- Sat. Sep. 6, 2008
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AARP Ups the Ante
AARP plans to spend "far above" $40 million on get-out-the-vote and voter-education efforts this year as a way to focus the presidential and congressional campaigns on the issues of health care reform and long-term financial security, says William Novelli, CEO of the behemoth senior citizens lobby group.
AARP will shell out the huge sum as part of a two-track effort involving its own advocacy efforts and its contributions to the "Divided We Fail" coalition, which also includes the Business Roundtable, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Service Employees International Union. The spending will go toward voter guides, advertising, and a variety of other election-related tools.
AARP says it will encourage its 40 million members to participate in events tied to the election so that the Republican and Democratic candidates know where seniors stand on Social Security and health care policy. "This will be the biggest voter-education effort we've ever had," Novelli says. Given AARP's history of advocacy campaigns, that's saying a lot. -- Bara Vaida
Fundraising Fun
Winter sporting events, both inside and outside the Beltway, have long been a fundraising staple. This year is no different. On February 26, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is holding a "hockey night fundraiser" at the Verizon Center when the Washington Capitals face off against the Minnesota Wild. The event for Bachmann, a member of the Financial Services Committee, is being hosted by Eddie Ambrose, the associate director of the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. The suggested ticket price: $1,000 for a political action committee. Meanwhile, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., is hosting his annual Winterfest during the weekend of February 29 to March 2 at Big Sky Resort in Yellowstone National Park. Lobbyists can ski on Saturday and ride snowmobiles on Sunday. Says the pitch letter: "This is a perfect opportunity for your local/state and regional reps to participate, if you can't make it." -- Peter H. Stone
Tank Marriage Tanks
Out on the campaign trail, the buzzword is "post-partisanship," but back here in Washington it's a different story. Witness the fact that the nearly decade-long engagement between the center-right American Enterprise Institute and center-left Brookings Institution has been called off.
The AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies was set up to bring economic scrutiny to government regulations. Now its successor, the Center for Regulatory and Market Studies, is solely an AEI project, run by Robert Hahn, a staffer at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Reagan administration.
Meanwhile, Brookings is getting ready to launch the new, broader Initiative on Business and Public Policy, led by Martin Baily, who was CEA chairman in the Clinton administration. He recently rejoined Brookings after more than a decade elsewhere.
The joint AEI-Brookings venture lost a key advocate when Brookings senior fellow Bob Litan took a job with the Kansas City, Mo.-based Kauffman Foundation in 2003. Litan, who remains an adviser to the AEI center and will also work with Baily's Brookings venture, says that the split doesn't suggest a philosophical difference on regulation; rather, it's "the shifting priorities of the two institutions."
At the AEI, meanwhile, Hahn has taken another step rare in the think-tank world: His center's website lists all of the program's foundation and corporate donors. -- Julie Kosterlitz