Time to Stop Giving Interest Groups a Free Pass

Every election cycle, hundreds of special interest groups inundate political candidates and elected officials with questionnaires. Some are thoughtful. Many are not. Almost all are private. Taken together, they exert a subtle but significant influence on American politics, one that few voters ever see, and that almost no one is willing to confront.
These questionnaires are often framed as harmless accountability tools. In reality, they function as ideological loyalty tests enforced by groups that never face voters and never have to govern with the consequences of their demands. Completing them requires valuable staff time, and in some cases campaigns leave volunteers to decipher hyper-specific policy questions about obscure legislation that most voters have never heard of and don’t care about.

The message candidates receive is implicit but unmistakable: side with us or else. Not with the district. Not with the coalition required to win. Not even with the imperative of winning at all. What matters is fidelity to the cause, not whether it reflects voters’ concerns or can survive a general election.

This is a subtle form of corruption, so common that few stop to notice it, let alone challenge it. Each group that sends a questionnaire may be acting rationally and in its own self-interest, but collectively they create a culture that undermines the basic goals of winning elections and governing effectively. There is no accountability. That needs to change.

Too many Democrats rightly decry the role of big money in politics. Yet many of the same voices are comfortable with a system in which tax-exempt nonprofits, often funded by unlimited, anonymous donations, exercise enormous influence over candidates behind closed doors. The money may be legal and even well-intentioned, but the incentives it creates are corrosive.

These questionnaires matter most in primaries, and in today’s politics, the primary is often the only election that counts. Gerrymandering and partisan clustering have turned most elections into foregone conclusions, concentrating power where money and endorsements loom largest.

Candidates face a choice: squander scarce time appeasing advocacy groups with sprawling, often unreasonable demands, or face the threat of well-funded opposition for failing a private loyalty test.

Cycle after cycle, we have seen these questionnaires carry real electoral consequences. In 2022, Katie Hobbs, Tim Ryan, and Hillary Scholten were among those targeted by attack ads citing their responses to questionnaires.

In 2024, Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars attacking Kamala Harris over her support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners – positions drawn from her responses to the ACLU’s 2019 endorsement questionnaire and a public appearance that same year. Did the ACLU intend for that to happen? Almost certainly not. But good intentions are not an excuse when they result in bad politics.

Choosing moral purity over winning elections helped put a sociopath in the Oval Office. You might expect that to trigger reflection or accountability. Instead, the money keeps flowing, the same groups continue to shape the party’s positions, and the incentives that produced failure remain untouched.

To be clear: advocacy groups have every right to petition candidates to ask where they stand. And candidates have agency over how they answer those questions. That is not the problem. The problem is excess, secrecy, and irresponsibility.

Groups that genuinely care about their causes should ask themselves some basic questions before sending their questionnaires:

• Is this actually central to our mission?
• Is this something in our lane?
• Does it help good candidates win in the tough districts or states?
• Would we defend this position publicly, in plain English, to actual voters?

If the answer to any of these is no, they shouldn’t send the questionnaire.

That’s why we’re launching The Questionable, a public repository of the questionnaires special interest groups send to candidates.

Transparency won’t eliminate these dynamics. But it will introduce accountability in a system that currently has none. When questionnaires are public, groups have to justify their demands. Candidates can prioritize voters over gatekeepers.

And if Democrats are serious about reforming politics—and serious about winning—they need to confront this system honestly. Because the greatest threat to democracy isn’t any single issue.

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