Vaulting into politics again
You may have been as shocked as I was to learn yesterday that Boston’s business community has been feeling neglected by our political leadership.
But that was the inescapable conclusion after reading Steven Syre’s terrific story detailing the formation of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership. The newly minted group of 14 executives is seeking to be a voice on political and economic issues - particularly, it seems, on job creation.
It’s not surprising that the local movers and shakers believe government is not doing a great job on the economy. You don’t need an MBA to see that the Massachusetts economy is not as strong as it was. But the people on this list certainly don’t need to start a club to get their points across.
Their spokesman, apparently, is John Fish of Suffolk Construction Co., quite possibly the most powerful CEO in the city. Its members include Bob Kraft, Jack Connors, and John DesPrez. To call them high-powered would be an understatement bordering on insult.
Aside from running wildly successful businesses, many of them are also politically active. It isn’t like John Fish can’t get a call returned in City Hall or the State House. So it’s a little surprising that they’ve felt the need to band together so formally.
They take their inspiration from the Vault, the legendary group of Boston business leaders that quietly wielded influence for decades, often raising money to support causes it considered worthy. For all its influence, the Vault was widely - and accurately - assailed as anti-Democratic, and its influence waned two decades before it formally disbanded in the late 1990s.
Since then, the business community has been tentative about getting involved in local politics. It gets excited about certain politicians - like Mitt Romney or Charlie Baker - but has not shown the kind of staying power that was the hallmark of the Vault. Perhaps members are simply too busy to try to run city and state government themselves.
Fish seemed to go out of his way to suggest that the new group, whose members are not known for their modesty, has modest goals. They just want to get some jobs created, ideally in outposts like Springfield, New Bedford, and Fall River. They know times are tough. They just want to lend some expertise.
Nothing wrong with any of that. Still, no matter how diplomatically they try to spin it, I can’t get away from the impression that they don’t think state government understands business. They have signed on a Patrick administration refugee, Dan O’Connell, to chair the group.
This is at least partly about filling a vacuum. But they may find that it takes more than clout or corporate success to take on a deep recession. Romney famously claimed that he would go to the heads of industry, sell them on Massachusetts, and bring in jobs. It didn’t happen, even in a far less troubled economy than this one. Job creation is harder than it looks.
It’s telling, though, that the new group seems to have been greeted with open arms by legislative leaders such as House Speaker Robert DeLeo. Legislators also believe that the Patrick administration has never had a real strategy for creating jobs. But the critics have never presented much in the way of ideas, either.
The business community is always in a quandary when it comes to politics. When it gets involved, its motives are questioned, or rejected as self-serving. When members sit it out, as they have for most of the past decade, they are criticized as too detached. It’s not easy to strike the right tone. According to most of what I’ve read, the Vault is more warmly regarded now than when it was pushing for urban renewal 40 years ago.
The business community wants to be a player again. That impulse may well be healthy. But the road to new jobs in Fall River may be longer than it realizes.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
