/treasurer of the Education Fund: “We were doing political action and voter education at the same,” she says. “To me it is hypocrisy to have both happening at the same time.” parallel efforts of the League U.S. and the League Education Fund in any way violated tax law, she does say that “it put us in an untenable position.”
The ads were unobjectionable, says Cain with clipped assurance: “They did not advocate, in any way, a plan.” Perhaps not — but then how would the League U.S. have kept itself busy? If there were still a question whether the League Education Fund’s health-care ad campaign was in reality a clunky bit of propaganda designed to further the League’s political lobbying, a glance at the text of the ads would clear the matter up. “What percentage of Americans without health insurance are in working families?” goes the commercial quiz. The answer? “Eighty-four percent of Americans who lack health insurance are in families that work hard and pay taxes, but don’t get health insurance on the job.” For starters, the convoluted statistic the League chose to broadcast the percentage of Americans without health insurance who are in working families — is designed to be shocking. Had the question been “What percentage of people in working families lack health insurance?” the answer would have been in the mid-teens.
Having given the answer to its quiz as 84 percent, the League’s commercial closes out with an emotionally charged recap: “That’s eight out of ten of us. And that’s a fact.” Hardly. The casual viewer couldn’t help but take away the idea that eight out of ten of “us” in working families lack health insurance. That’s all wrong, of course, but it is the obvious meaning of the League’s ad. In other words, either the League is hopelessly inept with basic explanations of facts and figures, or it purposely cooked the statistical books in an effort to frighten viewers into the arms of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Neither interpretation reflects well on the information gurus at the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
These sorts of shabby shenanigans convinced Robin Seaborn not only to leave the board of the League, but to leave the group she had been a member of for 20 years. “When I was a young naive member, I truly thought the League was non-partisan,” she says. But ,ahen she joined the national board and tried to challenge the organization’s orthodoxies, she was sire out of step. In a spirit more of sadness than of bitterness, she came to the conclusion that ” it was a lost cause.”
She has a point.
Eric Felten is a writer and jazz musician in Washington, D.C.
