A new day’ at U.S. Chamber if Edwards on Dem ticket
Business group would throw resources into race to defeat former trial lawyer
By Josephine Hearn
February 18, 2004
hillnews.com
If Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) receives a place on the Democratic presidential ticket, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will step into presidential politics for the first time to try to defeat him, the head of the influential business group said last week.
Chamber President Thomas J. Donohue said that because of Edwards’s work as a trial attorney, the Chamber — a perennial foe of trial lawyers — would be forced into action.
“I think, in that circumstance, that the Chamber would have to recognize that it’s a new day,” Donohue said.
patrick g. ryan
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) could face the Chamber’s opposition.
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He stopped short of saying that the Chamber would formally endorse President Bush. Donohue’s comments appeared in an interview posted on the business news website Bisnow.com.
“We haven’t begun to contemplate formal endorsement,” the Chamber’s national political director, Bill Miller, told The Hill. “In the case of Senator Edwards, the issue may be how we more aggressively make sure that people in the business community recognize … that [having] John Edwards in the White House, whether it’s as No. 1 or No. 2, should be a great concern.”
The group has never made a presidential endorsement, recognizing that it must work with whoever wins.
Edwards represented victims of medical malpractice during a 20-year career in North Carolina before running for Congress in 1998. A large proportion of the contributions to his presidential campaign have come from lawyers and law firms.
The Chamber recently has opposed trial lawyers on a trio of congressional debates over tort reform, including efforts to curb class-action lawsuits, move asbestos litigation to federal court and place limits on medical malpractice verdicts.
“I don’t think ... that we would be … able to allow a candidate that supports and gets all his financing from that group of people to go unchallenged,” Donohue said in the Bisnow.com interview.
Meanwhile, the Chamber appears to be taking a much different tack with another well-known trial lawyer running for office this year, Florida Senate candidate Mel Martinez (R).
Despite having once headed the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, Martinez — who also was secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — has cultivated a pro-business reputation in recent years. The Chamber hosted a meet-and-greet luncheon for him last Wednesday.
The Chamber can have substantial sway in the contests it chooses to enter. This year, it already has endorsed over 200 pro-business congressional candidates.
Of those, it plans to devote substantial funds to three dozen close races. In past years, much of the money has bought television issue ads. The Chamber spent $25.5 million on issue ads in the 2000 election cycle, according to a report by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
But the recently enacted campaign finance law, as well as a general change in strategy, has led the Chamber to shift its focus this year to grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts.
A spokeswoman for the Edwards campaign, Kim Rubey, downplayed the significance of the Chamber’s potential involvement. “More special interests backing Bush isn’t breaking news,” she said. “Senator Edwards is very proud of the work he did representing families against special interests, HMOs and drug companies.”
More than half of Edwards’s campaign contributions — $8.1 million of $14.5 million received through the end of 2003 — have come from lawyers and law firms, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The amount specifically from the trial bar could not be determined.
By contrast, leading Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) received 12.3 percent of his donations from law-related sources. Bush’s proportion was 5.3 percent, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) came in at 3.6 percent.
In Florida, Martinez has come under fire for his background as a Democratic trial lawyer. One of Martinez’s opponents in the Republican primary, former Rep. Bill McCollum, recently released an ad likening Martinez to Edwards and calling them “two liberal trial lawyers.”
But a fundraiser associated with the Martinez campaign said that he expected that the campaign’s finance data, when it is released in mid-April, would show overwhelming support from business interests and no support from organized trial lawyer groups.
The Chamber has been helpful to the Martinez campaign, although it has indicated no formal position on him. At last Wednesday’s luncheon, the candidate met executives from some of the group’s largest member companies.
An executive from United Parcel Service present at the luncheon already has contributed to the campaign, the fundraiser said. Others are planning to attend a fundraiser at the home of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham next month.
And in perhaps the most convincing indication of support from the anti-trial-lawyer faction, Stanton D. Anderson, the head of the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, which spent $8.1 million in the first half of last year lobbying to enact tort reform, recently sent the Martinez campaign a personal check for $2,000, the fundraiser said. |
