Wal-Mart caught in politics
WASHINGTON -- There is no candidate. There are no ballots. There won't be an election day. And yet it may be the hottest, highest-stakes political contest in America today.
It's the campaign against Wal-Mart.
A year-old effort to force the nation's number one private employer to change its business practices has evolved into a Washington-style brawl: tens of millions of dollars spent by Republican and Democratic political consultants using polling, micro-targeting, ads, e-mails, direct mail, grass-roots organizing, and strategic ''war rooms" to ply their trade in the corporate world.
Their fight involves some of society's most vexing trends, including the rising cost of healthcare, the painful realities of globalization, and the waning relevance of organized labor.
''Our opponents have organized the likes of a political campaign against us," said Bob McAdam, vice president of corporate affairs at Wal-Mart. ''It would be nonsense for us not to respond in a similar fashion."
Wal-Mart's main opponents are the Service Employees International Union, which started Wal-Mart Watch, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which funds a separate campaign that's called WakeUpWalMart.com.
After failing to organize employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with traditional tactics, the unions decided to use modern campaign and communications methods to drag the company into the public square and try to shame it into change.
WakeUpWalMart.com is run by Paul Blank, political director for Howard Dean's 2004 Democratic presidential campaign, and Chris Kofinis, a former political professor who helped draft retired Army General Wesley Clark into the same race.
Among those lined up against the company at Wal-Mart Watch are Jim Jordan, campaign manager for 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, and Terry Holt, a spokesman for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.
''Wal-Mart is giving capitalism a bad name," Holt said. ''It's lost touch with its small-town roots and has become a company that is depending on corporate welfare . . . and an all-too-cozy relationship with China."
Under fire, Wal-Mart turned to Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Bush-Cheney political director Terry Nelson, and several Democrats, among them civil rights leader Andrew Young and campaign strategist Leslie Dach.
''We were being attacked. We wanted to hire people who knew how to respond," said Wal-Mart's McAdam, formerly a GOP aide on Capitol Hill and political strategist for the tobacco industry.
At stake for Wal-Mart is the future course of a company with $312.4 billion in sales in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31. Its stock has fallen 20 percent during the past two years, and the company has had trouble sustaining its historically high profit growth.
Wal-Mart denies that the union-backed campaign has hurt its bottom line. But the company sees the effort as a threat.
After Maryland's Legislature passed a labor-backed bill requiring companies -- Wal-Mart in particular -- to spend more on workers' health insurance, the company came out with improvements in its healthcare coverage.
Amid criticism, Wal-Mart also has made plans to:
Then there is Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The potential 2008 presidential candidate served on Wal-Mart's board for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. Just two years ago, the New York Democrat called her time on the board ''a great experience in every respect."
But now she does not want anything to do with the company. Her reelection campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from Wal-Mart, citing ''serious differences with current company practices."
To this, Wal-Mart officials acknowledged that the company has become a political issue -- at least for Democratic candidates who need labor's money and organizing might.
''While not commenting specifically on Mrs. Clinton, apparently there are those who want to appeal to union leaders regardless of what office they're running for and whether they want to do what union leaders want done," McAdam said.
