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T
hings looked good for the Demo-
crats in 2009. Not only had Barack
Obama been elected president, but
for the first time in 14 years, their
party controlled both houses of Con-
gress as well as the White House. Then
came the 2010 midterms: In what Obama
called a “shellacking,” the Republicans
picked up 63 seats in the House and six in
the Senate. While the headlines focused on
the Republican takeover of Congress andwhat it meant for the rest of Obama’s presi-
dency, the most painful losses occurred in
the state races down ballot. Before 2010,
the Republicans controlled 14 statehouses,
and the Democrats held sway in 27. After
2010, the Republicans controlled 25 state-
houses and had scored a trifecta—the gov-
ernorship as well as both chambers of the
legislature—in 11 states.
In many of these states, what followed
was a three-pronged attack—the intro-
duction of model legislation, the deploy-
ment of publicity campaigns to promote
it, and the use of faux-grassroots actions
and demonstrations to rally support forBryce Covert writes on economics and public policy
for The New York Times, The New Republic,
and New York magazine, among other places.RIGHT-WING TROIKA
by BRYCE COVERT
The Republican Party’s 50-state strategy
it—that had been decades in the making
and helped realize a battery of conser-
vative policy priorities, many aimed at
preventing the Democrats from winning
back power.
In Wisconsin, for example, one of the
first things the newly installed Republican
governor, Scott Walker, did was introduce
Act 10—which was supposedly intended to
address the state’s budget gap but essen-
tially ended collective bargaining rights
for public employees and limited their
unions’ ability to collect fees. The move
sparked massive protests, attended by both
public-sector workers and regular citizens.
But he had a powerful coalition at his back
ready to push the act through, including
the American Legislative Exchange Coun-
cil (ALEC), whose model bills provided
him with many of the legislation’s provi-
sions; the State Policy Network (SPN),
which backed think tanks like the Wis-
consin Policy Research Institute and the
MacIver Institute that spread the word
in the media; and Americans for Prosper-
ity (AFP), a group founded by right-wing
megadonors Charles and David Koch that
bused in hundreds of counterprotesters
and bought at least half a million dollars’
worth of ads.
“Between ALEC, SPN, and AFP, then,
Walker was buttressed by a ‘longstanding
conservative alliance against unions,’ in the
words of two New York Times reporters,’ ”
writes Alexander Hertel-Fernandez in his
new book, State Capture: How Conserva-
tive Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy
Donors Reshaped the American States—and
the Nation. As with similar laws passed in
other states, Act 10 was not just an ideo-
logical victory for conservatives; it was also
a significant political win. With the power
of public-sector unions diminished, one
of the main forces resisting Republican
rule had been eroded. “Do we have less
boots on the ground? Yeah,” admitted one
public-sector union leader in the state. “Do
we give the same amounts of money to the
candidates? No.” In the triumphant words
of AFP president Tim Phillips, “That’s
how you change a state.”
Packed with wonky and original data
analysis, State Capture tells the grim story
of how ALEC, SPN, and AFP became
a well-honed “right-wing troika” that
amassed conservative power, providing
valuable insight into the operations of
three shadowy groups that have profound-
ly shaped every American’s life—and have
done so not from the White House but via
state governments.