Corporate America Vows to Go "Grassroots" in the Year 2000 Elections
November 1, 1999

Big Business and GOP Copy
Labor's Grass-Roots Success

By GREG HITT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- A corporate raid of sorts is taking place in the 2000
campaign, but with a twist.

Big Business is purloining a page from the political playbook of Big Labor.
It is cutting back on the notion of reaching voters through costly media
campaigns and focusing instead on making personal contact through phone
banks, mail and door-to-door visits if necessary.

It's the sort of blue-collar politics that can make a difference in close
campaigns, as next year's congressional contest is expected to be. The
AFL-CIO, led by its president, John Sweeney, already is a power player.
"Business doesn't tend to have an alley-fighter style," says Dirk Van
Dongen, president of the National Wholesaler-Distributors. "Sweeney
does."

In the last two national elections, Mr. Sweeney intensified the grass-roots
efforts of the 13 million-member labor federation, mobilizing huge blocs of
votes on behalf of mostly Democratic candidates and loosening the GOP's
grip on Capitol Hill. This election cycle, the AFL-CIO intends to spend
$40 million in a get-out-the-vote campaign, topping the more than $30
million spent on such efforts in 1998 and 1996.

Business, fearful of losing the sympathetic but slim GOP majority in
Congress, is pushing back in a number of ways.

'It's a Big Showdown'

Some of the nation's most influential trade groups, including the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers,
are poised to raise millions of dollars for a grass-roots campaign aimed at
motivating voters sympathetic to their agenda. Separately, a new for-profit
entity is offering to mount grassroots political campaigns for corporations
and trade associations. And a not-for-profit group closely allied with
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas has pledged to raise $25
million from businesses and wealthy individuals to mobilize core supporters
in swing districts.

"It is a big showdown," says Karl Gallant, Mr. DeLay's former top
fundraiser, who now heads the Republican Majority Issues Committee.

Although there
are 435 House
seats, the fight
for control of
the chamber
will hinge on
the outcome of
voting in a
small number
of districts.
Swings of a
few thousand
votes can
make a difference. In 1998, the Democrats narrowed the GOP majority to
six seats, but could have taken outright control of the House if fewer than a
total of 10,000 voters in six districts -- three of them in California -- had
supported a Democrat instead of a Republican. The gap between the
parties narrowed even more last summer, when New York Rep. Michael
Forbes left the GOP to become a Democrat.

"There's an enormous amount at stake," says Karlyn Bowman of the
American Enterprise Institute. "When you think of a shift of five seats, it's
going to be hard-fought, it's going to be hand-to-hand combat."

For many in the business community, the easiest and most popular form of
political action is making a campaign contribution. In 1998, business gave a
total of $666.6 million, compared with $60.7 million in labor donations.
But political participation for business tapers quickly after that. Part of
it is
cultural, an executive-suite aversion to collective action. Part of it is
ignorance of what the law allows. Supporters of greater business activism
say there is broader authority under existing rules to make direct political
appeals to executives, administrative employees and stockholders than
most are aware of.

TV Is 'a Lot of Wasted Message'

"The grass roots have been allowed to atrophy," says attorney Cleta
Mitchell, co-founder of Building Blocs Inc., the new Washington, D.C.,
consulting firm. Ms. Mitchell says TV ads don't bring out the voters
anymore. "It's expensive, and it's a lot of wasted message."

"This stuff works," Steven Rosenthal, the AFL-CIO's political director,
says of grass-roots campaigning. Mr. Rosenthal doubts whether the
business community will be able to rally potential voters in the same way
unions do. "What they don't understand is, it's built around a relationship,
not a candidate," he says.

Acting on their own, groups such as the National Federation of
Independent Businesses and the National Association of Realtors have had
success at mobilizing their members. In fact, Ms. Mitchell, working as an
NFIB field representative, helped whip up opposition to former Speaker
Thomas Foley, a Washington Democrat who was defeated in 1994.

But most recent efforts by business to boost turnout have been dismal, and
some Republicans worry that GOP efforts also have started to lag. "We
have lost touch with the fundamentals of campaigning," says House
Majority Leader Richard Armey. The Texas Republican last year helped
set up Operation Breakout, a $15 million initiative run through the House
GOP campaign committee that was originally seen as a grass-roots effort.

Funds for the program came from the business community and from
members of Congress themselves. But the initiative's focus shifted over
time, and it eventually became the financing vehicle for the impeachment ad
campaign favored by former Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia that
backfired on the GOP just before last year's election. "It was basically
Newt sitting up there thinking that if you control October, you control the
election," Mr. Armey says.

The Republican Majority Issues Committee represents the next evolution
beyond Operation Breakout. It cropped up after the AFL-CIO announced
its goal of spending $40 million in 2000 to get out the vote. "My phone
rang all day," says Mr. Gallant, a veteran GOP trench-fighter who worked
for much of the 1980s at the antilabor National Right to Work Committee.

Tobacco Companies' Support

Mr. Gallant organized support outside the Beltway for the tobacco
companies when they were under siege, and most recently ran Rep.
DeLay's political action committee. Contributors to the new group are not
being disclosed. But Mr. DeLay is promising to help fund the effort, and
companies such as RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. and Phillip Morris Cos.
-- both past supporters of DeLay causes -- are being counted on for help.
Longtime Republican Party patrons -- Amway Corp. President Richard
DeVos and his wife Betsy -- are among those who have blessed the
initiative.

Mr. Gallant envisions organizing grass-roots operations in 20 to 25 key
districts. He says he is willing to use whatever issues will gain traction for
the local GOP candidate -- whether it is tax cuts or abortion rights. The
goal is to identify potential voters, register them and turn them out at the
polls.

"It is none of this mealy-mouth, wink-wink, we're not trying to influence the
election," he says. "It is our intention to influence the election, and elect
more conservative Republicans to Congress."

Moving on a parallel track is an ad hoc corporate group known as the
Coalition, which raised and spent a total of $6 million in the last two
elections on mostly issue ads. The group is chucking that strategy now.
"This time, the emphasis is on get-out-the-vote," says Stephen Sandherr,
executive vice president of the Associated General Contractors of
America. "And frankly, that's something we've neglected."

This go-round, the group is working closely with the Business-Industry
Political Action Committee on a turnout initiative. No financial goals have
been set, and coordination is still loose. But already the Chamber of
Commerce is pledged to raise $5 million to boost turnout, and the
combined fund-raising figure for the group is expected to go much higher.

In justifying the effort, BIPAC President Greg Casey quotes the old maxim
about all politics being local, and he speaks with a certain awe about the
AFL-CIO's organizing prowess. "They proved it works," Mr. Casey says.
"We just have to get our guys to do it."