Guertin: NFIB represents partisan interests

Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Jed Guertin, a resident of Montpelier.

Brian Dubie has been using his NFIB endorsement heavily in his campaign. But, what is the NFIB?

Is the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB, locally NFIB/VT) really a non-partisan organization representing small business, or is it a partisan conservative lobbying group?

The NFIB has been around Vermont for several years, quietly reaping the benefits of being a locally run part of a national, “non-partisan,” operation. Now in this election year the NFIB has been putting its real agenda in place.

The NFIB started out as a non-partisan organization, but between 2000 and 2004 something changed. Its membership dropped by almost half, from 600,000 to 300,000 members. This dramatic drop in membership has been attributed to a conservative/Republican takeover. By 2004, the NFIB was showing its conservative flavor: At a time when all the national polls showed small business owners having only a slight (53/47) bias toward Bush, NFIB members, in their own poll, had an extreme (95/5) bias toward Bush. By 2007 the Republican Party was calling for tort reform. NFIB members were polled and again 95 percent said tort reform was a critical priority, yet national polls of the small business community indicated that tort reform wasn’t even on their radar.

Here are few important facts about the NFIB from the best available figures. NFIB/VT has used three different membership figures in the last few months (1,500/1,800/2,000).  Giving them the benefit of doubt, I used the 2,000 figure.

This is not an impressive representation of small businesses.

Membership lists of NFIB and NFIB/VT are not readily available. I came across some information that suggests the NFIB is an organization funded by much more than small businesses. Nationally, the names Walmart and Exxon/Mobil have shown up. In Vermont, members appear to include the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, Entergy, Vermont Yankee and VELCO. It should be noted that the Vermont NFIB chapter head is also the lobbyist for Vermont Energy Partners, an organization that to my understanding is now mainly funded by Entergy.

The success of the NFIB political campaign depends on the perceived legitimacy of their legislative voting record ratings and the methodology they used to produce the ratings. However the ratings have some serious limitations. Here’s how it worked:

1. In the Vermont Senate, NFIB defined nine issues (bills) as critical to small businesses.
2. NFIB determined whether a vote for or against was in the best interest of small businesses.
3. Each item is worth 11 points.
4. A vote in accord with NFIB’s choice = 11 points, not in accord =0.  It’s an all or nothing methodology based on the issue’s perceived impact on small business.

For example, one of the bills was about decommissioning Vermont Yankee. A YES vote was for decommissioning, a NO vote against decommissioning. The NFIB pro small business choice was a NO vote.

Just think of all the issues the legislators had to process before making their Vermont Yankee decision – the impact on electric costs, the loss of jobs, the radioactive leaks, reliability of the plant, Entergy’s consistent lack of honesty, the unreliability of the Public Service Department, etc. Yet, NFIB distilled it down to one marginal issue – its supposed impact on small business.

This is also how Peter Shumlin, a successful Vermont small businessman, gets a zero rating, effectively labeled 100% against small business??? A well designed and implemented rating system would have taken all these issues into consideration. But, we’re talking about a political agenda.

The NFIB appears to be a focused, tightly run and well-financed conservative political “nonprofit” entity. Everything goes through the Nashville, Tenn., office and is then filtered back to state organizations. The funding/advertising arm, called the Save America’s Free Enterprise Trust, has funds in excess of $6 million — the source of the current ads.

Here are a few final and current facts.

1. All 64 Vermont NFIB/VT-endorsed candidates are Republicans. 100 percent.
2. Nationally, more than 98 percent of the NFIB endorsed candidates are Republicans. The NFIB still calls itself “non-partisan.” Makes you wonder what a partisan group would look like to them.
3. NFIB has pulled this same stunt in very state in the Union. The process is cloned and tightly controlled – the format, wording, timing, promotion are all the same. The differences are only the names of the legislators and the bills chosen.

Check it out for yourself. On the Internet, search for “NFIB/VT voter rating” or go to the NFIB web site and do the same. Do the same for any other state and you’ll find a document that looks virtually identical to Vermont’s. I did this with every state in New England, New York, Tennessee, Alabama and a few others. They’re all the same.

The NFIB is a perfect example of the heavy-handed, outside partisan political influence in politics that Vermonters of every stripe deplore.

This is a good reason for Peter Shumlin to be proud of his NFIB anti-business rating. It’s also good reason for Brian Dubie to be embarrassed by his NFIB endorsement.