“Washington-iziation of Wal-Mart”
Posted on July 25, 2005 by webteam
With all the political news
swirling out there today – the Supreme Court, Karl Rove, China – the
New Republic is currently featuring Wal-Mart as its main topic on its
Web site. Regular Wal-Mart Watchers will be
pleased to see some of their favorite characters from Down
& Out in Bentonville
included in the New Republic’s look at Wal-Mart’s Washington lobbying
operation.
The
full text of Clay Risen’s article is available to subscribers-only, but
some excerpts are below:
Wal-Mart
Comes to Washington: Store Lobby…Until recently, the battle
against Wal-Mart–from unionization drives to anti-sprawl
initiatives–took place exclusively at the local level. But, during the
last year, it has matured into a national fight. And the campaign
hasn’t just gone national–it’s gone to Washington. Virtually
overnight, both sides have been taken over by campaign-hardened
staffers and Beltway superlobbyists, who deploy tactics taken straight
from political playbooks even as they insist that the Wal-Mart battle
is still a “grassroots” effort. The “Washington-ization” of Wal-Mart,
in turn, is transforming the company into a campaign issue–one that
will likely figure heavily in the national elections in 2006 and 2008.
…Instead of disparate,
store-specific drives, [the UFCW] would concentrate its efforts in
Washington, using Internet-age campaign tactics and drawing staff from
the city’s abundance of savvy politicos. In April, the union announced
Wake Up Wal-Mart, a Washington-based campaign led by Blank, Howard
Dean’s former political director. (Chris Kofinis, the former deputy
policy director for Wesley Clark’s primary campaign, is its
communications adviser.) Meanwhile, at the same time Wake Up Wal-Mart
appeared, the Service Employees International Union (seiu) helped to
launch another effort, Wal-Mart Watch. Like Wake Up Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart
Watch has attracted a coterie of bold-faced campaign names, including
John Kerry’s former campaign manager Jim Jordan (officially a partner
at the lobby shop Westhill Partners), former Democratic Senatorial
Campaign Committee Executive Director Andrew Grossman, and the former
deputy director of research at the Democratic National Committee (DNC),
Tracy Sefl. (The AFL-CIO, which is the umbrella organization for both
UFCW and SEIU, has its own Wal-Mart operation, run, until recently, by
Ellen Moran, a DNC veteran.)…Partly in response to
growing public
antipathy and the change in union strategy, [Wal-Mart] has greatly
expanded its
Washington office. It has hired several new lobbyists and replaced its
government affairs chief with Lee Culpepper, the former head lobbyist
for the National Restaurant Association and a key player in backroom
GOP politics (among other things, he was instrumental in organizing
support for John Thune, the conservative Republican who unseated Tom
Daschle). And it has quickly developed a network of well-connected
outside lobbyists; according to lobbying disclosure records, it has
retained more than a dozen of them, including two Bush pioneers, two
former staffers for House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, Tennessee
Representative Harold Ford Jr.’s former chief of staff, and George
Koch, father of George W. Bush’s brother-in-law.The company has boosted its
campaign spending as well. Giving about 80 percent to Republicans, it
laid out $1.67 million in the 2004 cycle, more than triple its 2000
spending, and far more than other Fortune 500 leaders. “It gives you an
idea that they’re a big player,” Noble says.What’s more, the Walton
family,
which still controls about 40 percent of the company, has quickly
become a major force in Washington in its own right. The Waltons gave
millions to conservative candidates and groups in 2004, including $2.6
million to Progress for America, a GOP 527 organization. Aubrey
Rothrock III, a partner at star lobbying shop Patton Boggs, works for
both the Walton family and Wal-Mart. Overall, according to USA Today,
the Walton family spent $3.2 million on lobbying, candidates, and
conservative causes during the 2004 cycle, more than twice what it
spent in the previous two elections combined. Notes Noble, the family
and company “are often seen as a package. Together with Wal-Mart, they
are quite a formidable machine.”With both sides pursuing
Washington strategies–and with Washington politicos starting to take
notice–it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Wal-Mart will become an
issue in the next elections. For one thing, as Kerry found last year,
the company makes a great stand-in for the issues that many Democrats
want to focus on: Health care, wages, and offshore outsourcing. “They
will be held up as bad guys in ’06 on particular issues,” says Jennifer
Palmieri, a 2004 presidential campaign veteran now with the Center for
American Progress. “They’re Democrats’ best talking point on why we
need more progressive policy.”
