U.S. PIRG Staff

Blair Bowie, Democracy Advocate for U.S. PIRG, is  a recognized expert in the areas of campaign finance, election administration, federal lobbying and ethics rules.

Ms. Bowie has given briefings on Capitol Hill to Congressional offices on preserving democracy in the post-Citizens United campaign financing landscape and she has presented at national conferences, most recently at the New Organizing Institute Voter Registration RootsCamp.

She is a frequent contributor to the media and her work has been covered by NPR, ABC, NBC, CBS, Cox News, PBS, the Washington Post, the Washington Business Journal, Politico, the Hill, Talking Points Memo, Roll Call, and numerous other media outlets. Her most recent research project, Representation Without Taxation, documented a comparison of taxes and lobbying expenditures of 30 profitable U.S. Fortune 500 companies.  The report was cited on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Other reports in the last year, Auctioning Democracy: The Rise of Super PACs and the 2012 Elections and Business Contributions to Super PACs were featured on MSNBC, NPR, CNN and in Bloomberg, Politico, the Nation, and The Week.

Prior to coming to U.S.PIRG, Ms. Bowie learned firsthand of the impact of big money in politics through her work with Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, on campaigns for the Sierra Club, Corporate Accountability International, the Human Rights Campaign, and the League of Conservation Voters. At the end of her Green Corps term, she was awarded the Sarah Forslund Memorial Fellowship for excellence in organizing.

She is a native Washingtonian and a graduate Cum Laude of Middlebury College in Vermont.