What the Election Results Mean for Nonprofit Groups

The results of this week’s election were mostly a reflection of how voters felt about foreign policy and corruption in Washington.

While those issues are of

concern to people in the nonprofit world, other issues at stake on Tuesday will have a more direct impact on many types of nonprofit groups.

The change in leadership in the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, will improve the ability of some nonprofit groups with strong ties to Democrats, such as Independent Sector and OMB Watch, to influence Congress. However, other groups, such as the Council on Foundations, which recently appointed a former Republican congressman, Steve Gunderson, as its president, may suffer.

Higher education should also benefit. Improving financial-aid programs for college and university students was one of six pledges made by the Democratic Party. And as Republicans re-evaluate their policy positions, think tanks such as the libertarian Cato Institute, which has sharply criticized the Bush administration’s foreign and domestic polices, are apt to have greater influence than more neoconservative ones, such as the American Enterprise Institute, which is closely associated with Vice President Cheney, who is likely to receive some of the blame for the election loss.

Nonprofit groups should expect no change in the efforts of the Senate Finance Committee to tighten laws and regulations affecting nonprofit accountability and political involvement, since the views of the possible new Democratic chairman, Montana’s Max Baucus, seem to be similar to those of the outgoing one, Iowa’s Sen. Charles Grassley.

But in the House of Representatives, the likely new head of the Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, is apt to be more aggressive than his predecessor, Rep. William Thomas, Republican of California, who is retiring. Mr. Rangel, who represents a low-income district in New York City that contains several highly regarded medical centers, has been particularly concerned about how much “community benefit” hospitals and other nonprofit groups actually provide in return for their tax exemptions.

Nor should nonprofit groups anticipate increased spending on federal programs that support nonprofit groups. The Democratic winners in this week’s elections generally came from the more moderate wing of the party and are apt to favor fiscally and socially cautious initiatives, especially since those elected to the House of Representatives will have to defend their seats in two years in districts that were closely contested this week.

The defeat of Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, may sound the death knell for legislation the White House has sought to help religious charities gain greater access to government and private aid.

Along with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who won re-election in Connecticut as an independent, Mr. Santorum was the program’s principal advocate in the Senate.

On the other hand, the Bush administration’s efforts to enact a major immigration overhaul may have received a boost from the defeat of Republican Congressional candidates in Arizona and elsewhere, who had opposed it.

The passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which amends the state’s Constitution to ban racial preferences in education and other government-provided services, is also likely to strengthen the hand of those who have been critical of affirmative-action policies.

Looking toward the 2008 election, the outgoing Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, probably gained a slight advantage in the race for the Republican nomination for president, since he will be campaigning as a Washington outsider without responsibility for the problems that concerned the voters who went to the polls on Tuesday. Like his father, the former Michigan governor George Romney, he has been a strong supporter of efforts to increase volunteering and giving.

Although he is not likely to run for president in two years (at least if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton enters the field, as many expect her to do), Gov.-elect Eliot Spitzer, who won overwhelmingly in New York, is positioned for increased national influence. Among other steps, Mr. Spitzer built his reputation by seeking to curb abuses in the nonprofit world and at one time even discussed restricting the number and size of foundations in New York State. Ambitious attorneys general in other states may be encouraged by Mr. Spitzer’s political success to pursue similar policies.

While they may wait for the outcome of the next presidential election, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens could take advantage of a Democratic majority in the Senate by retiring.

Both have had health problems in recent years but were believed to be reluctant to step down from the bench if their successors were apt to be judicial conservatives in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. A change in the makeup of the Supreme Court could have significant effects on a variety of issues with which nonprofit groups are concerned.

In this election cycle, the role of “independent” committees in sponsoring negative ads and other kinds of antagonistic voter messages received considerable criticism.

To no small extent, the prominence of such groups is the result of efforts to clean up the campaign-finance system , which have limited the amounts candidates for federal office can raise themselves and opened the door for organizations they do not control — and whose messages they do not have to “approve” — to try to influence voters.

Measures to rein in these committees are likely to be discussed (along with additional IRS proposals to curb the activities of tax-exempt groups in registering voters and campaigning), but with a forthcoming presidential election, Democrats and Republicans are likely to prefer keeping the current rules, so that neither side gains an advantage.

Yet for all its acrimony, this year’s election provided another example of how voters in a democracy can, when necessary, express their displeasure with how their country is being governed. That the results are apt to have such a small impact on the nonprofit world may actually be cause for satisfaction, if not a certain amount of celebration, about the confidence most Americans still have in it.

Leslie Lenkowsky is a professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University and a regular contributor to The Chronicle’s opinion section. His e-mail address is llenkows@iupui.edu.