WASHINGTON — In an unusual look inside Washington's lobbying culture, a sequence of letters published last week exposed how a conservative nonprofit advocacy group apparently tried to sell its clout in a legislative battle between FedEx and UPS.
For a fee of $2.1 million to $3.4 million, the American Conservative Union offered to "strongly support" FedEx's position and "rally [the] grass roots," according to a June 30 letter from Vice President Dennis Whitfield to a top lobbyist for the package carrier.
After FedEx rejected the offer, the group's chairman, David Keene, joined seven other conservative leaders in signing a July 15 letter supporting United Parcel Service Inc. and blasting its competitor for "false and disingenuous" statements made in trying to fend off legislation that would have increased organized labor's power at FedEx Corp.
The letters, which were published Friday by the Capitol Hill newspaper Politico, offered a window into the transactional side of nonprofit advocacy, in which money appeared to influence the position of a group ostensibly motivated exclusively by principle.
The Conservative Union responded in a statement that it still supported FedEx in the dispute and that Keene had signed the anti-FedEx letter as an individual -- even though the document bore his title and the group's logo.
The group has not received or been promised any money "to date" from UPS, the statement went on to say, and "ACU's positions on important policy issues have never been for sale."
The organization said that Keene was not available to be interviewed.
Others, however, said the letters provided a rare glimpse into how Washington works.
"Rarely do you see it spelled out like this. It's a blatant paper trail of how an organization will sell itself to the highest bidder," said Ellen Miller, director of the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for more disclosure by groups trying to influence government policy.
"There is probably far more of this than we're aware of," Miller said.
Billing itself as the nation's largest and oldest conservative lobbying organization, the American Conservative Union touts a commitment to defending traditional values, among them a market economy.
It is organized as a nonprofit under a provision of the tax code that allows it to engage in unfettered lobbying but does not permit donors to take tax deductions for their support.
