Diehards Stick With Koch-Backed Lobby Amid Corporate Exodus

  • Conservative focus on state laws still a draw for some
  • AT&T, Verizon, latest to quit ALEC after controversial speaker

A public housing development built and maintained by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), stands in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America
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Several tables sat empty -- salads untouched -- in the Washington ballroom as hundreds of lawmakers, lobbyists and others ate roasted chicken as a speaker blamed over-regulation for the nation’s lack of affordable housing.

“That’s why you see people out with all those tents,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said.