State Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) takes a selfie at the 2024 conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy of Ryan Clancy)

Milwaukee State Rep. Ryan Clancy readily admits he was the odd one out last week at a Washington, D.C., meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC, a nonprofit that brings together  state lawmakers and corporations and drafts model legislation, describes its point of view as “dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” It has produced state policies  embraced almost solely by Republicans — drafted with input from  corporate members of the  organization.

Clancy is neither a Republican politician nor a corporate official. “To the best of my knowledge, I would be the only Democrat — and almost certainly the only socialist” at the States & Nation Policy Summit ALEC held Tuesday through Thursday, Clancy said in an interview. But as a state legislator, he was technically welcome at the event.

On the last day, however, Clancy was summarily kicked out and told his registration would be withdrawn and the fee refunded. While declining to explain how, an ALEC spokesman said Clancy was being “disruptive” — something Clancy categorically denies.

Attending an ALEC event was important to him, said Clancy, who is just wrapping up his first term in the Assembly after being elected in 2022. He wanted to see the process by which ALEC drafts model legislation and distributes bill proposals through its member lawmakers to statehouses around the country.

Clancy said that in his first term in Madison he has seen a lot of legislation circulate that originated in ALEC proposals. Those included more than a dozen bills putting restrictions on trans and nonbinary people, such as preventing gender affirming medical care for people under 18, he said.

“My oldest child is trans,” Clancy said in an interview. “It was just horrific to have to bring together the community to push back on those. But it was also good to know about them in advance.”

Clancy said the anti-trans legislation points to priorities that he believes ALEC has beyond the talking points it makes about individual liberty, free markets and limited government.

“Even more economic-seeming policy discussions were often peppered with anti-trans and anti-DEI comments behind the scenes,” Clancy said. 

While his attendance was cut short, he said, his time at the session offered a preview of ALEC-inspired legislation that he expects to see in the coming session of the state Legislature, and an opportunity for his fellow Democratic lawmakers to “figure out how we can push back on that.”

Democratic tradition

When Clancy joined ALEC and signed up to attend last week’s policy summit, he was following a tradition among Wisconsin Democrats in the state Legislature, who have long viewed the organization with suspicion. 

The first Democrat to decide to attend ALEC sessions was then-state Rep. Mark Pocan, who began attending the meetings two decades ago, before he became a member of Congress. He was succeeded by Democratic Rep. Chris Taylor, who has since left the Legislature when Gov. Tony Evers appointed her to Dane County circuit court, before her election to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. 

Most recently in 2023, Reps. Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay) and Francesca Hong (D-Madison) attended an ALEC annual meeting in Florida.

ALEC has its lawmaker members join two task forces, and Clancy, a former Milwaukee Public Schools teacher, chose education and the environment.

In the education task force, Clancy caught a discussion about legislation that would give families who home-school their children or enroll them in private schools a tax credit to offset the taxes they pay to support public schools.

“They were looking at it as fairness because [those families] shouldn’t have to pay for public schools and also pay for homeschooling or a private school as well,” he said.

As proposed, the tax credit would be non-refundable — meaning that a taxpayer would only collect up to the amount of their tax liability.

“What that means is if you are fairly well off, like middle class or rich, and you have a big tax liability at the end of the year, you’d get that back,” Clancy said. A lower-income family with a lower tax liability wouldn’t get as much, even if their school expenses were just as high.

He said another lawmaker suggested that in the name of fairness, the tax credit should be made refundable — paying the balance of the credit amount in cash to someone whose tax liability was less than the credit’s full value.

The lawmaker presenting the proposal rejected the suggestion, saying that “it was not supposed to be, quote, a wealth redistribution program,” Clancy said. The lawmaker called that “a bright line and she absolutely would never support that.”

Recycling — conservative or ‘woke’?

At the environmental task force session he attended, the principal topic was recycling — a subject that provoked conflicting opinions.

One participant advocating incentives for recycling disposable cans and bottles instead of sending them to landfills declared, “Conservation is conservative,” according to Clancy. “And then you have other people very angry about this saying no … recycling is ‘woke.’”

Still others countered in defense of recycling aluminum in particular, making the argument that “communist China is going to continue to get a leg up because we import aluminum from communist China all the time,” Clancy said.

Those arguments revolved around a model bill that  would establish a deposit-based recycling system operated by the beverage industry rather than the state, with the deposit funds that consumers don’t collect staying with the industry, offsetting the costs for recycling initiatives and for marketing the system to consumers. “This would be a handout to corporations,” Clancy said.

Clancy said that throughout the meetings he kept his own reactions to the proposals to himself and listened to other lawmakers as they discussed the issues. He took notes and photographed information slides with his phone, something that he said he saw many other participants doing.

But he said he never spoke up during any of the presentations, raised questions or publicly engaged presenters or other participants.

“The extent of my behavior in both the task forces and the workshops was sitting there taking notes, holding up the [phone] camera and getting pictures of what was going on, just like all of the other participants who were not told to leave for that same behavior,” Clancy said.

Kicked out of the meeting

In the midst of the last session he attended on Thursday, however, a hotel security staff member came to him and escorted him from the room. Outside he was told that his registration had been withdrawn.

Clancy, who recorded the exchange with the security staff member, asked why he was being thrown out. The security staffer deferred the answer to ALEC officials, but Clancy said he’s never been told what violations he was accused of.

When registering, Clancy said he was directed to a code of conduct that ALEC has posted directed to media covering the event, but that he has seen no other such list of rules for participants. In any event, he said, he took pains to not draw attention to himself.

“I have recordings of all the things that I was in, and you can hear me not asking questions,” Clancy said. “That’s really difficult for me,” he added. “I mean, to be in those spaces, to hear them saying those things, and not to say what the hell is wrong with you people was an act of will on my part, and I succeeded. I managed not to say any of the things that a reasonable person would say in that situation, because I didn’t want to be, you know, accused of disrupting or anything else.”

Clancy questioned an unnamed ALEC representative whether he was being thrown out because he’d been identified as a Democrat or a socialist. He suggested that in doing so the organization would be running afoul of its 501(c)(3) tax-exemption and IRS rules under which “they can’t give undue influence to inside members of their group and exclude people based on partisan things.”

In response to the Wisconsin Examiner’s inquiry, ALEC’s communications director, Lars Dalseide, replied in an email message.

“All are welcome at ALEC events, where all attendees are asked to abide by our long-standing code of conduct. One that ensures a welcoming and productive experience for everyone in attendance. Sadly, the individual in question failed to adhere to these guidelines. On the final day of the conference, after several complaints, he was asked to leave,” Dalseide said.

In a subsequent email, Dalseide declined to clarify what actions of Clancy’s constituted conduct violations.

“We don’t release those kinds of details to the press,” he said. “If we did, then every speaker, member, and guest wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking freely at our events.”

While Dalseide said that attendees were reminded of the code of conduct at each session, Clancy denied that. 

“They did not ever make reminders of any code of conduct at the beginning of any session, nor did I ever make a single comment or ask a question within any of them,” Clancy said. “I still don’t know what rules they’re accusing me of violating, or why speakers wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking if they knew the rules for attendees.”

Dalseide also relayed an additional statement from Leah Vukmir, a former Wisconsin state senator and former ALEC National Chair:

“The Wisconsin Socialist Party has been sending people to disrupt ALEC meetings for years, so it’s no surprise that the newest member of the Wisconsin Socialist Party would try to cause trouble at this year’s event. As a former National Chairman, I can attest to the fact that ALEC has always welcomed all views as long as individuals conduct themselves in a mature, professional manner.”

Clancy said he is a Democratic Party member and that, while he also identifies politically as a socialist, he is not a member of any Wisconsin Socialist Party, nor had he  heard of any past actions by socialist-aligned groups to disrupt ALEC events.

Rep. Pocan was reached through his Congressional office and asked if during his years of attending ALEC he recalled any socialist groups attending or engaging in disruptive behavior.

“Nope,” Pocan replied in a text message. 

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