Dial back efforts

Business lobbyists dial back efforts to prop up GOP establishment

The Chamber of Commerce says it identified fewer primaries that pitted moderates against less business-friendly conservatives.

By MAGGIE SEVERNS and LORRAINE WOELLERT

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, long an aggressive defender of establishment Republicans, has given conservative insurgents cause for glee after it cut back primary spending this election cycle.

The Club for Growth, a small-government group often at odds with the nation's biggest business lobby, predicts that November's midterms will add as many as 15 Republican lawmakers to the 30-member Freedom Caucus, the uncompromising conservative bloc that doesn’t hesitate to buck congressional GOP leaders.

Rather than fighting them off, the Chamber slashed its primary-season expenditures this cycle, spending just $3.6 million on political communications for its preferred candidates, compared to $11 million and $14 million in 2014 and 2016 respectively, according to federal election data.

Business groups and other establishment Republicans have watched their party's trajectory shift under President Donald Trump, particularly on trade and immigration. This cycle, some candidates seeking to embrace Trump’s outsider status have even shunned support from the party’s corporate wing.

But Chamber senior political strategist Scott Reed said his group identified fewer primaries in 2018 that pitted moderates against less business-friendly conservatives, and the group felt its cash was not as critical in those races. It instead shifted spending to support vulnerable Republican incumbents, he said.

“It’s not a normal year,” Reed said in an interview. “There weren’t a lot of primaries where there was a real, fundamental difference between the candidates, so we took a different approach.”

He cited Indiana’s Senate contest, where all three GOP primary candidates won high marks from the business group. After consulting with local affiliates on the ground, the national group decided not to get involved, Reed said.

The Chamber also has spent money on election-year efforts such as get-out-the-vote work with local branches and digital issue ads, activity that isn't publicly disclosed, Reed said.

David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth — whose chosen candidates faced off with Chamber-backed hopefuls in prior years — said he sees the congressional Republican caucus growing more conservative next year after his group spent money on behalf of candidates running in open primaries to replace retiring House lawmakers.

The conservative group has tailored its endorsement process to avoid supporting candidates who stand little chance of winning a general election, McIntosh said, a decision he said has helped the group gain standing within the GOP establishment.

“Aggressively at the beginning of the cycle, we went out and looked for candidates who would be strong on our economic issues, very good, limited-government conservatives,” McIntosh said.

Reed said the Chamber saw no need to duel with the Club for Growth in such races.

“We are not the policeman of the world or an arm of the Republican National Committee,” Reed said. “If the Club for Dopes want to get involved in all these races that are layups, that’s fine.”

There were some signs this year, however, that the Chamber’s money might not be welcome everywhere. In one conservative district, candidates publicly distanced themselves from the Chamber en masse: In the crowded, 13-candidate South Carolina primary to replace departing Rep. Trey Gowdy, all of the Republican candidates said during a Tea Party forum in April that they would reject Chamber money and support if it were offered to them.

“They usually spend money against me,” former South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright said.

Ted Pitts, CEO and president of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, said candidates in the Gowdy race who disavowed the business lobby were “speaking more to the fact that they wanted to be an outsider — because Trump played the outsider role.” He said he doubted many of them would have turned down the Chamber’s help if offered it.

“When some of those candidates got down to the end, they were interested in seeing if the U.S. Chamber felt like they needed to look again at that race,” Pitts said.

And some candidates who lost primaries this year in which their opponents received Club for Growth backing said they could have used the Chamber’s help.

Former CIA officer William Negley, who had support from the local business community in an 18-way GOP primary in Texas, said he faced a barrage of attack ads from the Club for Growth, which supported conservative Chip Roy. The Chamber sat out that battle. Negley missed making the runoff by about 1,000 votes.

“Organizations like the Chamber and like-minded people need to organize and get their act together so that others aren’t just walking away with it,” Negley said in an interview. “To give [the Club for Growth] full credit, there’s no doubt that those ads were effective in driving me down.”