LeaMond attributes AARP’s success to the association’s staying power and its members and supporters. “Very few organizations can stay at such a fever pitch on an issue for so long a time,” she says. Between 2019 and this summer, AARP spent $60 million on advertising, collected 4.3 million signatures on petitions urging Congress to act, generated 3.6 million emails to lawmakers and flooded congressional offices with hundreds of thousands of phone calls.