The Democrats Are Coming!

Tweet

The Democratic Party's new Small Business Council is getting its act together and taking it on road. Beginning in June, the council will sponsor a series of local "town meetings" intended to solicit the advice, ideas, and opinions of people in small businesses around the country. The plan calls for a band of roving Democrats to travel from town to town, attending meetings organized by local members of the Small Business Council. The meetings will feature open sessions on topics ranging from capital formation to international trade, followed by a speech from a Democratic official active in the small business arena.

Appearances notwithstanding, organizers insist that the meetings will be "nonpartisan." The purpose, they say, is not to recruit small businesspeople to the Democratic cause, but rather to find out their needs and concerns. "We want people to express what they think the Democrats should be doing," says Rob Bender, executive director of the Small Business Council. "In a sense, we're going to be using them to help us formulate our small business program."

The idea for the town meetings comes from the ubiquitous Bill Nourse (see INC., November 1982, page 59), the West Nashville hardware store owner who has helped lead the charge of small businesspeople into politics over the past three years. Nourse had participated in similar town meetings in Tennessee, organized in connection with state small business conferences. "They were incredibly productive," he says. "So I took the idea to Rob Bender. I said, 'Why not go nationwide with this?' "

Nourse sees the meetings as a way for the Democrats to take the pulse of the mall business community, find out which issues are important, and come up with practical programs addressed to those concerns. Along the way, he hopes to strengthen the hand of the Small Business Council within the party. "We need credibility," he says. "We need the strength to win battles behind closed doors. Think of the power of being able to say, 'Here's the consensus of what small businessmen all over the country are thinking."

In effect, Nourse and Bender, among others, are trying to build a visible small business constituency within the Democratic Party that is comparable to the labor and big-business constituencies that already exist. To succeed, they must pull off a neat trick. First, they must attract traditionally Republican small businesspeople to their town meetings -- which involves convincing them that the meetings will be truly "nonpartisan." Then they must turn around and persuade the Democratic party to adopt a program responsive to small business needs. Finally, they must go back and convince the small business community that the Democrats really have its best interests at heart.

That is an awful lot of persuading to do, and Nourse knows it won't be easy. "We have no illusions," he says. "It's going to be a tough, uphill fight."

On the other hand, he can draw some encouragement from recent surveys that suggest that the Republicans, and President Reagan in particular, may be losing ground in the small business community. The latest poll of small business executives conducted by Walter E. Heller International Corp.'s Institute for Small Business, for example, indicates a sharp increase in those who consider the Reagan Administration's policies "nonsupportive" of small business and a sharp decline in confidence in the President's leadership. Of course, the trend could well reverse itself if the economy makes a strong recovery.

In any case, Nourse believes that the Democratic Party can win significant numbers of small businesspeople to its cause. "You know, I was a typical small businessman, never active in politics. I just assumed I was a Republican," he says. "But when you get involved, you go through a metamorphosis. You realize that you have more in common with Democrats."

Nourse thinks that others will draw the same conclusion, whether he tries to recruit them or not. With that hope in mind, he and Bender will take their traveling, nonpartisan road show to New England in June, move down the coast, and radually make their way along the highways and byways of America.