The good folks at Common Cause revealed all that today in a report released in tandem with the newser in New Orleans during ALEC's annual meeting. (In case you haven't been following, ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- is a secretive corporate-backed lobbying group that writes model legislation for state lawmakers. We call it a legislative roach motel.)
Pro Publica has also jumped on the Expose ALEC bandwagon. They've printed a handy guide to the amounts ALEC corporations dumped into each state lawmaker's campaign here.
Common Cause notes that two of ALEC's biggest successes in 2011 were in Wisconsin and Ohio,
...where newly-elected Republican governors and legislators attacked budget shortfalls with legislation that sharply restricts the bargaining power of public worker unions. The bills were passed just a few months after companies in ALEC’s leadership put more than $304,000 into the campaigns of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin state legislators, and spent more than $563,000 on Ohio Gov. John Kasich and lawmakers in the Buckeye State. Both Walker and Kasich are ALEC alumni.Nicole Schulte from Wisconsin spoke at the news conference. She's a Wisconsin mom who took her 19-year-old son to the DMV to get his free voter ID. You'll recall the video where her son showed the clerk his bank book as proof of residence. The clerk said he didn't have enough bank activity to get an ID. (They found some activity and he got his card.)
ALEC got such a dandy voter-suppression law in Wisconsin that people have to ask for a free voter ID, Schulte said. If they don't think to ask, they have to pay $28. For some people, that would be enough to discourage them from getting the ID (and voting) -- or if they do pay it, it's a poll tax.
Heckuva job, ALEC.
