U.S. Chamber doubling down on political juggernaut

Carrie Levine
Updated

In late February, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s biggest and most powerful lobbying group, gathered its members from around the country together on a conference call to talk politics.

The business group invited a special guest, Sen. Dan Sullivan, a newly elected Republican from Alaska. And Sullivan didn’t mince words in saying thanks.

“Without your support,” Sullivan told the listeners, “I think it’s very doubtful I’d be sitting here as your U.S. senator, talking to you right now.”

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Sullivan has plenty of company.

The Chamber spent tens of millions of dollars to elect a Republican-dominated Congress in 2014 and just about ran the table: 94 percent of the 268 mostly Republican federal candidates endorsed by the business lobby won their races.

In the wake of that stellar win-loss record, a Chamber celebration should be in order — but that’s not how it’s playing out. In fact, as Congress leaves town for two weeks of Easter recess, there’s been remarkably little progress in the first three months of the new Congress on many of the biggest items on the Chamber’s wish list — comprehensive tax reform, immigration reform, a long-term highway bill — and the prospects for action later this year are equally bleak.

Related: Democrats endorsed by U.S. Chamber of Commerce

But leaders of the business lobby are soldiering on undaunted. Instead, the Chamber, whose imposing limestone headquarters fronted by Corinthian columns stand watch over the White House in the heart of Washington, D.C., is taking the long view. Perhaps that's a natural strategy for an institution that has represented business in the halls of political power for more than a century.

The Chamber’s strategy will include a greater emphasis on recruiting the right sort of business-friendly GOP candidates and intervening in primaries as it attempts to sculpt a compliant Congress that mirrors its priorities. In other words, the Chamber will double down on its political juggernaut, and will no longer take breaks between elections.

“We’re just going to run it 24 months in a row, cycle after cycle after cycle,” said Thomas Donohue, 76, the Chamber’s longtime president and chief executive officer, during the Feb. 19 conference call.

Related: U.S. Chamber of Commerce TV ads in key 2014 Senate races

The group is already raising money for upcoming special elections in New York and Mississippi. And after Labor Day, it plans to launch image-boosting campaigns in states like Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which all have Chamber-friendly Republican Senate incumbents up in 2016.

The long-haul strategy could well pay off — but it also might prove a tough sell to a fractious membership that wants quicker returns on the mountains of cash they pump into the Chamber. The Chamber is seemingly on a political roll, in some ways at the height of its power — but is finding it tougher and tougher to get what it really wants.

A booming voice

Related: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wish list

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce describes itself as businesses’ “voice in Washington, D.C.”

It’s also their army for hire. But it doesn’t come cheap.

The Chamber is easily the nation’s biggest business trade association, with an annual budget that has ranged from $145 million to $210 million each year from 2008 through 2013.

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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.