Conservatives push agendas through a centralized state network; progressives are building one of their own.
Sixty percent of *Western voters* recently polled oppose the current movement to transfer federal lands to state control. Lawmakers have killed dozens of transfer-related bills brought up across the region in the last year. And yet, the movement continues to gain prominence in national discourse.
That’s partly because the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) *has put significant weight behind the campaign to transfer lands*. The conservative policy group, funded by corporations like Koch Industries and coal giant Peabody Energy, creates model legislation that lawmakers in states like Idaho and Arizona pick up and tweak slightly to make their own. One reason ALEC is so effective is because it has created a tight-knit network around the country to move bills through state legislatures. The group serves as a central backbone to the movement by funding, writing, and pushing legislation at the state level. ALEC has been writing model bills for decades but started posting them on its website in 2013.
Source: How progressives are taking a page from ALEC’s playbook