New tactics alter flavor of lobbying

WASHINGTON - -- For decades, the National Restaurant Association was the poster child for the unbreakable alliance between Washington's business lobbyists and the Republican Party.

One of the most potent grass-roots lobbying groups in the capital, the group helped kill Bill Clinton's health care plan, bankrolled Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution, and year after year helped drive stakes through such Democratic proposals as raising the minimum wage and protecting the environment.

But something strange happened after Barack Obama became president: Courted and cosseted by savvy White House political operatives, the National Restaurant Association and some other business powerhouses changed their stripes.

The "other NRA," for example, ousted its conservative leader and installed a more pragmatic chief executive. It began to take meetings with once-hated Democratic politicians, including White House aides. And when the titanic battle over health care began, the restaurant group broke ranks with such unreconstructed business groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and declined to attack the White House.

The shift is a tale of changing political tides, the ultimate practicality of business executives and of a successful Obama White House effort to reach out for allies among traditional adversaries. And it's beginning to change the balance of power inside the Beltway.

The new strategy embraced by the restaurant group and others such as the Business Roundtable has allowed them access to Democratic decision-makers and a chance to influence or at least mitigate proposed policy changes.

"The political landscape changed so dramatically over a short period of time that we had to make a decision on how to respond," said Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, who is on the board of the national group. "Are we going to lob bombs from afar and understand that return fire will kill us? Or should we try to mitigate legislation that is a relative certainty?"

The restaurant association began to shed its conservative aura in late 2007, installing Dawn Sweeney, a longtime Washington player known for pragmatism, bipartisanship and marketing savvy, as its first woman CEO.

The organization continued to meet with conservatives, but it also began talking with consumer activists, Democratic party leaders and White House officials.

"What we are trying to do is see how we can be at the table," Sweeney said. "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu."

When the health care battle came to a boil this fall, the National Restaurant Association was among those that broke ranks with such business groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, declining to join their "Start Over" coalition that has launched an advertising campaign against the reform bills in key states.

The decision, along with those made by the drug industry and a handful of other business trade associations, helped Democrats keep their initiative moving. It also gave the National Restaurant Association access to the White House and to Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, allowing them to be heard on key issues, such as whether small business would be exempted from some of the new law's requirements.

On the eve of the Senate's health care vote Dec. 23, Sweeney entered the White House gates to meet with, among others, the Obama family's personal chef, Sam Kass.

Sweeney, who represents the interests of the megachains such as McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts, also discussed first lady Michelle Obama's plans for combating childhood obesity.

"We should play a leading role," she said.

She took a similar approach, dubbed "mitigation and damage control" by members of her board, to consumer activists' demands that the health care bill include provisions on restaurant nutrition labeling.

Sweeney and her board members met with food safety activists at the Center for Science in the Public Interest to hammer out a precedent-setting industry-consumer deal on the issue. The compromise, forwarded to the House and Senate health committees, provided that calorie information be printed on menus, but more detailed information such as fat and cholesterol content would be available on request.

Sweeney has not endorsed the recently passed Senate bill, but she is able to tell her members that the excesses of earlier proposals were dropped thanks in part to the restaurant group's participation. And she notes that effective lobbying killed efforts to tax soft drinks, one of the most profitable items for restaurants, in the name of reducing obesity.

Her new friends at the White House have helped provide access to the Commerce Department, where Sweeney is in the early stages of developing a proposal that would have likely stunned her predecessors: using stimulus funds to encourage Americans to dine out and support the restaurant industry.

Sweeney makes the case that "restaurants are major providers of jobs, employing 13 million individuals in restaurants nationwide," making it the second-largest private sector employer in the country, after health care.

In November, Sweeney was one of 13 trade association chiefs invited to meet with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama's health care czar. Sweeney laid out a handful of specific fixes that could win her organization's support.

Among them: Exempt small businesses from the law's penalties, change the calculation for defining part-time workers to allow for the seasonal fluctuations in the industry, and raise the minimum time allowed for complying with paperwork and registration requirements.

Those proposals alarm labor advocates, who see them as a way for employers to avoid providing benefits to workers.

Yet, most were adopted, at least partially, in the Senate bill, and Sweeney hopes for further gains when House and Senate leaders meet to reconcile their meetings.

Neil Trautwein of the National Retail Federation credits the Obama White House for tactical brilliance in finding ways to split the business community on health care.

"The genius of the administration's approach was to set broad principles and allow Congress to fill in the details," he said. "This immediately divided the focus of outside groups and ... it delayed development of a unified opposition."

Source:chicagotribune.com/

Lobbying on in BJP for vacant positions

The newly elected chairman of BJP Parliamentary Party L.K. Advani blesses Sushma Swaraj after she was appointed as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha on Friday.






Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party were on Friday lobbying hard with Ms. Sushma Swaraj, the newly anointed Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, for several positions that are lying vacant.

After Mr. Jaswant Singh resigned as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the most prestigious parliamentary committee, several senior MPs have made it known they would like to be considered for the position. With Ms. Swaraj’s elevation, the position of chairman of the standing committee attached to the Ministry of External Affairs that was held by her is also vacant.

In the parliamentary party, all positions are to be filled afresh, including the positions of Deputy Leaders of Opposition in the two Houses, till now occupied by Sushma Swaraj in the Lok Sabha and S.S. Ahluwalia in the Rajya Sabha.

For the deputy’s post in the Lok Sabha, the buzz is around the names of Ananth Kumar and Gopinath Munde. With the party becoming “Brahmin-heavy”— Mr. Jaitley and Ms. Swaraj and the next party chief, Nitin Gadkari, are Brahmins. On that score Mr. Kumar, also a Brahmin, is likely to lose out to Mr. Munde with his backward caste credentials.

On Saturday, the BJP Parliamentary Board is expected to announce its “choice”— Nitin Gadkari — for the position of next party chief at the end of tenure of Rajnath Singh. He will take charge by mid-January or February and set up his own team of office-bearers, for which hectic lobbying has begun.

Keywords: Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, lobbying

Source:beta.thehindu.com/

Engaged in the Garden State

I typically stick to discussion of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but with all of the recent marriage events, I feel I can’t sit quiet much longer. Jo and I will not legally marry until DADT is repealed; therefore, marriage has not been my top issue. But let’s face it, most of us dream of walking down the aisle to wedded gay bliss; and we may never get the full legal chance.

I have an old friend in New Jersey who was engaged long before there was even a civil union option. The Garden State was due to vote on gay MARRIAGE this past Thursday, yet they pushed back the vote.

TJ was filling me in on the details over a nice little Facebook chat. I thought we could all learn a something from her story, and I’ve asked her to share with you…

Guest Blog: Engaged in the Garden State
By TJ Lock

I’m pretty confident that most would say I’ve led a charmed life. Born and raised in a perfect little nook on the Jersey Shore (just north of the fist pumping and hair gel), I arrived from a definition nuclear family. My coming out story was about as close to a fairy tale as you’d expect. There were some small bumps along the way, but only because I didn’t know how to properly stand up for myself yet.

Fast forward to nine years and a handful of lesbian relationships later- we have a politically obsessed, civil rights on the brain, bitter and frustrated, open-endedly engaged, TG.

So what’s it like being gay and engaged in New Jersey?

My fiance, Sasha, is probably one of the most independent and opinionated people I know. Surprisingly, though, when it comes to politics she is a little apathetic. This works out pretty well for us. I do the research and form my opinions and then I rant them to her. Some of them stick and later on I hear her repeat them with conviction and I get all warm and fuzzy inside.

For a year or two we were happy to just be engaged. We got diamond rings for each other and talked about bits and pieces of what our wedding would be like. We continuously deflected all of the questions about setting the date with the reply of “we want to wait until its legal”. After a while, some bitterness set in and our responses began to get more and more negative. We’ve even watched (straight) friends get engaged after us and marry before us.

A couple of years ago, New Jersey made a peace offering by legalizing civil unions for same sex couples. We opted not to get one. To me, right from the get go it reeked of second class treatment. My thoughts were: If it is equal to a marriage, then why not call it a marriage? We all know that separate but equal doesn’t work, so I’ll save my Brown v. Board of Ed. rant for another time and place.

The NJ Civil Union Act was enacted in February of ‘07 and within a year the Civil Union Review Commission deemed it as a failure. One point for me. Still no marriage for me, though.

In the time since this failure was noted, a Same Sex Marriage Bill has been written and just this past week was given the go ahead by the Senate Judiciary Board to be pushed through to an official Senate vote. The vote was supposed to take place on Thursday, December 10th, but was postponed at the last minute. Sponsors of the bill believed that they didn’t have adequate vote support in the Senate for it to pass.

Next month, New Jersey will have a new, Republican governor, Chris Christie. Mr. Christie publicly opposes gay marriage and has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. Our lame duck governor, Jon Corzine, has on the other hand, vowed to sign the gay marriage bill when and if it lands on his desk. So here we are, with 2009 winding down and Governor Corzine’s reign coming to an end, lobbying our gay fannies off to get the NJ State Senators to understand that equality is essential all within the next 3 weeks. The alternative? Four more years of engagement. I think I’ll lobby.

Source:lezgetreal.com/