The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is expected to drop roughly $50 million on the midterms. Big biz takes on tea party, gently

Big Business swore this would be the year it would wrestle back the soul of the Republican Party from the grip of the tea party.

No more Todd Akins. No more government shutdowns. And no more third-party groups running roughshod over the Washington agenda.


But with primary season looming, the big threats from Big Business appear to be just that.

“They can turn, but they can’t turn quickly,” explained veteran K Streeter Denise Bode, who said business is like an aircraft carrier. “The business community, in general, tends to not make big shifts.”

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Business isn’t taking on sitting lawmakers responsible for grinding legislative business to a halt on Capitol Hill. It isn’t backing many candidates early. And it hasn’t cowed conservative groups fueling challenges to incumbent senators.

The result: Tea party groups are launching rebel campaigns nearly unchallenged by the big money of corporate America. A new breed of conservative is marching up to Congress who doesn’t much care that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of Big Business.

Take the primary race between tea partier Rep. Justin Amash and pro-business challenger Brian Ellis. Ellis isn’t getting much help from industry donors, even though Amash would be a great candidate to defeat, sending a message to the insurgent wing of that party that business means business.

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican lobbyists and operatives said they think business is missing a crucial moment to course correct the Republican Party and make a dent in the Washington gridlock.

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“All of this is just happy talk by the business community,” said one veteran business lobbyist. “First off, they are reluctant to go against incumbents. No. 2, they are reluctant to go against Republican incumbents. If that person is defeated in a primary and a Democrat wins, they view it as a worse position for business.”

And while Republicans are not in serious danger of losing the House this year, and they still have a real shot at retaking the majority in the Senate, the pro-business wing of the party is struggling to maintain its influence inside a party that’s moving further and further away from the principles that defined it for decades.

“We need to take the party away from extremists who don’t believe in the realities of compromise and negotiation,” said David Herro, a Republican donor who doesn’t think the establishment has taken back the reins. “I do think we are making progress — but are not there yet.”

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A prime example of the gap between what business says and what it does is unfolding in the Amash race in Michigan. Establishment operatives identified Amash early as a possible sitting Republican to target, since he has made a name for himself ginning up opposition to party leaders on everything from raising the debt ceiling to government spying.

Downtowners even mapped out a game plan: Find a pro-business challenger with in-state industry support and the deep financial backing of K Street and key trade groups in order to mount a credible campaign against Amash.

But so far, that plan isn’t coming together. Amash pro-business challenger Ellis hasn’t gotten the early backing of the national business community — something that would help raise his profile in the district and also among large donors across the country.

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The Amash race is just one example of what is happening nationwide: Business interests have yet to effectively threaten tea party candidates, according to operatives tracking the 2014 field.

And the resource disparity is striking. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, once the behemoth in outside spending, is expected to drop roughly $50 million on the midterms. But groups supporting tea party interests, like Americans for Prosperity, have already spent more than $28 million since August blasting Democratic House and Senate candidates for their support of Obamacare. In North Carolina alone, AFP could spend more than $27 million to oust Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

Sure, business groups have been adept at launching a public-relations campaign and have had conversations with donors to not contribute to groups, getting plenty of ink on how they won’t take it anymore.

But they’re playing the way they always have — meeting with potential candidates, trying to persuade more business-centric candidates to run and cutting checks to incumbents facing primary challengers.

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In the Amash case, some say business just doesn’t want to go up against him and then lose. Business also doesn’t want to tangle with the DeVos family, a major Michigan political player whose members include the co-founder of Amway.

Meanwhile, the Club for Growth jumped aggressively into the race. The anti-establishment group has dropped six figures on a radio and TV ad attacking Ellis and has bundled $150,000 for Amash in contributions.

Amash chief of staff Will Adams insists he is hardly nervous over business’s plans to knock out his boss.

“It’s not clear to me that all of the rumbling from the so-called establishment is anything more than just talk,” Adams said, noting that none of the downtown groups have said they were going to go after incumbents. “It’s an entirely different operation when you try to take out an incumbent, although I know there are lots of lobbyists and trade association groups unhappy with my boss.”

Even former Rep. Steve LaTourette — a moderate who has been on the front lines of trying to fend off the tea party — is only “in talks” about getting into the Amash race. LaTourette founded the centrist Main Street Advocacy Fund and the Defending Main Street super PAC to fight back against the tea party challenger candidates in the 2014 cycle.

“It’s a question of whether or not you defend your own, and once you cross the line and go get the other guys, you are kind of doing what they are doing,” the Ohio Republican said. “I haven’t gotten there yet.”

There has also been a hesitancy to back even widely supported GOP Senate candidates like North Carolina state House speaker Thom Tillis, who is facing a six-way primary. And, so far, groups have shied away from backing a candidate in the Georgia primary, which many fear could launch a conservative candidate who would be vulnerable to gaffes on the campaign trail.

For all the grousing that business isn’t fighting hard enough, the Chamber’s Scott Reed said the group has gotten active to blunt primary challengers supported by Club for Growth in Idaho. The Club is backing corporate attorney Bryan Smith, who is running against moderate Chamber-endorsed Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson.

“That’s a good fight for us and a fight we’re going to take all the way through May,” said Reed, noting that Simpson has a 94 percent lifetime voting record with the Chamber.

The Chamber has spent $1.3 million in the 2014 cycle on independent expenditures to support Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Simpson and West Virginia House candidate Evan Jenkins, according to federal filings. The group has also endorsed McConnell and the Republican Whip, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

The chamber also took out a $400,000 TV ad buy supporting Florida Republican candidate Dave Jolly, who recently won the primary to take on Democratic candidate Alex Sink in the 13th Congressional District.

The Chamber plans to get active in more primaries once the filing deadlines close and points to its success in Alabama, helping Bradley Byrne defeat conservative real estate developer Dean Young in a November runoff election.

Reed said no one is more aggressive than Chamber President Tom Donohue, and “that’s the attitude that he has brought to this program.”

Meanwhile, big conservative groups are out for blood, ferociously pushing the party further right and fanning the populist flames that terrify business.

And groups are already dumping historic sums into TV advertising, targeting moderate Democrats and planning an aggressive grass-roots campaign to turn out the vote in primaries to take out incumbents like Sens. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Conservative groups like Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks and Club for Growth haven’t been scared by prominent lawmakers’ tough talk, continuing to raise and spend millions of dollars to support candidates mounting primary challenges.

Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said that while Big Business has a money advantage over the grass roots, it is “handicapped by the simple fact that voters don’t like their policies.”

“Big Business already controls the Republican Party. It’s why the Republican leadership regularly sides with the Democrats to increase the debt, raise taxes and fund Obamacare,” Hoskins said. “The corporate community’s control over the party is now being threatened by grass-roots conservatives who oppose their crony capitalist policies and are determined to replace liberal Republicans with true, constitutional conservatives.”

These ideological groups’ tougher tactics are similar to the long-standing aggressive posture of entities like the National Rifle Association.

The gun lobby has made it a practice to take out lawmakers at odds with its agenda, adding to the mystique of its political power. Recently, the NRA helped oust two Colorado Democratic state lawmakers who had supported tighter gun laws. And, in Tennessee, Republican Caucus Chairwoman Debra Maggart lost her state House primary in August 2012 to Courtney Rogers, whom the NRA heavily supported after Maggart didn’t back legislation that would have allowed employees to store guns in vehicles parked in company parking lots even if employers opposed it.

“We do get involved in primary elections,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said. “We are very much focused on winning elections whether primary or general elections because that’s what our members pay us for and that’s what ends up helping preserve the Second Amendment and hunting rights.”

So far, none of the trade associations and companies have mounted an effort to take out any of the numerous tea party-aligned incumbents they blame for the Washington dysfunction.

Dirk Van Dongen, head of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, said it would be “premature” to try to take out incumbents.

“Our focus first is going to be helping to protect incumbents who are challenged in primaries when the incumbents have anywhere from a solid to a stellar record when it comes to business issues and, for that matter, a conservative voting record,” Van Dongen said.