Contentious conference.

• Author: Boulard, Garry
• Position: Proposed Conference of the States - Includes related articles

PROPONENTS OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE STATES SAY IT'S AN EFFORT TO REALIGN STATE-FEDERAL RELATIONS. OPPONENTS SEE IT AS A NEFARIOUS ATTACK ON THE CONSTITUTION. AND THEY'VE MANAGED TO STOP IT - FOR AWHILE.

A GATHERING OF GOVERNORS AND STATE LAWMAKERS AIMING TO FIND WAYS TO PUT STATES BACK ON EQUAL FOOTING WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WAS DETOURED THIS SESSION BY UNEXPECTED RESISTANCE FROM A COALITION OF GROUPS CONVINCED THAT THE MEETING COULD SOMEHOW DESTROY THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

Organizers of the proposed "Conference of the States" just want states to unite and take a stand on ways to restore the balance of power between the states and the federal government. Their efforts have been temporarily thwarted by an amalgam of groups long suspicious of the federal government and now not too sure about state government either.

"We were taken for granted, and that's one of the things fueling our drive," says Colorado Senator Charles Duke of the movement he is largely credited with founding - an effort to halt the Conference of the States that was to bring together lawmakers and government officials from all 50 states in Philadelphia this fall.

"The people who were pushing for this conference are the ones who forced us to take the action that we did," Duke explains. "And now that we have, I think they just find this entire movement unbelievable."

Who could blame them? Could any political scientist or state lawmaker have predicted just three or four months ago that the seemingly innocuous Conference of the States would prove to be every bit as potent a rallying cry for some groups on the right - often the far right - as the Trilateral Commission was in the 1970s? Or the idea that Communists were poisoning fluoridated water two decades before that?

More important, who could have predicted that Duke and the curious anti-conference coalition he has assembled would have been successful in defeating in as many as 20 states the call to join the conference? The conglomeration includes local chapters of the John Birch Society, the Christian Coalition, the Eagle Forum and even members of Ross Perot's United We Stand crusade.

"I have been absolutely amazed by the opposition and their effectiveness," says Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, a Republican, who, together with Nebraska Governor E. Benjamin Nelson, a Democrat, has been the prime mover behind the conference idea. "From a political science point of view, I have also been completely impressed and fascinated by how they've organized the opposition and beat us in state after state."

In Tennessee, Senator Douglas Henry says lawmakers "got tons of phone calls and faxes leading up to the vote on the conference resolution."

Henry was a principal supporter of the resolution that ended up passing the Tennessee Senate this spring with only three votes to spare. "These groups just really came on strong with us, they made their presence known, and the effect was even more powerful considering that no one was here, really, to speak up for the other side."

MASSIVE SATURATION

Duke's supporters - many of whom espouse views holding most if not all government as an onerous force - have been able to win in those states by a process of massive saturation.

Linked together through computer Internet bulletin boards, a vast fax system and even a network of shortwave radio talk shows, the various groups responding to Duke's call have been able to flood legislatures in a matter of days or hours. Hundreds of calls and faxes have poured in urging lawmakers, often in dire, alarmist language, to cast their ballots against any resolution allowing state participation in the Conference of the States.

Duke claims to have built a constituency of more than 100,000 people nationally who can respond almost immediately. "This is the people responding," says Duke. "And their anger, when aroused, can be a powerful thing to behold."

In Louisiana, House members in April voted almost 3-to-1 against just such a resolution after getting dozens of calls and faxes from all over the country in the days leading up to their ballot. The lawmakers also received visitors from gun rights advocacy groups and the state chapter of the Christian Coalition who also lobbied against the conference. "One guy in Maryland faxed lawmakers at least three times each," says Alfred W. Speer, clerk of the Louisiana House. "Other groups just came in person and did some very effective lobbying. It was a very vigorous campaign they waged, and it worked."

Lawmakers on the Federal and State Affairs Committee in the Kansas House of Representatives noticed a similar phenomenon. As they took up a resolution permitting Kansas to participate in the conference, their meeting rooms and offices were suddenly housing earnest, if not vociferous, anti-conference activists including a local John Birch Society chapter and a group called the Kansas 10th Amendment Society, which called the conference a "most dangerous" idea.

"We voted it down in committee by about a 2-to-1 margin," says Cliff Franklin, a freshman committee member. "I think that now that the proposal has gotten so much negative attention here, it could never pass." Kansas House Speaker Tim Shallenburger, who said he would have voted for the conference if it had made it to the floor, agrees with Franklin's forecast. "I wasn't in the hearings, but the chairman came to me and said, 'This thing is DOA.' I asked why and he started talking about all of the people who came in to protest it. There were hundreds of them, while no one was really pushing for it. When that happens, any legislation is almost doomed to defeat."

MONSTROUS MOVE

Beyond the technology of how Duke's legions work, is why they work in the first place. Viewing what seemed to be a positive, productive meeting of the minds where state lawmakers would move to assume more responsibility and power in their relations with Washington, Duke's supporters have seen, instead, a monstrous move that could well lead to a new constitutional convention.

"That is exactly what this entire thing is about," says Duke. "The Conference of the States, through a succession of events, would ultimately weaken state power. Their goal is to destroy the 10th Amendment and eventually allow the federal courts to decide all of the issues of concern between the state and the people."

Some of Duke's followers are more direct. A fax sent by the John Birchers said the Conference of the States would prompt a second constitutional convention and that the resolution currently making the rounds of state legislatures "would concentrate the sovereign powers of the people." The message continued: "Through their state-appointed delegates," the conference would transform itself into a "de facto constitutional convention - without calling it one."

"We don't agree on much," says Mike Gildea, a field director of the AFL-CIO in Washington, of the rightist groups resisting the conference, "but one thing we do agree on is that the Constitution is not something we can tamper with lightly."

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