Last month, with the inauguration of a newly elected Democratic governor fast approaching, Michigan’s Republican legislators made a last-minute attempt to ram through a bill to dramatically weaken public-sector unions. The bill would have required those unions to hold a recertification vote every other year, subjecting them to possible dissolution on a regular basis and forcing them to spend scarce resources on elections rather than on organizing. It was the first time the bill had made its way onto the floor, but its contents were familiar: Much of the legislation’s language was copy-pasted from a “model bill” introduced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) at the group’s annual meeting just a few months earlier.



It was one of hundreds of model bills similarly designed by the corporations, trade associations, and legislators that make up ALEC, a “private-public” organization with shadowy financing that has long been an influential resource for Republican lawmakers across the country. A flurry of state laws in the past ten years weakening labor unions, restricting voting, allowing environmental degradation, and bolstering gun rights have their roots in legislation drafted by ALEC, which has acted as a kind of government in waiting, helping Republicans move with all speed once they take over a given statehouse. But ALEC’s recent appearance in the Michigan lame-duck session revealed that the group has plans for when Republicans are out of power as well—which could affect legislation in states where Democrats are inching closer to winning back control as we head into the 2020 election cycle.

To the relief of the hundreds of protesters who showed up at Michigan’s capitol in Lansing to protest the deluge of Republican bills, the union recertification proposal didn’t get enough votes to pass. But many others did, including bills to minimize the impact of a minimum wage increase, limit paid sick leave, restrict ballot initiatives, and curb the power of the incoming governor. During Wisconsin’s lame duck session, Republican lawmakers pulled a similar stunt, passing a number of bills transparently designed to rein in the authority of the incoming Democratic governor just weeks before he took office. While the union recertification was by far the most direct ALEC copy-cat, there were several others introduced in the Great Lakes states that, according to Brad Bauman of the Stand Up to ALEC coalition, “have ALEC DNA all over them.”

In Wisconsin, lawmakers passed new restrictions on early voting remarkably similar to legislation struck down by a federal judge in 2016—a pet project of ALEC legislators at the time. Another ALEC favorite to pass during the state’s lame duck limits the governor’s power by preventing him from changing administrative rules. ALEC adopted its own Administrative Procedures Act model legislation in September, designed to “reduce the regulatory burden on private enterprise and rebuff the administrative state’s encroachment on individual liberties.” In Michigan, the legislature passed into law a bill that bans state and local agencies from requiring public disclosure by nonprofits, much like ALEC’s model policy on “donor privacy,” which anti-ALEC groups refer to as a “dark money” policy that allows right-wing groups to extend their influence.

Democrats won back seven governorships, six state legislative chambers, and more than 300 state legislative seats in November. A number of other states, like Florida and Georgia, came close to breaking up the Republican stranglehold on their respective governments. Democrats are hoping that opposition to Donald Trump, combined with a new awareness about the importance of rolling back Republican dominance at the state level, will help tilt the field in their favor in the next couple years. But as the party focuses on building power in the states, these lame-duck power grabs sent a stark message that Republican state power is not built on seats alone, but on a power structure that can’t simply be voted out of office. ALEC’s role, increasingly, is to solidify that structure in the face of a blue wave.