Interest Groups
What strategies can interest groups
use to affect policy?
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Research / Draft legislation
Lobby (provide information to MCs)
Testify at hearings
Encourage its members to write their representative
Protest/Demonstrate
File lawsuits
Give money to a candidate
Run a campaign on behalf of a candidate
Give money to parties
Campaign on a party’s behalf
Interest groups helping a party
Advantages and Disadvantages of
a Party-group alliance
• Advantages to group:
• Disadvantages:
• If the group’s
resources become
valuable to the party,
the party’s candidates
may feel constrained
by the group’s
agenda
• No access to the
other party
• Especially
problematic when the
other party controls
the government
Advantages and Disadvantages of
a party-group alliance
• Advantages to a party
• Disadvantages to a
party
• Gains that group’s
resources
• Gains that group’s
policy positions
• Gains that group’s
enemies
How can an interest group try
to affect a party?
How can an interest group try to
affect a party?
• Get members elected as delegates to the
national conventions
• Affect the party’s platform at conventions
• Try to affect nominations/primary elections
– Recruiting, training, endorsing
In general, how can a group help a
candidate?
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Training
Endorsement
Contribute money
Advertise candidate to group members
Encourage group members to volunteer
Pay for independent expenditures
What should a group consider
when deciding whether to
back a candidate?
What should a group consider
before backing a candidate?
• Agreement with group’s goals
• Likelihood of winning
• Potential repercussions from the opposition
Interview, Executive Director, Texas
Chapter of the Sierra Club
• Q Does Sierra Club ever endorse in primaries?
• A. Yes we do endorse in primaries. We did not
endorse in [The 2002 Texas Senate] primary for
a variety of reasons. The process within the
Sierra Club for a national office like senator or
US house of Representatives, takes more than
one layer of the club to endorse. So in Texas our
Executive Committee had to make the
recommendation to the national organization
and the national committee would have had to
make the endorsement…
• There was some interest at the national political
committee at some point about endorsing
[Dallas Mayor Ron] Kirk, but I believe that came
after the primary elections were over not before.
The bottom line is we’d have had to have gotten
an approval at our level, before going to the
national level and there wasn’t any way that
there would have been an endorsement for
Kirk in the primary, because of the
opposition from the Sierra Club people in
Dallas and other environmentalists in Dallas.
• Bentsen had a fairly good environmental
record, but he did not support a critical
Sierra Club position on a trade issue
and so that was something that was a
problem in terms of making an potential
endorsement for Bentsen.
• Morales, we had eventually endorsed him in an
election when he ran earlier against (Former
Texas Republican Senator Phil) Gramm. But at
this particular juncture there was not a
willingness to endorse him, because there were
a great deal of questions that he was not a
credible candidate at that point. And his
positions that he stated in the previous
campaign, were good from the environmental
standpoint, but there was not any particular
track record to go on.
• Question: does the Sierra Club pick its
candidates on positions on issues or because
they can win?
• The leadership of the Sierra Club at both the
state and national level are fairly sophisticated in
understanding that we are better off going with
someone who can win who also has a better
environmental record or positions than their
opponent. In fact one of the criteria in Sierra
Club selection process is electability.
In what ways might we say
that parties and candidates
are beholden to interest
groups for running
campaigns?
If this is the case, is that
okay?
If not, there any remedy?
What do interest groups and
outsider groups like 527s mean
for political parties?
How do they help or hinder
parties’ electoral goals?
Candidates’ interests and goals?