Wal-Mart Evolves Into Big Political Issue

[cal04]

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 No. 1 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 health care, 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 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 them into change. Both groups have hammered the world's largest retailer about its wages, health insurance, treatment of workers and proclivity for buying non-U.S. goods. Wal-Mart has responded with counterattacks and a multimillion-dollar public campaign to polish its image. On both sides are some of the best political strategists money can buy.

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 Gen. Wesley Clark into the same race.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060423/ap_on_el_ge/wal_mart_politics

[kurth]

1. And in Wal-Mart's corner: Andrew Young & Henry Cisneros!

"Under fire, Wal-Mart hired Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Bush-Cheney political director Terry Nelson and several Democrats, among them civil rights leader Andrew Young, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros and campaign strategist Leslie Dach. Talk about odd bedfellows: Democrats working for Wal-Mart against organized labor..."