Gamer lobby to get more clout on Capitol Hill

Industry-friendly candidates will be getting financial support this election year from a political action committee established last fall by the Electronic Software Association (ESA). The New York Times spoke to ESA chief executive Michael D. Gallagher on Tuesday (January 15, 2008) regarding the status of the new committee and how it could affect politicians this year:

We will be writing checks to campaigns by the end of this quarter. This is an important step in the political maturation process of the industry that we are ready to take now. This is about identifying and supporting champions for the game industry on Capitol Hill so that they support us.

With the presidential candidates having already surpassed the twenty million dollar mark a full year before the election, $5,000 hardly seems like big money. But Gallagher’s action committee intends to write about $50,000 to $100,000 worth of donations, which is a lot of candidates. The article also states that these kinds of action committees are analogous to their music and movie industry counterparts.

In addition to the forthcoming financial contributions, the article cites the ESA’s 100,000 member Video Game Voters Network and its potential for political change. Gallagher had this to say:

If I can walk into the office of a member of Congress and tell them we have 20,000 voters in their state who are already signed up to write letters and act based on game-related issues that concern them, that’s powerful.

Two of the more interesting anecdotes in article mention Gallagher’s admission that he rigged office computers to play Doom while he was working as chief of staff for a Washington State Republican during the 1990s, and an episode involving a senator and a Wii bit of political graft:

We had one member of Congress who tried golf on the Wii, and he got a birdie on his first hole and an eagle on the second. We couldn’t get it out of his hands for 20 minutes.

Isn’t that adorable? I hope this is an indicator that the industry will no longer be the target of political witch hunts in Washington. It’s a little bit sad to see that the solution to the problem has to be money, both in the form of political contributions and the staggering bottom lines of last year, but such is the world we live in. On the bright side, all of that money is being generated by gamers, so it can’t be all bad. Hmm, I wonder if Hillary will be getting a contribution?

Read [New York Times] Via [Game Daily]