I talked to Tracy Fairchild today about Edelman's efforts on behalf of ARM 
and the Direct Access Coalition and learned the following:

The DA Coalition is willing to take media calls -- Tracy has identified 
coalition members who will talk to the media, and she is forwarding to me the 
list of these members and their contact information.  The three lead 
organizations in the coalition are the California Retailers Association, the 
California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers and 
Technology Association.

Since February, these key members have changed their position on whether to 
participate in a press conference, and now they do not want to participate in 
a media event.  The reason is that there are other energy issues they're 
working on with legislators that they feel are more important than direct 
access (rate increase unfairly targets large businesses, interruptible 
issues, etc.).  They fear that if they participate in a direct access press 
conference, that issue will appear to be more important to them than these 
other issues.  In addition, there is now a desire by these organizations to 
distance themselves from ESPs because of the turnback of customers.  Many of 
the businesses are not thrilled with how direct access has worked, and ESPs 
are viewed as the bad guys. Furthermore, these business organizations view a 
press conference as offensive to the legislature and governor.

One universal comment that Tracy had received from the DA Coalition and ARM 
members is that any event should not include Enron participation.  The UC/CSU 
issue has really painted us in a bad light, and no one wants to be associated 
with us.

Tracy has been pleading for customers who are willing to talk about direct 
access, and she is starting to get a few.  Once she has customers, she 
believes she can pull together a press conference.  The target date is the 
week of April 16, although that may change so it doesn't coincide w/ the 
investigation hearings.

ARM has been talking about introducing its own bill.  She'll keep me posted 
on this.

Early on, Tracy had been successful pitching the retail story.  She's now 
working on a second mainstream media pitch about the conflict surrounding 
direct access: legislation is needed to fix AB1X, the utilities want to kill 
direct access, businesses want choice,  ARM has been screwed by Bowen (i'm 
sure she'll soften this angle) and  CDWR has concerns about direct access.

I'll pass along any new information as I receive it.
thx.
kd