The American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed conservative-leaning group that creates model legislation, is promising to focus only on economics in the wake of a massive progressive campaign targeting the group and its sponsors.
Liberal groups and Democratic allies have condemned the group for supporting legislation that has led to voter ID laws and the Stand Your Ground legislation at the center of the political debate over the Trayvon Martin killing. Big corporations that backed ALEC have pulled funding after progressive protests, and on Tuesday the group pledged to abandon its non-economic legislative efforts.
“We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned,” ALEC’s chairman said in a statement. “While we recognize there are other critical, non-economic issues that are vitally important to millions of Americans, we believe we must concentrate on initiatives that spur competitiveness and innovation and put more Americans back to work.”
