Business abandons GOP for Democrats By: Jeanne Cummings October 16, 2007 12:20 AM EST
Lag, lag, lag. That’s all you hear these days regarding Republican fundraising compared with the Democrats’.
Now we can add a new word: abandoned.
The business community that celebrated the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 by spending millions to prop it up for more than a decade is in full retreat.
All 10 of the top-giving industries tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan money and politics watchdog group, are now donating more cash to Democrats than Republicans. A year ago, Republicans had the edge in six of the 10 sectors.
Financial powerhouse Goldman Sachs has sent 71 percent of its cash this year to Democrats while JPMorgan delivered 68 percent of its checks to the new majority.
Citigroup Inc. followed close behind, with 63 percent of its cash deposited in the accounts of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues. Even the big drug companies are trying to warm up to their adversaries; that sector is giving at a rate of 50-50.
Only the old allies of President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the oil and gas sector are holding firm, giving 72 percent of their donations to Republicans and 28 percent to Democrats. Of course, those numbers could change after the Democrats unveil a global warming bill and the industry’s lobbyists seek to tweak the final language.
An obvious engine behind the shifting fortunes of the parties is the Democratic takeover of Congress. Businesses that ignored minority members for years are now trying to build relationships with the new power players.
These new friendships could quickly turn prickly as Democrats zero in on new funding sources for their domestic agenda by closing tax loopholes and raising other taxes that impact the business community.
But there’s more at work here. In many ways, Republicans have nobody but themselves to blame for turning the mutually beneficial and philosophically aligned relationship between corporations and GOP caucuses into little more than a transactional one, easily discarded at first evidence of a market disruption.
Republican leaders threatened a freeze-out of business lobbyists who dared hire a Democrat or ignored the names on the leadership’s private hiring tip sheet.
Pay-to-play became the insider mantra during the Republican reign. But “extortion” was how many CEOs described the annual shakedowns by committee chairmen with jurisdiction over their industries.
No group expressed greater relief — privately and publicly — than the business community when the 2002 McCain-Feingold law banning unlimited corporate donations to politicians became law.
Even the GOP’s agenda seems to have curled cruelly back on their erstwhile allies.
Sure, President Bush’s big tax cuts and easing of regulatory oversight were roundly applauded. But then there was the Sarbanes- Oxley law, a cumbersome set of new rules imposed on corporations after a spate of their own scandals.
As businesses begged for help on health care costs, Republicans staked out policy positions aimed more at defining partisan wedges than practical solutions.
Corporate chieftains disciplined in monitoring the bottom line witnessed Republican committee chairmen spending like divas on new government programs and earmarks.
Scandals and hypocrisy gave a tawdry air to the relationships, prompting some brand-conscious lobbyists to recoil from their political brethren.
And, even today, the White House and several Republican presidential candidates appear willing to try to boost their own political standing with their law-and-order ranks at the expense of their corporate allies.
Exhibit A: Leading Republicans argue a key way to solve the nation’s illegal immigration problem is to make business owners face prison time unless they can verify their employees are legal.
Just last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined with the ACLU to win a court order preventing the Bush administration from implementing a program that would subject farmers, landscapers, hoteliers and builders to fines and prison sentences if they can’t or won’t affirm the legal status of their employees.
The business community objected to the plan, arguing it could lead to discrimination and the denial of jobs to native-born U.S. workers. The court agreed. The Department of Homeland Security says it is considering an appeal.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said there is another solution — one that the business community agrees with — and that would be for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. But, excuse me, who blocked that this summer? Oh, yeah, Chertoff’s own Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill.
The U.S. Chamber had already begun to hedge its bets last year, when a broader shift in corporate giving was detected late in the election season as Democrats gained momentum. In January, a wholesale repositioning was in swing.The list of top recipients of corporate political action committee donations in 2003 was dominated by House Speaker Dennis Hastert and endangered incumbents, including California Rep. Richard Pombo and Ohio Rep. Deborah Pryce.
Today, Hastert’s sitting in the House cheap seats, Pombo’s at home fighting legal troubles and Pryce is bailing out of Congress before the Democrats can take another shot at her in 2008.
Meanwhile, this year’s third-quarter, top 10 corporate PAC recipients list leads with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Pelosi.
In the first nine months of 2003, the top 25 financial services political action committees donated $6.8 million to members of Congress. Of that, 38 percent went to Democrats and 62 percent to Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, done at the request of Politico.
During the same three-quarter period in 2005, those percentages were roughly the same.
Between January and August of this year, the financial services committees donated $8.6 million — 51 percent went to Democrats and 49 percent to Republicans.
While that ratio reflects the partisan breakdown on Capitol Hill, the shift for some organizations has been more dramatic. For instance, the Independent Community Bankers of America gave 67 percent of its donations to Republicans and just 33 percent to Democrats during the first three quarters of 2005.
Today, Democrats get the lion’s share — 53 percent — compared with a Republican take of 47 percent. The association’s spokesman, Bill Grassano, declined to comment on the reasons for the shift.