It’s universally acknowledged that politicians who seek to get directly involved with business while in office are looking for trouble. As recent cases show, the profit motive can be a corrupting force.
But the experience of mega-retailer Wal-Mart shows that, in fact, companies have as much to fear from getting involved with electoral politics as elected politicians have to fear from getting involved with big business.
In October,Wal-Mart kicked off an effort to encourage its vast army of associates –
1.3 mn strong – to register to vote. This marked an important step for Wal-Mart. Because the company has frequently been criticized by politicians for its labor practices and influence on local retailers, it has generally avoided speaking too loudly in the public sphere.
The campaign itself was fairly anodyne. The company distributed voter registration material, including pre-paid postage, to all associates, and emphasized its policy of giving employees paid time off to vote. Wal-Mart also agreed to distribute materials provided by respected non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters.
Wal-Mart took pains to remain nonpartisan. The company announced it would hire two seasoned, respected political consultants: one Democrat (Charles Baker, a senior adviser to the 2004 Kerry/Edwards campaign) and one Republican (Terry Nelson, who was President Bush’s national political director in 2004).
The problem was that Nelson came with some baggage. He had been implicated in a long-running criminal case in New Hampshire stemming from a 2002 effort by Republican operatives to jam Democrats’ get-out-the-vote calls. And as blogger Josh Marshall noted, ‘He was an unindicted co-conspirator in the political money-laundering case which ended [former house speaker] Tom DeLay’s career.’
This fall, Nelson was one of the producers of a now-infamous advertisement that ran in the heated Tennessee Senate race. The ad, targeting Democrat Harold Ford, an African-American, featured a bare-shouldered white actress who spoke of meeting Ford at a Playboy party and urged him to call her. Even Ford’s Republican opponent denounced the ad, which was widely condemned as borderline racist and below the belt. Nelson’s ad was a PR disaster for Wal-Mart, and he was forced to sever his ties with the company.
All those who feared that Wal-Mart’s greater involvement in politics would somehow corrupt the electoral process had it backwards. In this day and age, it’s politics that has the potential to sully the reputation of Wal-Mart and other companies that get too closely involved with the shady world of the professional election industry.
Daniel Gross writes the ‘Moneybox’ column for Slate.
