News
CQ WEEKLY – VANTAGE POINT Sept. 14, 2009 – Page 2013
By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff
The League of Women Voters has built a reputation as a leading liberal grass-roots advocacy organization since its founding in 1920. So when a league supporter saw a story on the Fox News Channel last month about the refusal of two major broadcast networks, ABC and NBC, to run an advertisement critical of Democratic health care bills that was produced by the League of American Voters, she was befuddled. She contacted League of Women Voters President Mary G. Wilson to inquire.
Wilson was outraged. “The use of such a name so similar to ours for the purpose of being against the health care reform proposals that are so badly needed is very offensive to us,” she says. “It plays on a name and reputation that we’ve built over the last 90 years to give accurate information to citizens.”
As it turns out, the League of American Voters is a new advocacy group established by two veteran conservative operatives, Bob Adams and Alexandra V. Preate. An aide to Oklahoma Republican J.C. Watts Jr. when he was in the House, Adams more recently worked for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of conservative state lawmakers. Preate is a principal with the New York public relations firm CapitalHQ. Former Clinton administration political adviser Dick Morris is advising the group.
Adams says there was “no intent whatsoever” to play on the League of Women Voters’ name and that “If you Google ‘League of, blank, voters,’ you’ll come up with a dozen different organizations.” Not dozens, but there are leagues for rural voters, young voters, education voters and, of course, the League of Conservation Voters.
Even so, a letter from Wilson asks Adams and his colleagues to “cease and desist” from using the name and to reveal the source of the funding for his ads.
But Adams is using Wilson’s request to raise more money, telling potential donors last week that her missive was “the most obnoxious, hypocritical political letter I have seen in my long career.” He said Wilson is trying to silence his group.