A funny thing happened to the term limits movement on its way to political success. It got sold.
On Jan. 19, 1994, a New York businessman named Howard Rich bought Americans To Limit Congressional Terms for $10,000, in what seems to have been the first sale of a political organization in American history.
Technically, the purchase was made by Rich not as an individual, but as president of what had been a competing organization, U.S. Term Limits Inc. And, technically, he bought only the name and trademark in a transaction overseen by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
But the transaction gave Rich effective control of the group’s only real asset-its contributor mailing list.
It also put the nationwide term limits movement firmly in the hands of a group of people who espouse libertarianism, a political outlook based on opposition to almost all government activity, usually including Social Security, environmental regulations and the public school system.
The idea of term limits has become so popular that this association is unlikely to erode its strength. Much of the activity is taking place on the state level, where organizations are partly independent of U.S. Term Limits, even if they accept money from it.
“I know that they have a libertarian bent,” said Dorothea Vitrac of the Massachusetts term limits organization. “I don’t see a problem with that. They haven’t tried to push it on us.”
The sale of ALCT raises the possibility of a covert libertarian strategy underneath the term limits movement, but it also illustrates how some political crusades have become lucrative businesses. If ALCT was the first political organization ever sold, it probably won’t be the last.
Politics has become more specialized and less popular, creating opportunities for businesses to provide services once performed by party organizations or by citizen volunteers.
These days, “grass-roots” movements are often orchestrated by people in the politics business-direct-mail firms, professional petition-gatherers and political advertisers.
As more political service firms are formed, and as single-issue political groups continue to spring up, raise money and compile valuable contributor lists, it seems likely that a market in buying and selling pressure groups could develop.
There is enough money in the term limits dispute for each side to accuse the other of being greedy.
“The contract (ALCT) had with its chief fundraiser, Richard Viguerie, was unconscionable,” Rich said. “Here are several hundred thousand people writing these $10 or $15 checks for programs not being implemented. I felt I had a fiduciary reponsibility.” To exercise that responsibility, Rich said, he took the organization into bankruptcy so he could alter the terms of the contract with Viguerie.
Rich said only Viguerie and the political consulting firm headed by Eddie Mahe were getting any benefit from the group’s former management.
“That’s unmitigated nonsense,” said LaDonna Lee, who sat on the group’s board and is president of Mahe’s highly regarded Republican consulting firm. “We created the professional side of this movement. We provided all the staff and equipment, and we lost money.”
Others, noting that under Rich’s leadership U.S. Term Limits concentrates almost exclusively on referendums, wonder whether the organizaton is more interested in petition-gathering than in building political support. USTL’s new motto is “Term Limits Everywhere” and it has circulated petitions in some jurisdictions, such as Illinois, where term limits referendums may not even be valid.
The organization does not make money when it hires a professional petition-gathering firm; it spends its money on these efforts. But at least one of the big petition-gathering companies it hires is owned by a friend and political associate of USTL officials.
“These people are petition-happy,” said Cleta Mitchell, the former Oklahoma Democratic legislator who resigned from the board of ALCT shortly after Rich and his allies assumed control of it. “They’re motivated by money.”
As a loser in the power struggle with Rich, Mitchell might be speaking out of bitterness. But Vitrac of the Massachusetts organization said she sometimes wonders about the motives of the national group.
“U.S. Term Limits raises a lot of money around the country,” Vitrac said. ” . . . They collect the signatures, and when it gets to the vote they do a media campaign, but they don`t care about what it takes to maintain a political organization.”
Until Rich and his allies took control of ALCT, the organization was run by people well known in the political world-Mitchell, Lee and former Rep Jim Coyne (R-Pa.). The new leaders are Rich, Eric O’Keefe of Spring Green, Wis., and Chicago banker Bob Costello.
Those names were not familiar to either Democrats or Republicans; their background was with the Libertarian Party. It was a Libertarian-connected organization, Citizens for a Sound Economy, that formed Citizens for Congressional Reform, which later changed its name to U.S. Term Limits.
Rich was on the Libertarian national committee in the early 1980s; O’Keefe was the national director; and Costello was an active member, according to Libertarian Party official Perry Willis.
Still active is Richard Arnold, who heads National Voter Outreach in Carson City, Nev., which specializes in petition drives. Arnold’s company hires paid petition-gatherers, and while he said his fast-growing firm was hardly dependent on USTL’s business, he acknowledged that the term limits organization is a major customer.
The libertarian movement is no monolith. Over the years, several leaders have split from the Libertarian Party to concentrate on specific issues, including term limits and the anti-environmentalist “property rights” movement.
“I have not been connected with the Libertarian Party in years,” Rich said. “The label is about 15 years old. We all came from somewhere, and I have evolved into a situation where I am a single-issue person. My wife would say that I am completely obsessed with term limits.”
But while Rich may no longer be connected with the Libertarian Party, USTL’s executive director, Paul Jacob, is an active party member.
Jacob spent a week in Illinois recently overseeing the effort by the “Eight Is Enough Committee” to gather signatures to put a term-limit question on the November ballot.
Rich and his wife maintain several connections with groups that espouse the libertarian outlook. Andrea Rich runs Laissez-Faire Books, a mail-order outlet for books espousing a “free market” or “economic rights” point of view. She is now, and her husband used to be, on the board of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in Virginia.
That institute has received at least $2 million from foundations controlled by the billionaire Koch family of Topeka, Kan., who have also contributed heavily to other libertarian causes and institutions, including the Cato Institute, according to Internal Revenue Service documents. They were also instrumental in starting Citizens for a Sound Economy, the group that spun off Citizens for Congressional Reform, which evolved into USTL.
David Koch was the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential nominee in 1980, although he is no longer associated with the party. Koch and Howard Rich are on the Cato Institute board.
More recently, Koch family money founded something known as the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based organization that helps challenge environmental regulations and also espouses the use of vouchers to replace the public school system.
Through Citizens for Congressional Reform, the Koch family, whose oil and gas firm is the second-largest family-owned company in America, contributed heavily to the term limits campaign in Washington state in 1991, when it was defeated in a referendum. It is not clear whether they are still actively contributing to the term limits movement.
Rich said the Kochs “do not write checks to U.S. Term Limits. I wish they did.” Political organizations such as U.S. Term Limits are not required to disclose the names of contributors.
There seems no reason to doubt that Rich and his allies are sincerely devoted to the cause of term limits.
Furthermore, it is unclear why libertarians think term limits would help their cause.
Conventional political wisdom holds that because most incumbents are Democrats, and because incumbency is an advantage, term limits would help Republicans pick up some seats at all levels of government. Because Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support school vouchers and to oppose strict environmental laws, term limits could lead to more votes for libertarian-backed positions.
But this is all conjecture, and many political observers doubt that term limits would help Republicans very much, or for very long.
But whatever the rationale, libertarians do seem to be using the term limits issue.
Congressonal researcher David Rausch at the University of Oklahoma said he had seen messages on computer bulletin boards in which Libertarian Party officials urged party members to go to Oklahoma in 1992 to circulate petitions for the referendum there. (By law, only registered Oklahoma voters can circulate petitions for referendums in the state.) There were similar reports earlier this month in Maine, which is likely to conduct a term limits vote in November.
Just who owns the mailing lists of ALCT remains uncertain. Viguerie, who did not return phone calls, still hopes to buy them, according to Bryan Ross, the bankruptcy trustee.
But last year the Bankruptcy Court allowed Rich and his allies to send out three fundraising mailings, giving them access to the names and addresses of everyone who responded. A hearing is scheduled next month.
