From the WSJ Opinion Archives
POTOMAC WATCH
How Business Could Make Gephardt Speaker
Lobbyists hedge their bets on the House.
Rich Rodriguez is like a lot of other tax-cutting, pro-business Republicans running for Congress this year.
Business is playing hard in his California Central Valley district, raising money and running TV ads. The realtors, the homebuilders, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are all putting credibility and cash on the line.
There's just one small catch: They're all riding to the rescue of his opponent, 10-year Democratic incumbent Cal Dooley.
"That's a little frustrating to me," says Mr. Rodriguez, a 46-year-old TV broadcaster who has nonetheless made himself one of the GOP's best chances to gain a Democratic seat. Other Republicans are less restrained. GOP consultant Ed Gillespie refers to the Beltway business class as "rope sellers," recalling Lenin's famous quip that capitalists like to sell the rope they're hung with.
Business lobbyists prefer to think of it as hanging insurance, or, more precisely, Gephardt insurance. If Democrats take back the House on Nov. 7, Republicans won't be able to help much. So business wants some political protection from potential Speaker Dick Gephardt and his merry band of Robin Hoods (liberal committee chairmen Henry Waxman, George Miller, David Obey, etc.). That means getting into bed with other Democrats who may be grateful enough to respect them in the morning after Election Day.
There's a catch here too, though. Republicans have a mere six-seat majority. If business rescues too many Democrats, it could provide just enough votes to hand Mr. Gephardt the speaker's gavel. All the more so because labor is a wholly owned Gephardt subsidiary (or vice versa) that rarely backs Republicans in close races. Thus could Big Business end up putting the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney back in power. So long, free trade. Hello, striker replacement.
"It's a Catch 22," admits Bill Lane, the estimable lobbyist for Caterpillar Inc. and a major Dooley backer. "You need a [current Republican Speaker] Denny Hastert to have a pro-business Congress. But you need some pro-business Democrats so Denny can succeed."
This last point is a lesson the business class claims to have learned since the GOP won control in 1994. It takes bipartisan coalitions to pass a business agenda, they say, especially on trade and regulation. And whoever wins the House this year will control it with only a narrow majority. So business needs friends on both sides of the aisle.
And at least in Mr. Dooley it seems to have one. He's ringleader of the New Democrat Coalition, a band of 65 House Democratic centrists. Mr. Dooley led the fight this year for China and African trade, as well as bankruptcy and financial reform.
"Cal Dooley not only votes the right way, he tries to change the minds of people within his own party," says Johanna Schneider, spokeswoman for the Business Roundtable, the Fortune 500 lobby.
The BRT is spending $6 million this year to re-elect 35 incumbents, including 12 House Democrats. Its pro-Dooley TV spot shows a baby's face and praises the Democrat for backing "an America opening foreign markets around the globe, spreading peace and prosperity." Schmaltzy, but still helpful.
BIPAC, a business fund-raising bellwether, has called the Dooley seat one of its top three races this year. And business PACs may pour in as much as $1 million before it's over.
Mr. Dooley thinks this kind of business support is precisely why the GOP has made him a 2000 piñata. "We've been successful in creating a pro-growth Democratic movement, which has allowed us to poach on domain that has been solely that of Republicans," he says. "I make their life a little more difficult."
He's right about that, but he also may be too culturally left for a district that is 55% Hispanic and trending GOP. He supports partial-birth abortion and seems to take dictation from the teacher unions. He's also strangely inconsistent on tax policy, voting to repeal the estate tax but not the marriage penalty, the latter on grounds that it favors the rich.
But the marriage tax "affects 44,000 married people in this district," says his opponent, Mr. Rodriguez. "I ask people to 'raise your hand if you think you're rich.' It works every time." The Republican has also won the Farm Bureau endorsement, a plum in this agricultural region, over water and immigration policy. Mr. Dooley fought for more H1-B visas, a kind of migrant-worker program for cash-rich Silicon Valley. But he opposes the equivalent for immigrant farm workers, perhaps because the United Farm Workers union endorsed him.
The big question for both Mr. Dooley and business is whether he can ever sway enough House Democrats. Mr. Dooley thinks he can, arguing that "as New Democrats gain in Congress, the face of the Democratic caucus won't change but their positions will change."
Good luck convincing Barney Frank. When Mr. Dooley ran for his party's House leadership in 1998, liberals routed him 124-81. And some of his own ballyhooed New Democrats--notably Michigan's Debbie Stabenow and Kansan Dennis Moore--have turned out to be imposters.
There's little evidence that most House Democrats have learned anything from their six wilderness years. Business had better hope it doesn't catch itself in its own "Catch-22."
Mr. Gigot is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
