The Corporations Funding the Annual Meeting of the Powerful Right-Wing Front Group ALEC

This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. ALEC is a powerful corporate front group that allows big corporations to help write legislation that it then delivers to state legislators across the country. The organization is so influential that as many as a third of all state legislators nationwide, mostly Republicans, are members of its legislative outreach network. Much of the nation’s most dangerous right wing legislation, like laws decimating collective bargaining and promoting climate denial, have come from ALEC.

Now, a source who attended ALEC’s annual meeting has passed on a list of its corporate financiers. The documents detail different levels of funding, ranging from “Presidential” to “Trustee” level sponsors. According to the source, “If the funding levels have not changed since last year’s meeting,” then that means that Presidential sponsors gave $100,000, Chairman sponsors gave $50,000, Vice-Chairman gave $25,000 and Director sponsors gave $10,000. Trustee-level sponsors appear to be new this year.

The following are the documents showing the large list of corporations financing the meeting. As you can see, they run the gamut from big polluters like BP to online retailers like Amazon.com to drug industry representatives from PhRMA to Koch Industries:

To learn more about ALEC, see the Center for Media and Democracy’s new website ALEC Exposed, which provides an easy way to search through the legislation that the front group has been promoting and passing in states around the country.

Financiers Of ALEC’s 38th Annual Meeting:

PRESIDENT LEVEL BP Reynolds American Takeda Pharmaceutical CHAIRMAN LEVEL Allergan Altria American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity American Electric Power AT&T Bayer Chevron ExxonMobil EZCorp Lumina Foundation Peabody PhRMA Shell State Farm State Policy Network UnitedHealthcare Visa Walmart Walton Family Foundation VICE-CHAIRMAN LEVEL CashAmerica Entergy FedEx Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity Freepont-McMoran Copper & Gold Intuit Johnson & Johnson Koch Industries LouisDreyfus Commodities Louisiana Seafood McMoran Exploration National Rifle Association Pfizer Sanofi TogetherRX Access UPS

DIRECTOR LEVEL Amazon.com Atmos Energy BlueCross BlueShield Association CenturyLink Chesapeake Energy ConocoPhillips Dow Encana Energy Transfer Gulf States Toyota International Paper Jacobs Entertainment LouisianaTravel.com NetChoice QEP Resources StateNet TimeWarner WellPoint TRUSTEE LEVEL American Federation for Children BlueCross Blue Shield of Lousiana BNSF Cleco CN Cox CSX Genesee & Wyoming Inc. Harris Deville & Associates HP Kansas City Southern Kraft Foods Lilly Louisiana Clerical Associates Louisiana Railroads Association Louisiana Realtors Merck Norfolk Southern RestoringFreedom.org Society of Louisiana CPAs Southern Strategy Group Spectra Energy The Capitol Group Union Pacific USAA Walgreens