[Vision2020] Business Leaders Mighjt campaign against Tea Party Republicans. This one is for you, Gary G.

[Nicholas Gier]

Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P.By ERIC
LIPTON<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/eric_lipton/index.html>
, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nicholas_confessore/index.html>
 and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/nelson_d_schwartz/index.html>
*New York Times, *October 10, 2013

WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt
default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have
come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are
carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of
dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.

Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade
association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were
considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who
had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington.

Such an effort would thrust Washington’s traditionally cautious and
pragmatic business lobby into open warfare with the Tea
Party<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
faction,
which has grown in influence since the 2010 election and won a series of
skirmishes with the Republican establishment in the last two years.

“We are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of
conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment
than it has been in the past,” said David French, the top lobbyist at the
National Retail Federation. “We have come to the conclusion that sitting on
the sidelines is not good enough.”

Some warned that a default could spur a shift in the relationship between
the corporate world and the Republican
Party<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
Long intertwined by mutual self-interest on deregulation and lower taxes,
the business lobby and Republicans are diverging not only over the fiscal
crisis, but on other major issues like immigration reform, which was
favored by business groups and party leaders but stymied in the House by
many of the same lawmakers now leading the debt fight.

Joe Echevarria, the chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and
consulting firm, said, “I’m a Republican by definition and by registration,
but the party seems to have split into two factions.”

While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P.
did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90
seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”

Moreover, business leaders and trade groups said, the tools that have
served them in the past — campaign contributions, large memberships across
the country, a multibillion-dollar lobbying apparatus — do not seem to be
working.

“There clearly are people in the Republican Party at the moment for whom
the business community and the interests of the business community — the
jobs and members they represent — don’t seem to be their top priority,”
said Dan Danner, the head of the National Federation of Independent
Businesses, which spearheaded opposition to President Obama’s health care
law<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
among
small businesses. “They don’t really care what the N.F.I.B. thinks, and
don’t care what the Chamber thinks, and probably don’t care what the
Business Roundtable thinks.”

The lawmakers seem to agree. Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of
Texas and a Tea Party caucus member, said in an interview on Wednesday that
if American corporations wanted to send their money elsewhere, that was
their choice.

“We have got to quit worrying about the next election, and start worrying
about the country,” said Mr. Neugebauer, who sits on the House Financial
Services Committee and is a recipient of significant donations from Wall
Street.

Few of the most conservative House lawmakers draw substantial support from
business political action committees, and business lobbyists acknowledged
that the mere suggestion they were considering backing primary challenges
next year could enhance grass-roots support for the very lawmakers they
want to defeat. But the dysfunction in Washington has now turned so
extreme, they said, that they had few other options.

“What we want is a conservative business person, but someone who in many
respects will be more realistic, in our opinion,” said Bruce Josten, the
top lobbyist at the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/chamber_of_commerce_us/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
the single biggest lobbying organization in Washington.

In the two previous battles over the debt
limit<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/national_debt_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
many chief executives were reluctant to take sides, banding together in
groups like Fix the Debt, which spent millions of dollars on a campaign
urging Democrats and Republicans to work toward a “grand bargain” on the
budget. But with shutdown a reality, and the clock ticking toward default,
some of those same executives now place the blame squarely on conservative
Republicans in the House.

“It’s clearly this faction within the Republican Party that’s causing the
issue right now,” said David M. Cote, the chief executive of Honeywell and
a steering board member of Fix the Debt.

The rift, these industry executives acknowledge, reflects longstanding
tensions that sometimes emerge between the agendas of corporate executives
and those embraced by the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

“We ask them to carry our water all the time,” said one corporate sector
lobbyist, who demanded anonymity in order to speak frankly about the
relationship with Republicans. “But we don’t necessarily support them 100
percent of the time. And what has happened is the rise of an ideological
wing that is now willing to stand up to business interests.”

Despite their diminished leverage, business leaders said they would step up
their appeals for an agreement.

Most of the officials said they agree in principle with conservative
lawmakers about the need to cut federal spending or roll back parts of
Obamacare, but said using the threat of shutdown — or worse, of a debt
default — to extract those concessions was both ineffective and dangerous.

Mr. Josten said he had been on Capitol Hill every day this week counseling
compromise.

“The name calling, blame gaming — using slurs like jihadist, terrorist,
cowards, that kind of language — it does not get you to a deal,” Mr. Josten
said of the advice he is giving to Democrats and Republicans. “The problem
is everybody is in the same corner here and everybody has to try to save
some face.”

To some extent, the Chamber itself, along with other lobbying groups,
helped create the conditions for Washington’s impasse.

After the 2010 elections, the Chamber and other business interests funneled
millions of dollars into Republican redistricting efforts around the
country, helping draw overwhelmingly safe Republican districts whose
occupants — many among the most conservative House members — are now far
less vulnerable to challenges from more moderate Republicans.

The Chamber spent more than $32 million on the 2012 election, nearly all of
it backing Republicans. Similarly, the American Bankers Association sent 80
percent of its $2.6 million in political action committee donations to
Republicans in the last election cycle, compared with 58 percent in 2008,
according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, out of
dissatisfaction with Democratic efforts to impose more financial
regulations<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_crisis/financial_regulatory_reform/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
.

Now the group’s president, Frank Keating, a former Republican governor from
Oklahoma, is among those lamenting Congress’s failure to achieve a deal to
avert default. On Thursday, he will testify before the Senate banking
committee that “ordinary Americans will bear the brunt of the damage if our
leaders do not prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt for
the first time in history,” according to an advance copy of his remarks.

To break through to lawmakers, some national trade groups are deploying
local business owners, who they believe may have more clout with
conservatives than big-name chief executive officers. The National Retail
Federation has already begun such efforts in states like Oklahoma and
Kentucky, where the Republican Party dominates.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of Manufacturers, Erin Streeter,
said the group had decided to sponsor a fund-raising event for
Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho, who is among the 20 House
Republicans who have said they will support a budget bill — or at least a
temporary measure to reopen the government — without removing funds from
the health care program. Mr. Simpson is facing a primary challenge from a
more conservative, Tea Party-backed Republican.

“We need to be more aggressive,” Ms. Streeter said.

Michael J. Driscoll, a former managing director of Bear, Stearns & Co. and
lifelong Republican from New York, said he would not be surprised if Wall
Street executives began to shift some of the giving away from House
lawmakers.

“One thing about Wall Street, it is very aware of who is working in their
best interest,” he said.

But other lobbyists cautioned that while individual Republican lawmakers
may lose financial support, the business community was unlikely to turn its
back on the party over all and that donations would continue to flow to
campaign committees set up by Republican leaders in the House, including
from Wall Street.

“The reason the business community is overwhelmingly pro-Republican is
because of the policy positions generally held by the Democratic Party,”
said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of
Wholesalers-Distributors. “But there’s a lot of talk around town about the
need for Republicans to get into primaries and protect people who are being
attacked because they are only 96 percent pure.”

“I, for one, think that would be a healthy exercise,” he added.

Eric Lipton reported from Washington, and Nicholas Confessore and Nelson D.
Schwartz from New York.
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