Recently in Most Under the Influence Category
Updated at 10:15 a.m. on Aug. 24.
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity said Thursday that it would no longer be working with Bonner & Associates, the grassroots lobbying firm founded by Jack Bonner, whose employee sent false letters to lawmakers urging them to vote against the House energy legislation.
"We will not be working with Mr. Bonner again," Joe Lucas, senior vice president for communications at ACCCE, told NationalJournal.com. "ACCCE did nothing wrong. Looking back, there would be many things we would do differently."
Bonner's firm was hired by ACCCE's subcontractor, the Hawthorn Group. Lucas said his group is in the process of determining exactly what it could have done differently. "We're taking this very seriously, but we do recognize that this was an isolated incident involving the wrongdoing of someone working for a subcontractor."
The Hawthorn Group itself cut ties with Bonner over the fake letters in June, according to ACCCE.
Whether ACCCE will continue to work with Hawthorn is still under review, Lucas said. But his comments suggest the middleman in this scandal is not losing out. "Hawthorn has been a consultant in this area for over 10 years and has a very, very good record of performance," Lucas said. "And this is, again, a very serious but isolated incident."
CLARIFICATION: The original version of this post implied that ACCCE was announcing the firing of Bonner & Associates. A company representative subsequently told us that the subcontractor, the Hawthorn Group, had already fired Bonner in June.
When Google users look up information on the stimulus package, Freedom Project and Freedom Works want to be there to persuade them.
In buying targeted advertising slots on the popular search engine, the two right-leaning advocacy groups have joined a list of organizations looking to build a network of Internet users who can push lawmakers to vote for or against certain legislation -- in this case the stimulus, which is expected to be voted on in the House on Friday.
Thomas Keeley, Freedom Works' online marketing coordinator, said search engine advertising is the most straightforward way for his group to reach the most people. The organization's anti-stimulus Web site and petition, www.destimulus.com, pops up in Google's "Sponsored Links" column when a user searches for the keyword "stimulus." Freedom Works has been using this tactic for two years, a lifetime in the Internet age. Keeley touted it as a way to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle, since his group can put up a new ad within a day, and it's cost-effective: groups only pay for ads when users click on them.
This latest round of online advertising suggests a future for lobbying that's less about cocktail parties and K Street and more about reaching as many people as possible around the country through the Web and e-mail. While these latest search engine ads have come primarily from right-leaning groups, Peter Greenberger, the head of Google's D.C. political sales team, said organizations from all over the political spectrum have capitalized on the strategy.
Groups can influence the Beltway audience both indirectly, by targeting Web users around the country, and directly, by tailoring ad buys to the Washington area, Greenberger said. The latter is what the National Association of Realtors did with the wording of some of its search engine ads urging Congress to "fix the housing crisis." That campaign ends Friday, but it may be extended depending on what Congress does with the stimulus and how the provisions related to home foreclosures fare, said Erica Kraus, media director of Fenn Communications Group, which is coordinating NAR's campaign.
