League of Conservation Voters

In 1970 Marion Edey, a U.S. congressional staff aide, approached the former Sierra Club director David Brower about creating an organization that could act as the electoral wing of the environmental movement in America. Frustrated by the movement's lack of power in the nation's political sphere, Edey, Brower, and a directorate made up mainly of members of Brower's Friends of the Earth organization organized the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).

The LCV was part of the second wave of American environmentalism that arose out of Earth Day 1970 and focused its efforts on influencing politics. Prior to Earth Day 1970, most environmental organizations had been tax-exempt nonprofit organizations forbidden by law from supporting legislation or endorsing a candidate. The LCV took political activism as its mission and focused on influencing Congress to pass environmental protection and resource conservation legislation.

The LCV won its first major victory in the congressional election of 1970, backing Baltimore attorney Paul Sarbanes in the Democratic Party primary against incumbent George Fallon, a Democratic representative who had a record of opposition to mass transit projects as the head of the House Public Works Committee. The LCV used aggressive fund raising and volunteer support to help Sarbanes unseat Fallon, signaling its strength to members of the environmental movement and members of Congress.

A trademark of the LCV became the rating system that the group developed for state and national politicians. The league's National Environmental Scorecard and the environmental grades, begun in 1970, are now well recognized by voters. Between 1972 and 1985 the average grade given was a 33 (or F) to House Republicans and a 60 (or D) to House Democrats. This rating system was partially responsible for giving the two major political parties their environmental (or antienvironmental) identities.

After the administration of President Ronald Reagan, the LCV focused on elections. In 1988 sixty out of seventy-six congressional candidates backed by the LCV won their elections, although the LCV considered the presidential election an embarrassing loss (the LCV gave Michael Dukakis a В and George H. W. Bush a D).

In the 1990 election the LCV doubled its spending, but the results gave little support to electoralism as a strategy. Ballot initiatives in California, New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Missouri all lost, and only 84 candidates from a slate of 133 LCV candidates won their election. The league had an even worse record in 1992, when only 58 percent of its congressional candidates won election. The LCV and other groups hoping to influence elections began to realize that they could never outspend corporations.

The years spent lobbying for environmental legislation had given the league an institutional presence in Washington by the 1990s, despite the setbacks in individual elections. With the election of Bill Clinton as president and A1 Gore, a well-known "green" politician, as vice president, the LCV gained access to the White House. Clinton appointed former LCV president Bruce Babbitt to be secretary of the interior, and a number of lower-ranking positions were also staffed by former LCV directors and officials.