This message is brought to you by our student interns from high schools and colleges including NYU, Dartmouth, Harvard, Rutgers, MIT, Cornell, RPI, the University of Michigan and Yale, and attorneys Charles Juntikka, Dan Wolf and Craig Heller. Many of the 27 represent so-called marginal districts, where party enrollment numbers or uniquely local issues make them vulnerable in this fall's campaigns, and Juntikka is unabashed about selecting them for that reason. Six of the lawmakers are from Long Island and three are from Queens. If we can defeat just one of them, they're all going to get religion. Last week his organization, Students4Reform, unveiled a series of 30-second television ads that urge voters to turn out incumbent lawmakers who, according to the group, have accepted gifts from lobbyists or failed to support tighter limits on lobbying and campaign donations.
Similar messages appear on postcards the group has mailed to voters in the lawmakers' districts.
Some lawmakers received so many calls that they complained to the phone company. Many interest groups try to influence lawmakers, but they usually are backed by larger organizations and are urging them to vote in favor of a particular bill, while also being generally less aggressive. Juntikka's ads, by contrast, urge people to vote against a particular legislator and are blunt and critical, oftentimes without contacting the lawmaker they are targeting-a courtesy extended by most other interest groups. Juntikka's guerrilla-warfare style has angered some legislators, most of whom have never spoken with him or his organization. We're not as guided by the standard rules of the game.