Main Street

Chamber vs. Chamber

Your local Chamber of Commerce does not necessarily agree with the political positions taken by and negative ads run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – and increasingly, local Chambers want people to know that. AlterNet has a rundown.

“I now have a standard e-mail saying we’re not a chapter of the U.S. Chamber that I have to send out a couple of times a week,” Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce president Timothy Hulbert told Washington Monthly.

Earlier this month, the Greater Hudson Chamber of Commerce in New Hampshire disaffiliated from the U.S. Chamber. Executive vice-president Jerry Mayotte told the Nashua Telegraph, “We didn’t like the fact that the U.S. Chamber was supporting particular candidates. We don’t think it’s good business practice to do so.”
The nearby Souhegan Valley Chamber of Commerce has never been a member, telling the Telegraph, “We cover a very large area, and in our towns, there is a broad range of political viewpoints.”

“It’s a matter of practicality,” Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce executive director Dan Bookham told the Free Press, a Midcoast Maine newspaper. “We have a diverse membership of 600 people, from Tea-Partiers to Marxists. It would just cause disruptions and arguments in the business community.”

The more extreme the US Chamber of Commerce gets, the more its false claims to representing small business are stripped away. Remember that in 2008, just 19 contributors gave the Chamber a third of its revenue. Remember how it claimed to represent 3 million businesses, but it turned out the real number was more like 200,000. Remember how the Chamber’s position on climate change was too extreme for Exelon, Apple, Pacific Gas & Electric.

The Chamber represents the very biggest and greediest corporations. By contrast, the vice-president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce says:

“This is just suspect,” says Pinto. “The whole activity of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suspect, and their motives are suspect, and their donors are suspect. My donors are not suspect: my donors are Sabrina’s Cafe and Isgro’s Bakery. Our 5,000 members are concerned about trash and crime. That’s the stuff we have to deal with on a daily basis.”

Tags: Chamber of Commerce