Madison area company targets lobbying group
Associated Press, June 27, 2008
By Scott Bauer
One of the state's most powerful lobbying groups has lost a member after a major Madison-area company said it would avoid working with the group's supporters.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's largest business lobbying group, has spent millions of dollars helping conservative candidates get elected.
All of the activity comes as a liberal political group, One Wisconsin Now, has been monitoring WMC's lobbying and political activities on a Web site called WMC Watch.
Its participation in the recent state Supreme Court race won by Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman has drawn the ire of Epic Systems, a medical records company in Verona that doesn't belong to the group. Epic said in a statement it was upset that WMC spent an estimated $1.8 million on that race and may pull business from local vendors who support the group.
Those vendors included Janesville-based J.P. Cullen & Sons, the contractor for Epic's more than $200 million campus expansion.
CEO David Cullen resigned from WMC's board of directors on June 9 and his company dropped its membership.
Cullen did not mention Epic in his resignation letter, which says the move was made based on "corporate structuring and analysis."
But WMC vice president James Buchen said Cullen's action appears to have been motivated by Epic's stance.
"It's hard to draw any other conclusion," Buchen said.
Still, he said the nearly 4,000-member group will not be intimidated from future involvement in political campaigns.
Epic's threat not to work with another company based on an election campaign appears to be the first of its kind nationwide, said Howard Schweber, a professor of law and political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Its action is perilously close to a type of illegal boycott that typically arises in labor disputes, Schweber said.
"We should be uncomfortable when private businesses have enough power to coerce businesses or other organizations to change their political views or affiliations or keep them secret," Schweber said.
All of the activity comes as a liberal political group, One Wisconsin Now, has been monitoring WMC's lobbying and political activities on a Web site called WMC Watch.
Paul Soglin, the liberal former mayor of Madison, also has been meeting with business leaders about their involvement with WMC.
Soglin said he didn't know whether it was better for people like Cullen to quit the board or stay and fight to change the organization.
The priorities listed on WMC's Web site include lowering taxes, reducing government regulation and reforming the legal system.
The group is headed by president James Haney and has a 52-member board of directors that includes high-level representatives from Harley-Davidson, M&I Bank and Wisconsin Power & Light. It has spent millions of dollars in recent campaigns to run unregulated television ads supporting conservative candidates such as Gableman, 2006 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green and Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.
Liberal groups, including teachers union Wisconsin Education Association Council and the Greater Wisconsin Committee, also spent heavily on this spring's state Supreme Court race. But WMC spent the most, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a group that monitors campaign spending.
Epic said in a statement that Supreme Court races need integrity and that was missing in Gableman's defeat of sitting Justice Louis Butler.
"The outcome of the election was never the issue," the statement said. "The issue was the process, which lacked integrity. This is an ethical decision, not a political decision."
Epic's statement was drafted by company leaders including founder and chief executive officer Judy Faulkner. She and her husband have donated to a now defunct political arm of One Wisconsin Now and a host of Democratic candidates, including Gov. Jim Doyle and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.
Epic said the company is politically neutral and consulted with employees and Dane County business leaders with a variety political backgrounds before taking action.
