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The Fallen Giant

A gang of new Republicans has stomped on the Business Roundtable.

When it was founded 25 years ago, the Business Roundtable was the biggest and baddest lobbying group in Washington. Its 200 chief executives formed the Green Berets of business influence. In the 1970s, when the Roundtable helped defeat a slew of pro-labor laws, its leaders were both industry giants and wily denizens of D.C., such as Irving Shapiro of Du Pont, Reginald Jones of General Electric, John Harper of Alcoa, and Roger Blough of U.S. Steel.

That was then. Now the Roundtable is an also-ran in the rapidly changing world of Washington persuasion. Once a shoo-in for a top-ten slot in any survey of clout in the capital, the Roundtable didn't break into the upper 30 in FORTUNE's recent poll. At No. 33, it was outranked by the likes of the American Trucking Associations and the National Retail Federation. More than 40% of its members are in the lower 250 of the FORTUNE 500, and some of today's most influential companies, like Microsoft and Intel, don't even belong.

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The Roundtable is like a vacuum-tube operation struggling to survive in a digital age. When it began, the Roundtable's powerful CEOs could walk into a few key offices at the White House and the Capitol and fix almost any problem. But the demise of Congress' seniority system, the decline of political parties, and the rise of political-action committees have converted once sheeplike members of Congress into independent contractors. A smattering of chief executives can't gather enough votes to do much of anything.

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Furthermore, most CEOs are too busy restructuring, reengineering, merging, or acquiring to dabble in public policy. As a result, the Roundtable limits its major initiatives to roughly two a year. It lobbied in favor of a balanced budget in 1995 and for fast-track trade authority this year. But more often the positions it takes are pabulum because of lack of consensus among its diverse membership. On global warming, for instance, the Roundtable merely admonished the President "not to rush to policy commitments." In Washington these days, real players choose sides.

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The Roundtable still has one valuable asset: access to cash. But even here, its members divide their giving in a cautiously corporate fashion. Sometimes the funds flow, say, 60% to Republicans and 40% to Democrats--except when it's 60/40 the other way. Such lack of loyalty so incensed GOP leaders that they confronted Roundtable CEOs at a fiery Capitol Hill meeting not long after the 1996 congressional elections. How, in the face of huge spending by the AFL-CIO, could the Roundtable have failed to back the Republicans? Answer: The Roundtable has no control over its members' donations. Complains Ed Gillespie, a former top GOP aide: "They're a wasted resource and just plain irrelevant."

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In contrast, the new elite of business lobbies is decidedly Republican. The so-called GOP Gang of Five includes old standbys like the National Association of Manufacturers (No. 13) and the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. (No. 15). But the ringleaders are hyperactive upstarts such as the National Federation of Independent Business (No. 4), the National Restaurant Association (No. 24), and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (No. 47 overall, but No. 28 among Republicans).

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What these groups have in common is that despite the occasional dalliance with Democrats, especially by the broad-membership Chamber and the NAM, they were unmistakably Republican before being Republican was cool. Now, with the pro-business party firmly in control of Congress, the Gang forms the core of two of the GOP's most secretive and influential inner sanctums: the Thursday Group, which lobbies at the behest of Republican congressional leaders, and the Coalition, which raises millions to help elect GOP lawmakers. The Gang of Five's far-flung members can be counted on to press for almost any Republican cause. "These groups were with us when we were in the wilderness," says Ohio Congressman John Boehner, the fourth-ranking GOPer in the House. "And they're still with us now."





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