Tapping deep pockets of support

Mass. corporate bigwigs contribute more than $1m to Obama, McCain coffers

Sitting next to presidential candidate Barack Obama at a private lunch in 2006 at the UMass Club in downtown Boston closed the deal for Bob Sherman, comanaging partner at the Greenberg Traurig law firm. They chatted not about politics but about the difficulties of balancing the demands of work and family.

"It was two people talking about shared experience and problems," recalled Sherman, who is now a member of Obama's national finance committee. "I made an instant connection."

Mike Crossen, partner at the Boston law firm Rubin and Rudman and national cochairman of finance for the John McCain campaign, said he was humbled when McCain - a former American prisoner of war in North Vietnam - called to thank Crossen's wife for the couple's work on his campaign.

"How can you say no to this guy?" asked Crossen, who joined the McCain campaign in March 2007. "I get that Massachusetts and Boston are fairly liberal places so you'd expect most people to be with the Democrats. But we have tremendous support here."

While both major presidential hopefuls are drawing support from the Massachusetts business community, the roster of pin-striped partisans lining up behind Obama is longer. The Democratic senator from Illinois has a more than two-to-one edge here from business givers, pulling in $786,143 between January 2007 and July 2008 from Massachusetts contributors with job titles such as chief executive, owner, president, senior vice president, and executive director, according to Federal Election Commission data. McCain, his Republican opponent, had amassed $357,026 from donors with those titles.

The gap among business givers is narrower than Obama's nearly five-to-one lead in overall contributions from Massachusetts - $11.2 million compared with $2.4 million for McCain - and reflects the leanings of a state that has voted reliably Democratic in presidential elections. In the primary here, neither was the first choice of the majority of their party's voters, who favored New York Senator Hillary Clinton and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

McCain, a senator from Arizona, has made inroads in the Massachusetts business community, even in sectors such as high technology where Obama has gained strong support nationally. Among McCain's business donors here are Akamai Technologies Inc. executive chairman George Conrades, EMC Corp. cofounder Dick Egan, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Boston Scientific Corp. cofounder Peter Nicholas, and Genzyme Corp. chief executive Henri Termeer.

The list of Obama backers similarly reads like a Who's Who of the business establishment in Boston and the Route 128 beltway. It includes Hill, Holliday chairman emeritus Jack Connors, Boston Celtics managing partner Wyc Grousbeck, MFS Investment Management chairman Bob Pozen, former FleetBoston Financial Corp. chief executive Chad Gifford, and Bain Capital managing director Josh Bekenstein (who previously donated to the primary campaign of Republican Mitt Romney, the former Bain chief).

Many captains of commerce declined to discuss their role in the presidential race. Those that did say they are influenced, like other citizens, by their overall sense of the candidates and their approaches to problems facing the nation, including the business climate and the state of the economy. Sixty-eight percent of potential US voters named the economy and jobs as the most important issues in the presidential race this year versus 20 percent who cited foreign policy, according to a poll Opinion Dynamic conducted for Fox News last week.

Following the time-honored tradition of hedging their bets, effectively assuring they'll be on the winning side, some business leaders, such as insurer Liberty Mutual chief executive Edmund Kelly and technology vendor eIQnetworks chief executive Vijay Basani, have donated to McCain and Obama, federal records show. Neither executive would discuss the reason for dividing his largesse.

Genzyme's Termeer, who gave to McCain, said he also plans to donate to his Democratic rival. "I supported McCain because he was the presumptive nominee of the Republican party," Termeer said. "Now that Obama is in the same position for the Democrats, I will probably support him as well. That tends to be my approach at this early stage."

Termeer, who described both candidates as thoughtful and independent, said he wants to "support the process" but is not yet sure who he'll vote for. The most important factor for him, he said, is to create a climate of stability, in everything from healthcare to the Middle East, so that businesses can innovate and the economy can grow.

For business contributors of all stripes, the motives are varied. The hope of getting the ear of the leader of the free world is certainly one of them. "Your phone calls are more likely to get returned if you contribute to a candidate," suggested Chris Anderson, vice president at Waltham research firm Opinion Dynamics Corp.

Business supporters of both Obama and McCain, ironically, shared the belief that their candidate would shun the partisan rancor that afflicts today's politics and restore cross-party amity to Washington.

"I'm 66 years old, and I can remember a time when Washington was a lot less divisive than it's become," said veteran advertising executive Connors, an Obama fund-raiser in the Boston area. "I remember when Tip O'Neill and Gerry Ford would resolve military appropriations issues over golf. And I felt that Obama was the kind of guy who could get along with a wide range of people."

Former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, now an education consultant and an adviser to McCain on education issues, said, "He has the ability to reach across the aisle. People know he's not an ideologue. And his basic approach to the economy, which is a deep belief in free markets, is attractive to the business community."

Other business barons don't shy away from partisan rhetoric. "The two main issues are the economy and national security, and Obama's on the wrong side of both of them," said Jim Rappaport, chairman of the New Boston Fund real estate investment firm and a McCain fund-raiser. "Obama's already said he's going to raise the capital gains tax, which means jobs are going to be lost or not created."

Healthcare investor and entrepreneur Alan Solomont, chairman of the New England steering committee for Obama, noted Obama told donors gathered in the State Room in Boston this month that he'd raised more money per capita in Massachusetts than in almost any other state.

"There's an unusually strong sense in this region that the last eight years have been a disaster," Solomont said. "We've been digging ourselves a hole, and we better stop digging."

Todd Wallack of the Globe staff also contributed to this article. Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.