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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

like that for having started it. Randolph and I are, anyway.

One of the things that we found blocking us completely was a remote, I should, say, barely noticed paragraph in some IRS ruling. To the effect that non profit 501 C-3 organizations couldn't spend more than, I believe it was, five percent of their revenues on lobbying. Well, obviously we were involved in lobbying. We were trying to get the Congress to pass laws. We were trying to get the executive to do certain things. We were absolutely stuck if we couldn't lobby. I'm trying to think how many years later this was, but probably six, seven years after John had taken on this thing. He decided that the Coalition should continue its work, but that we needed a lobbying organization that was free of the I.R.S. ruling. Namely, it would be an organization that would be dependent on its finances for membership or just contributions, but really a membership organization. And he came up with the notion of creating this membership organization to be called Common Cause. Common Cause was really a spin off of the Urban Coalition. It was created primarily to lobby. And it was a risky venture,

Q:

Why?

Heiskell:

Well, it had never been done before, in this sense. We weren't quite sure who it would appeal to. So we





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