01/08
Boycotts' Successes Have Nervous Officials Looking for an Antidote
By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
   At least a dozen states and cities in the United States have
recently been targeted for convention boycotts by special interest
groups, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourism
revenue and prompting nervous officials to give second thoughts to
controversial policy decisions that could potentially bankrupt their
budgets.
   While activists have long used the boycott as one of their
principal weapons, an increasing number of groups have broadened
their targets to include not just corporations or industries, but
entire states that are heavily dependent on tourism and convention
business. Public officials said they expect the trend to grow as the
interest groups' successes become more widely known.
   "It's kind of scary. It makes you wonder where it will all end,"
Deborah Cornelius, a Colorado state tourism spokeswoman, said as
officials in Denver began adding up the potential losses from a
tourism and convention boycott launched by national gay and lesbian
groups after voters in November approved a constitutional amendment
prohibiting special civil rights protection for homosexuals.
   The state governors are expected to take up the boycott issue
when the National Governors' Association holds its winter meeting
here later this month, although NGA Executive-Director Raymond C.
Scheppach said, "Politically, it's an issue they are not going to
talk publicly about very much. They're very sensitive about it."
   Most governors, he said, are not only sensitive to what they
regard as the unfairness of most economic boycotts, but also believe
they are ineffective because while "they get a lot of publicity,
they are fairly inefficient in reaching a solution to the problem
being protested."
   Besides Colorado, recent targets of threatened or actual boycotts
include:Alaska, which on Dec. 22 shelved plans to reduce its wolf
population by killing hundreds of the animals from helicopters after
environmentalists threatened to boycott the state's $1 billion
tourism industry, which is the third-largest revenue producer after
oil and gas and fishing.   Louisiana, which stood to lose at least
$87 million in anticipated revenue when 15 national organizations
threatened to pull their conventions out of New Orleans if former Ku
Klux Klan leader David Duke was elected governor. State tourism
officials breathed a sigh of relief when Duke lost.   Miami, which
snubbed South African black leader Nelson Mandela in 1990 because of
his refusal to repudiate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and became the
target of a tourism boycott that cost the city an estimated $8.1
million in lost revenue.   Utah, which along with Louisiana, became
the target of a boycott by abortion rights advocates because of
strict anti-abortion laws. While Utah officials claim there was a
negligible impact, New Orleans estimated the boycott cost the city
17 major conventions worth $116 million in lost business.   San
Francisco, which demonstrated that boycotts can be a double-edged
sword after it lost about $45 million worth of convention business
from agriculture associations because of a 1988 decision to support
a ban on table grapes. This week, San Francisco became the sixth
U.S. city to join the convention boycott against Colorado, decreeing
that none of its agencies could hold meetings there because of the
anti-gay rights amendment.
   Although state officials in Colorado said it is too early to
quantify losses from the boycott there, several major 1993
conventions have been cancelled, including the U.S. Conference of
Mayors and meetings planned by the National Organization for Women
and the American Association of Law Libraries.
   Colorado tourism promoters, including John Lay, director of
Colorado Ski Country U.S.A., a private group, said they were unable
to stop thinking about Arizona, which lost 166 conventions worth
$190 million, plus the a 1993 National Football League Super Bowl
date worth up to $200 million, after voters in 1990 rejected a state
holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
   Arizona voters in November finally approved a King holiday, and
the state's tourism and convention industry is beginning to recover
from the boycott, said Anthony Alba, spokesman for the Phoenix and
Valley of the Sun Convention and Visitors Bureau. However, Alba
said, most convention planners require a three-year lead time for
booking meetings, "so we'll continue to feel the effects for some
time to come.
   "We're not in the business of giving advice to Colorado, but what
we did was continue to assure our clients that whatever happened in
the state, Phoenix as a city was committed to civil rights. You
can't do much more than that," Alba said.
   Colorado is taking the same tact, reminding meeting planners that
the state's three biggest convention centers - Denver, Boulder and
Aspen - not only voted against the anti-gay rights amendment, but
have local laws protecting homosexuals' civil rights, Rich Grant,
spokesman for the Denver Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau
said.
   In Alaska, John W. Manly, press secretary to Gov. Walter J.
Hickel (I), said there was a "cruel irony" to the environmentalists'
threatened boycott because a principle victim would have been
promoters of the growing "eco-tourism" industry, which includes
wildlife tours.
   However, Wayne Pacelle, director of the Fund for Animals, which
led the Alaska boycott threat, defended the use of economic boycotts
as a weapon against states.
   "We recognize that it is a political tool that needs to be
cautiously exercised. But we also knew that reasoning would not
appeal to Walter Hickel and that the state legislature would not do
anything because of the hunting lobby," Pacelle said. "We felt this
(tourism) industry was dependent upon wildlife-sensitive people.
They can't have it both ways. If they want tourist dollars from
people in the lower 48 states, they have to respect their values . .
  . . . It's one of the issues that struck a deep chord."