Chamber vs. Edwards
"Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has made a public vow: If John Edwards is chosen as John Kerry's running mate, the chamber will abandon its traditional stance of neutrality in the presidential race and work feverishly to defeat the Democratic ticket," Wall Street Journal columnist Alan Murray wrote in yesterday's editions of the newspaper, hours before Mr. Edwards was anointed.
" 'We'd get the best people and the greatest assets we can rally' to the cause, he says.
"Other business leaders in Washington have been less public and less precise, but no less passionate. Reviewing the candidates in the Democratic primaries earlier this year, a Fortune 100 chief executive who is active in Washington told me that Mr. Edwards, the North Carolina senator, 'is the one we fear the most' — more than John Kerry, more than Dick Gephardt, more than Howard Dean.
"None of this is personal. These businessmen barely know Sen. Edwards and would probably find him a far more engaging dinner companion than most of his fellow Democrats — Sen. Kerry included. ..." Mr. Murray said.
"But Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America's CEOs see red these days like America's trial lawyers. 'It's visceral,' " says one person who works with a group of chief executives. 'You can feel it in a room.'
"The nation's top executives view the plaintiff's bar as modern-day mobsters, shaking down corporations by bringing endless lawsuits that are too costly and too dangerous to litigate and that result in settlements costing billions to the corporate bottom line. The antipathy, while not new, has never been greater.
" 'This is not a personal issue, and it is not a party issue,' says Mr. Donohue. 'It is not about getting Bush or Kerry elected. It is about something so fundamental to what we do here at the chamber that we can't walk away from it.' " |
