Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: December 21, 1964
EMPLOYEES: 5
MEMBERS: 500,000 (1997)
PAC: ACU-PAC

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 1007 Cameron St. Alexandria, VA 22314
PHONE: (703) 836-8602
TOLL FREE: (800) 228-7345
FAX: (703) 836-8608
E-MAIL: acu@conservative.org
URL: http://www.conservative.org
CHAIRMAN: David A. Keene

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

According to the organization's Statement of Principles drafted in 1964, the American Conservative Union (ACU) supports "capitalism, belief in the doctrine of original intent of the framers of the Constitution, confidence in traditional moral values, and commitment to a strong national defense. . . . ACU is created to realize these ends through the cooperation in responsible political action of all Americans who cherish the principles upon which the Republic was founded."

The ACU describes itself as the nation's oldest grassroots conservative lobbying and public education organization; its purpose is to effectively communicate and advance the goals, issues, and principles of conservatism through a single umbrella organization. Historically, conservatism as represented by the ACU has translated itself into advocacy of lower taxes and a decrease in federal spending, as well as a continuous opposition to extensive federal regulation of the economy, among many other issues.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

The ACU is governed by a 33-member board of directors. From this group, five individuals are elected to serve as an executive committee, comprising a chairman, first and second vice chairmen, a secretary, and a treasurer. All elected officers serve two-year terms. New board members are drawn from among the ranks of conservative activists; they are nominated and voted on by the sitting board. No more than two members of each house of Congress may serve on the board at any given time; in 1998, for example, senators Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Serphin Maltese (R-N.Y.), and representatives Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Louis Jenkins (R-La.) were members.

Similarly, while the first ACU chairman was Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio, the bylaws have since been altered to state that no sitting member of Congress may serve in the capacity of chairman. The board, which meets quarterly, is responsible for the overall direction of the organization and for developing ACU positions on public policy issues. Most importantly, it decides which issues the organization will focus its lobbying efforts on, such efforts being the goal of all the ACU's grassroots activity.

The ACU had 42 state affiliates (state conservative unions) in the 1970s. However, with the advent of fax communications, direct mail, and the Internet, it has become possible for the organization's central headquarters to communicate directly with members. Consequently, the state network has become less active, and the number of state affiliates decreased to half by the late 1990s. State affiliates currently in operation include Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee.

With this smaller collection of state groups to service, headquarters staff has been downsized accordingly. From a staff numbering as many as 30 members, the ACU now employs five full-time positions: directors of legislative, finance, and field activities, an executive director, and an office manager. The ACU actively recruits interns—preferably college juniors and seniors—to supplement office staff, making from 13 to 15 internships available each year. The Union puts the number of members and supporters at more than 500,000.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

The ACU sees itself as the grassroots lobby for the entire conservative movement, and as such functions as a policy-making and advocating body. Through its conferences, the organization helps provide direction and policy for the conservative movement. The ACU then advocates these policies at a grassroots level, strengthening the conservative movement by encouraging and coordinating public action. One important aspect of the ACU's activities is the monitoring of a broad spectrum of issues before Congress that are of concern to its conservative constituents. Its focus is on four general areas: Economic and Budget, which includes such areas as tax legislation and attempts to balance the budget; Social and Cultural, which encompasses welfare reform and abortion legislation; Foreign Policy and Defense, including the United Nations and foreign aid; and Institutional Reform, such as campaign finance reform and lobbying reform.

A good example of an ACU grassroots campaign was its push in the 1990s for major tax reform. In 1994, after a Republican majority was established in both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1920s, the ACU began a massive campaign to have the tax system replaced. The ACU's goals included abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and replacing it with a simpler and fairer tax system, repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment giving Congress the power to establish an income tax, and termination of the present tax code. "Abolish the IRS" committees were established around the country to coordinate grassroots activity. Throughout the 1990s thousands of petitions were mailed to members, urging them to gather signatures, call talk radio shows, contact their representatives in Congress, write letters to editors, and talk to their neighbors about the importance of tax reform.

PROGRAMS

ACU programs are aimed at stimulating grassroots activity and building coalitions around specific issues, with the ultimate aim of influencing the course of legislation in Congress. One of the ACU's most successful programs is the annual CPAC which, despite its acronym, is not a political action committee. The Conservative Political Action Conference was started by the Union in 1973 as a means of rallying demoralized conservatives in the wake of the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. The conference became the catalyst for building a grassroots movement, training and motivating talented conservatives for political action.

The three-day event, held in the Washington, D.C., area in late winter and open to the general public, has become the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the nation. It has attracted more than 2,000 participants who meet to debate current issues and policies, see and hear up-and-coming conservative candidates and leaders, and formulate the future conservative agenda. The CPAC attracts key political and media figures as speakers, and has become a popular forum for contenders for upcoming presidential races. The inclusiveness of the ACU umbrella is attested to by the number of conservative groups—a total of 64—that cosponsored the twenty-fifth CPAC in 1998.

An example of the ACU's success at coalition-building is its Committee for a Conservative Platform project, which has developed consensus platform positions for every Republican presidential nominating convention since 1972. More than 50 conservative organizations were able to generate a consensus platform that was ultimately adopted by the Republican Party during its 1996 convention.

The program for which the ACU is perhaps best known is its annual congressional rating, undertaken and published continuously since 1971. The ratings, done on a scale of zero to 100, track a wide range of current issues before Congress in order to provide a reliable and useful gauge of each member's political leaning as well as an overall measurement of conservative strength. The ratings, released every April, have become a fixture in reference guides and political almanacs, and are also available free of charge on-line or in printed form. The organization's stated purpose in issuing its vote ratings is not to influence Congress one way or the other, but to show the public just where individual legislators stand along an absolute ideological spectrum. In addition, the ACU periodically publishes voting indices on specific issue areas, which have included defense, judicial nominations, and pork-barrel spending. In election years, the ACU provides voters with interim ratings of Congress to enable them to track votes in the congressional session preceding the elections.

BUDGET INFORMATION

The ACU's budget of approximately $760,000 annually is raised almost entirely from membership dues and donations. Regular dues are $25 per year, patron membership, $100, Chairman's Club, $1,000. Major expenditures include monies spent to support headquarters operations and paid staff in Alexandria, Virginia, and lobbying, publications, and grassroots activity.

HISTORY

The ACU was created in 1964 during the weeks following the landslide victory of incumbent President Lyndon Johnson over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. A group of conservative leaders met in Washington, D.C., to lay plans for promoting and advancing the cause of modern conservatism. The organization born of that meeting was dedicated to public education and direct action in the political arena. Early on the ACU took strong stands in favor of decreasing taxes and government spending, developing a strong military, and supporting the Vietnam War (1959–75). It opposed recognition of the People's (Communist) Republic of China and detente with the then-Soviet Union.

In 1968 the ACU supported Richard Nixon's successful campaign for president, but by 1971 had withdrawn its support due to disagreements over foreign and domestic policy issues, Nixon's failure to reduce government spending, the implementation of wage and price controls, the president's initiative to abolish the Electoral College mechanism spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, and his visit to Communist China. In 1972 the ACU formally endorsed the presidential campaign of Congressman John Ashbrook (R-Oh.). While Ashbrook's challenge to Nixon's renomination was unsuccessful, it was a pointed reminder that the support of conservatives was not to be taken for granted.

Some of the ACU's fights during the administration of Jimmy Carter included its opposition to Carter's Panama Canal giveaway (the United States ceded control of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama under a 1979 treaty), its efforts to ease the regulatory burden placed by the Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on small businesses, its grassroots opposition to the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) II treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, its support of sending aid to freedom fighters in communist countries, the confirmation of conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the never-ending battle to lower taxes.

In 1976 the ACU mounted a massive independent campaign in support of Ronald Reagan's unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Along with thousands of conservative activists, it stuck by Reagan, backing him in his victorious run for the presidency in 1980 and again in 1984. The organization played a strong role in support of Reagan's administration, mobilizing Project One Million—a grassroots effort to push the President's 1981 economic reform plan—supporting his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and mounting a "peace offensive" in opposition to the nuclear freeze movement.

ACU: Born Again

The election of a democratic president in 1992 was a shot in the arm to the conservative movement. "Clinton has touched the hot button of every ilk of conservative," according to New Republic commentator Fred Barnes in July of 1993. Barnes claimed, as did many political analysts, that Clinton had done for Republicans what they were unable to do for themselves: namely, united the party and revived the conservative movement beyond its wildest dreams. "Most astonishing is the born-again experience of the American Conservative Union," Barnes wrote. "Underfunded, ACU had been a spent force for years."

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

As a leading lobbying organization for the U.S. conservative movement, the ACU has taken a leading position in many major public policy battles. Some of the so-called Hot Issues tracked by the ACU in the 1990s include educational savings accounts, racial and gender preferences, campaign finance reform, school vouchers, the partial birth abortion ban, the Chemical Weapons treaty, the minimum wage, and health care. This last issue became the focus of major ACU activity after the election of President Bill Clinton in 1992. The ACU took an early lead in challenging the new administration, targeting its showpiece—national health insurance.

Case Study: Health Reform—A Fight to the Finish

The campaign to defeat the newly elected liberal president's proposed reform of the nation's health care system was one of the ACU's most successful efforts. Clinton's proposed legislation, a 1,342-page bill introduced in 1993, was produced after months of meetings by the cabinet-level Task Force on National Health Care Reform presided over by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The plan called for a comprehensive overhaul of the nation's health care system that the ACU opposed as "allowing for a government take-over of the industry." The organization, responding quickly, led the conservative response to the plan by organizing an opposition coalition—Citizens against Rationing Health (CARH)—to mobilize the grass roots. For the next 18 months, the ACU and CARH sponsored more than 30 town meetings in cities around the country, including Providence, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Baton Rouge; Macon, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Milwaukee; Livonia, Michigan; Oklahoma City; Phoenix; Seattle; and Sacramento. Physicians in many localities helped to organize the events, which typically featured speeches by experts in health care, while local activists helped to generate crowd turnout and promote media coverage. An effective tool used by speakers was to hold up a copy of the telephone-book-sized health reform bill by way of demonstrating its complexity; a large chart of the complex plan gave graphic expression to the same point.

When, in mid-1994, Mrs. Clinton set out on a "Health Care Express" bus tour to promote the legislation, the ACU countered with a whistlestop bus trip called the "National Health Care Truth Tour" which made a circuit of several states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Speakers at each stop made the case against the health plan. The ACU would mount a similar bus tour in California that same year in the fight against Proposition 186, a wide-ranging proposal to overhaul California's health insurance system.

Millions of pieces of direct mail went out to the ACU's database of members and supporters, urging them to call or write their representative in Congress and to write letters to the editor of their local newspapers. A 15-minute video, featuring warnings on the dangers of Clintoncare by experts and congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle, was made available to members. The year-long battle ended in stalemate on September 26, 1994, when Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Me.) formally pronounced health care reform dead. A few weeks later, California's Proposition 186 went down in defeat in the November 8 election. Keene noted with satisfaction that Hillary Clinton herself credited the skill and tenacity of conservatives and the power of direct mail for the result.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The evolution of the ACU from its origins as a network of affiliated state conservative groups to a centralized organization focused on lobbying, communication, and direct action seems likely to continue on its present trend. While the goals of the organization are likely to remain constant for some years to come, its methods of operation are rapidly changing. The ACU is increasingly trying to reach out directly to individuals. Direct mail, once primarily a fund-raising mechanism, has become the union's primary communication tool. On-line communication is also an area of growing interest for the organization; the ACU's InfoNet is expected to grow in importance as a means of disseminating information via fax and E-mail.

GROUP RESOURCES

The ACU maintains a Web page at http://www.conservative.org that offers an ACU history, commentary on issues, access to the annual ratings of Congress archived back to 1971, publications and audiovisual tapes, names of staff and board members, and information on CPAC. For research, the union draws on the product of think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation; the ACU Education & Research Institute, a vehicle for research, studies, policy analysis and publications on vital issues, was spun off as a separate organization in the 1980s. InfoNet, started in 1997, is a free service available at the Web site offering confidential memos, published commentaries and essays by ACU leaders, news releases, and letters to Congress on key legislation. The site maintains "Legislative Update," a frequently updated list of Hot Issues before Congress, each item on which can be accessed for a news release or further information. Voters are urged to "Keep Your Eye on the Floor," and "Get Involved, send E-mail to your Senators and Representative Now!" With the E-mail address of every House and Senate member listed, doing so requires no more effort than the click of a mouse. Chairman Keene contributes a column twice monthly to The Hill, a newspaper about Congress, and Donald Devine, treasurer, writes regular columns for the Washington Times. Their columns are available at the Web site.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

The ACU produces a range of publications aimed at influencing members of Congress on public policy matters and educating members and supporters on the issues before lawmakers. Its legislative guides are used as working manuals primarily by members of Congress and their staffs; one such is The Clinton Plan: More Power to Government, documenting the Clinton record. Another is The 1996 Committee for a Conservative Platform. Video and audio tapes are also produced by the ACU; recent topics include opposition to the invasion of Haiti and an "informercial" on health care reform. Battle Line (originally the Republican Battle Line), a newsletter initiated soon after the ACU's founding, lapsed during the 1980s, but has resumed quarterly publication. It is sent to all members. Subscriptions are available to nonmembers free of charge. The annual congressional ratings and other publications are produced in-house and distributed from headquarters. They can be ordered on-line at http://www.conservative.org; by telephone at (703) 836-8602; or by fax at (703) 836-8608. Complete audiovisual tapes of the annual CPAC proceedings are also available; for information, call the CPAC at 1-800-752-4391 or (703) 739-2550.