News Clips

Virginia Kase Solomón will be the next president and CEO of Common Cause. Currently CEO of the League of Women Voters, she will start her new role in February and will be the first Hispanic person to lead the democratic watchdog. She succeeds Karen Hobert Flynn, who died this spring after three decades with the organization.

“The model bills sound like they are protecting our country but are actually designed to protect corporate interests. We have to shine a light on this,” said Viki Harrison from Common Cause, a group which for years has pushed corporations to break ties with Alec over the racist impact of its legislation.

"What I worry about in the general sense is you want to think that proposals and legislation comes from the people who are electing the folks representing them in the legislature and that there is some kind of local initiative for that," said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause NC. "But when you have a bill mill that really is serving the interests of special interests in corporate America and right-of-center agendas, that's alarming."

Viki Harrison, director of state operations for Common Cause, said fringe groups from both sides of the aisle have called for a convention of states over the years, but her organization is opposed, noting the gathering could easily be influenced by powerful special interests. "Who's going to choose who goes to the convention?" Harrison wondered. "We already see how outside special-interest groups, big-money donors, have so much influence in elections, so why would we think this would be any different?" Supporters argued Article Five was written by the founding fathers as an option for states to respond should the federal government overstep its powers. Harrison countered they failed to create guardrails, leaving the Constitution open to unpredictable changes. "Anything that we hold dear, whether you care about education, or environmental rights or gun rights, no matter what you care about in the Constitution, if we called an Article V convention, it's up for grabs," Harrison cautioned.

Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn reminds us, “ALEC has a long history of rigging the rules against everyday Americans while skirting ethics and tax laws.” And now, she adds, “ALEC…is working behind the scenes to restrict voting rights.” This week, more than 300 voting rights organizations and their allies, including Common Cause, Public Citizen, Fair Fight Action, Color of Change, the AFL-CIO, and the League of Women Voters, demanded that major corporations cut their financial ties with ALEC. 

“It’s a gathering of wealthy corporate funders and the policymakers who protect their interests,” said Anthony Gutierrez, spokesman for Common Cause Texas, which issued a 24-page report this week on ALEC’s influence in Texas, a state with at least 58 affiliated lawmakers, more than any other. The state chairmen are Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, and Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills.“We fully expect new attempts to suppress the vote or gerrymander Texas districts to come out of this conference, and we’ll be standing ready to stop them,”