In 2011, as the last presidential election cycle was heating up, freshman U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, splashed a little cold water on the members of his party who were rushing to sign various anti-tax pledges offered by GOP heavyweights Grover Norquist or Jim DeMint or any number of tea party groups.

"I think I've kind of supported enough pledges," Mr. Blunt told Politico at the time. "I've restricted myself too much this Congress."

His fellow Senate Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee was even more, well, blunt:

"My only pledge is to the United States of America," he said.

Unfortunately, for many Republican state representatives and senators all across the country, that's simply not true. For far too long, the most important pledge they signed was one to the United States of ALEC.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is a coalition of wealthy Republican industrialists and corporations that seeks to pass model legislation at the state level. Every year in Missouri and other states, duped lawmakers take prewritten legislation, mostly designed to make corporations more money at taxpayers' expense, and file it as their own, often using the identical legislation state-by-state.

Already in Missouri, numerous ALEC-written bills have been prefiled for next legislative session, to take away union rights, damage public schools or rob state workers of their pensions.

Last week, British newspaper the Guardian published a series of stories based on secret ALEC documents obtained by reporters. Among the most insidious items was a loyalty oath the organization has proposed for the state chairs of its legislative members.

It reads: "I will act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first."

Imagine that, a Republican like state Sen. Ed Emery of Lamar, a man who claims to be a constitutional conservative, putting ALEC first, over his voters, over his oath to the state, over the very constitution he claims to value.

Mr. Emery, the current ALEC chair in Missouri, is already demonstrating his loyalty, filing an ALEC-inspired bill to erase teacher tenure in the state.

The former ALEC-chairman for Missouri, current Speaker of the House Tim Jones, R-Eureka, is doing his part, as well, supporting anti-union right-to-work legislation for 2014 even while pushing through special session legislation intending to lure thousands of union Boeing jobs to the state.

As the Guardian points out, the ALEC agenda has taken a hit since it was blamed for the "stand your ground" law in Florida that helped lead to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Missouri and many other states have similar laws, supported by ALEC because of its symbiotic relationship with the National Rifle Association and its gun-manufacturing membership.

The good news about ALEC's sway with lawmakers is that many corporations have fled the secretive lobbying front, afraid of the bad publicity. The bad news is that because of the nation's lax laws on campaign finance, ALEC is simply retooling, and finding other ways to hide the source of its funding so it can lobby while telling the IRS it does nothing of the sort.

Missouri voters should consider such front organizations as offensive to democracy.

Mr. Emery and his ilk can believe what they want, but they should play no part in allowing corporations to hide their agendas, and their lobbying expenses, by pretending to be something they are not. The proof is in ALEC's actions, which as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank outlined, hid itself behind closed doors in a meeting last week in the nation's capital, pushing reporters away while claiming they had nothing to hide.

No, ALEC exists solely to hide. To hide money. To hide agendas. To hide its hijacking of democracy.

Lawmakers who care about the constitution and their commitment to voters should be fleeing faster than the corporations who realize ALEC is simply a bad investment.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH