Takes fresh look.....

'It’s a significant shift in our thinking': Business takes fresh look at Democrats

If businesses shift significant support away from Republicans, it could deal a blow to GOP fundraising. But some Democrats are skeptical that the talk will translate into cash for their campaigns.

By LORRAINE WOELLERT and MARIANNE LEVINE

Business groups, at war with President Donald Trump over trade and immigration, say they’re taking steps to rebuild the political center — including taking fresh looks at moderate Democrats.

The American Bankers Association this month began airing ads in support of candidates for the first time, including Democrats Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Rep. Lou Correa of California. The International Franchise Association has more than doubled its support to Democrats this cycle, with 27 percent of its donations going to centrists in the party. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which leans heavily Republican, endorsed Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey over Republican John McCann, who has the support of former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka.

Even the powerful Koch network appears to be withholding some support for the Republican Party, if not outright supporting Democrats. Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said at a donor retreat Monday that the political network would not help Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) in his Senate race against Democratic incumbent Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), citing inconsistencies on a range of Koch priorities.

“Republicans aren’t the only people who have great ideas for business,” International Franchise Association President Robert Cresanti said. “We really need more members of Congress that are in the middle and are willing to listen to both sides.”

“It’s a significant shift in our thinking,” Cresanti said. “Before, it was you’re either with us 100 percent of the time or you’re against us.”

Smaller players, too, said they are rethinking their midterm strategies. Aaron Lowe, senior vice president of regulatory and government affairs at the Auto Care Association, said his group will likely focus its spending on members of committees that oversee trade. The Household & Commercial Products Association re-established its PAC this cycle and will back “candidates from both parties that want to legislate in a bipartisan matter,” President Steve Caldeira said.

If businesses shift significant support away from Republicans, it could deal a blow to GOP fundraising and the party's hopes to retain control of the House and Senate in midterm elections in which Democrats are expected to be energized. But some Democrats are skeptical that the talk about boosting moderates will translate into cash for their campaigns.

Data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that business still favors Republicans. About 44 percent of contributions from industry political action committees have gone to Democrats so far this year, an increase from about 41 percent in 2016 but down slightly from 2014, according to data provided to POLITICO.

“We’ve heard this story before,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition. “Until these business groups genuinely prove, through behavior as well as words, that they’ve had a conversion and they’re going to actually behave fairly instead of make an empty promise, frankly Democrats have no reason to trust those folks.”

Some of the endorsements so far aren’t game changers; Gottheimer and Correa are incumbents with comfortable leads. But support from traditionally Republican-leaning business groups carries symbolic weight, coming amid growing frustration with the Trump administration and with Republicans who opposed raising the federal debt ceiling or tried to kill the Export-Import Bank.

“As we’ve lost the middle in Congress, we have leaders like Josh Gottheimer who are willing to go and embrace the middle,” Chamber Senior Vice President Rob Engstrom told the crowd at a rally in Paramus, New Jersey, last week. “That’s really the tradition in our country, when you think about the big things that have gotten done, people who have the courage to reach across the aisle.”

The soul-searching dates back to 2010, with the rise of the tea party and a centrist rout. The New Democrat Coalition lost a third of its members that cycle, and half the Blue Dog Coalition, whose members identified themselves as conservative Democrats, was wiped out. Moderates in both parties bemoaned a shift in U.S. politics toward extremes.

That year, Connolly said, he spoke to a gathering of financial services lobbyists.

“You’re all uncorking champagne to celebrate the results of the 2010 midterm, you’re all bankers, and I don’t understand how you can feel comfortable electing a bunch of tea party people who want to shut down government,” Connolly said, recounting his remarks. “You are now responsible for having financed the election of a bunch of Neanderthals when it comes to fiscal and monetary policy.”

Eight years later, business lobbyists are thrilled with the administration’s deregulatory push, judicial appointees and tax cuts. But Trump’s disdain for a fundamental tenet of capitalism — free trade — has overshadowed everything else.

A day after the Chamber's Gottheimer event, the president doubled down on his trade war, promising to send $12 billion in aid to farmers hurt by threatened tariffs. Speaking in Kansas City, Missouri, Trump knocked free-trade lobbyists such as his neighbors at the Chamber, which faces the White House from across Lafayette Square.

“They have some of the greatest lobbying teams,” Trump said derisively of the free-trade groups.

Chamber President Tom Donohue spared no criticism of Trump on the campaign trail in 2016. When the candidate talked about slapping a 45 percent tax on imports, Donohue told Bloomberg that Americans would "probably impeach [him] when they figured out what that really meant."

With Trump in office, Donohue has launched an anti-tariff campaign, bashed the administration’s family-separation border policy, and urged senators to block the president’s first pick for the Ex-Im Bank. When the White House asked business groups to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, the Chamber declined to issue an endorsement.

Now comes the latest aggravation: Trump’s threat of another government shutdown this fall, right before the election.

The American Bankers Association has been holding candidate-training schools to support business-friendly politicians and will endorse more Democrats between now and November, said Rob Nichols, the group's president and CEO. He noted that one legislative achievement this year was a revamp of the Dodd-Frank Act, which required the votes of several Democrats to get to the president’s desk.

“Bipartisan pieces of legislation are more durable and more long-lasting than things that are more partisan,” Nichols said. “If a member has taken some tough votes to support economic growth, we want to help them.”

Democrats acknowledge that this cycle’s business overtures might be little more than an admission that industry needs to make nice in case Democrats take control of the House or Senate.

“Enlightened self-interest is a great motivator,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), co-chairman of the Blue Dog PAC. “We’re seeing a big uptick in interest by the business community. Between the Freedom Caucus and the president and the chance we take the majority, all those things add up to the business community looking at Democrats.”

Still, both sides agree there’s a long way to go to before business and Democrats strike an alliance.

“When it comes to running the Congress, setting the committees, setting terms of the debate, we’re the pro-growth guys,” said Chamber senior political strategist Scott Reed, a Republican. “At the end of the day we prefer pro-growth candidates, period. If the Democrats can get themselves in a position where they’re pro-growth, we’ll take a look.”