Article by WashingtonStateWire. Published on Sunday, October 02, 2011 EST.

Who represents their stakeholders better – unions or businesses?

It’s no secret that one of the great frustrations of the Republican party is that the people they consider ‘theirs’ – meaning business – continue to give to the other side.  Some argue that, especially in a blue state like Washington, businesses are just trying to maintain access to those individuals rather than trying to elect politicians who will vote with them a majority of the time.

That may be valid, given that according to the Public Disclosure Commission nearly 41% of all campaign contributions in 2010 came from individuals, just under 20% came from political action committees, and contributions from businesses only amounted to 21.5% of the total.  Even this may overstate the ability of business to influence the outcome of elections, since well organized groups spent over $3.8 million in 2010 either supporting or opposing candidates.  Of all things to call the business community, “well organized” with respect to political spending is NOT on the list.

In contrast, unions, environmental activists, tribes and other supporters of the Democratic Party may have their philosophical differences, but they do a darn fine job of “dancing with the ones that brung ’em.”  While published numbers vary, and statistics can be misused, I feel safe saying that over 90% of the dollars contributed by labor union members that ultimately get used for political purposes end up in the hands of Democratic candidates.

Does this mean that 90% of union members are Democrats?  Certainly not.  Take the Fire Fighters Union – by some estimates, this mostly young, male, one might even say ‘macho’ group is over half Republican.  It’s hard to imagine that any constituency, other than the political parties themselves, is so homogenous that their membership is over 90% in one political camp or the other.

It occurred to me that the reason that businesses don’t align themselves as tightly with the Republicans as their ideological foes do with the Democrats isn’t due to strategic considerations – quite the opposite.  It is that businesses are a better representation of their stakeholders’ political leanings than unions.

After all, a business is nothing more than a group of human beings organized for a particular purpose, in this case, an economic purpose.  Despite the effort to demonize ‘business’ as some kind of alien entity (just Google ‘Corporate Personhood’ for a snoot full of venom on this point), every business reflects the personalities of the people who make up the business.  And this isn’t just the CEO or the Board of Directors, but the employees and sometimes even the customers as well.

Certainly, some opinions are valued more highly than others – no one assumes that the intern should influence the corporate personality as much as the head of the organization.  But people are a spectrum of beliefs, and the political activities of business more accurately reflect that spectrum than the political activities of their opponents.

So I have some advice for business.  You are a better reflection of the public than your opposition.  However, when you average out your “right of center” efforts and the unions “far left” efforts, you come out a little left of left of center.  You can’t win on issues like tax policy, liquor privatization, etc. in a Legislature that is left of left of center.  But you can win at the polls because you are more like the people than your opponents.  And when it comes to the economy, you’re the recognized experts.  If you can come to some kind of consensus on what to do about our current situation, the voters will follow you.

The only other choice is to become the right wing radicals that the unions already claim that you are.

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