Advocacy groups teamed up to win legislative battles

CARSON CITY -- An unlikely duo made for an effective lobbying team in the 2009 Nevada Legislature, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and the conservative Nevada Eagle Forum showing, once again, that politics makes strange bedfellows.

Throughout the session, the two groups teamed up on bills that addressed election laws, warrantless wiretapping, privacy issues and freedoms of speech. And after the session, lobbyists from both groups credited each other with helping advance their agendas.

"I know we turned a lot of heads in the hallway, because we'd be sitting together in a cluster of chairs, and we had people walk by and almost break their necks," said Lynn Chapman, lobbyist for the Nevada Eagle Forum. "But we worked very well together, and I think it was advantageous because of all we accomplished. They were fantastic."

The groups worked together to defeat Senate Bill 52, the "Real ID" bill which would have brought Nevada into compliance with a federal law that's aimed at making it tougher for terrorists, illegal immigrants and others to get official identification. The ACLU had called the bill "Orwellian."

The bill had sat on the Senate secretary's desk for months, and then resurfaced for a vote on the next-to-last day of the session. When they found out, both groups agreed to send out e-mails to their memberships calling for action, and lawmakers' electronic inboxes were flooded with pleas from gun advocates, conservatives and civil libertarians.

"It would have forced the state to be connected to a national database, and all the states would have been hooked up to the federal government, and that's scary in itself," Chapman said. "It goes beyond anything we should really want our government to have access to."

Chapman said she regularly e-mailed and called the ACLU lobbyists to coordinate efforts, exchanged information when they attended different hearings, and updated each other when lawmakers committed to a vote.

"There was just tons of stuff we worked together on this time," Chapman said.

Rebecca Gasca, public advocate for the ACLU of Nevada, said she wasn't surprised that the two groups came together since both groups work to protect the interests of the individual, using the U.S. Constitution as a medium.

The two groups weren't always on the same page. When a bill was introduced to bring Nevada in line with the Equal Rights Amendment, which never passed in Nevada, the Nevada Eagle Forum warned members on its Web site, and called the measure "the newest threat to Life and Family."

The two groups also held opposite views on Senate Bill 283, which granted rights to domestic partners, which Chapman said the Eagle Forum opposes because it is viewed as allowing same-sex marriage.

But when the Assembly voted on the domestic partnership bill, Chapman said she was in the gallery watching and tried to quickly write down all the votes, but didn't get them all. She noticed ACLU attorney Lee Rowland, who worked passionately to get the domestic partnership bill passed, was doing the same thing.

Even though they were on opposite sides of the issue, they fell into their usual routine of counting votes together and helping each other out.

In the end, they respected and helped each other, and all said they had fun along the way.