The lesson of Christine O’Donnell’s primary win in Delaware may be this: In politics you don’t elected officials to agree with you, just too afraid to vote against you.

Nonpartisan League founder A. C. Townley had a simple strategy to elect NPL members to state office in North Dakota. It relied on getting members to ignore their old political tribalism while taking advantage of others. Townley figured out that he could make use of a very recent development, the primary election of party nominees, to take over both major parties. Townley’s thinking was, why try to start a third party when, using the primary system, he could more easily take over the old ones?

In part four of the Anti-Saloon League series, we look at the effective use of leverage.

The Anti-Saloon League pushed the 18th Amendment, Prohibition, by wielding power and scaring politicians, a lesson interest groups could use today. In Part 3 of this 4-part series, we look at embracing “strange bedfellows” to develop a critical mass of power in order to make change happen.