THOMAS J. DONOHUE is not one for sweet talk. No sooner had he been named president of the United States Chamber of Commerce in 1997 than he promised to “make life miserable” for Bill Archer, a powerful member of Congress. In the next breath, he suggested that John Sweeney, the union leader, needed to be punched in the mouth.
Nor does Mr. Donohue show much deference to the current president of the United States. The chamber’s headquarters sit across Lafayette Square from the White House, and in May 2010, with unemployment near 10 percent, Mr. Donohue festooned the building’s grand, Corinthian-columned facade with four banners spelling J-O-B-S in red, white and blue block letters, each 23 feet, 4 inches high.
Three years later, the banners are still up. During a recent interview in his office, an expansive suite with black walnut paneling, Mr. Donohue offered a blunt explanation for why he hung the sign facing President Obama’s home. “So he’d have to look at it every day,” he said, lowering his voice to a theatrical growl.
That the head of the chamber would openly relish needling the president of the United States speaks to the wholesale transformation that this 101-year-old trade association has undergone on Mr. Donohue’s very aggressive watch.
Over the last 16 years, Mr. Donohue has used his considerable talent for fund-raising to build the once-struggling chamber into a free-enterprise research outfit, Supreme Court advocacy group and lobbying powerhouse. The chamber’s lobbying operation alone spent $136 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; the next-biggest spender, the National Association of Realtors, spent less than a third of that.
At 74, with his Kennedyesque mop of white hair and a Brooklyn accent, Mr. Donohue comes off as part street fighter, part showman and part head of state. He zips around town in a chauffeured Lincoln and flies around the globe in leased private jets. His salary, $4.9 million in 2011, makes him the second-highest-paid trade association chief in Washington, after the head of the Edison Electric Institute, according to CEO Update, a trade magazine.
“He’s got a little theater in him,” Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman and a onetime amateur actor, says of Mr. Donohue.
“He’s like the Energizer Bunny,” said John W. Bachmann, senior partner at Edward Jones and the past chairman and current treasurer of the chamber’s board, calling Mr. Donohue’s salary a “bargain.”
Yet, while increasing the group’s influence, Mr. Donohue has also plunged the business lobby into partisan politics. That move has infuriated many Democrats, made some local chambers uneasy and produced an embarrassing flop in the last Congressional elections. The chamber spent millions in an unsuccessful bid to wrest the Senate from Democrats; of 12 chamber-backed Republicans, nine lost.
“They got their clock cleaned,” said Mr. Tauzin, an outside adviser to Mr. Donohue. “It was a bold idea. Bold ideas either succeed boldly or fail dismally. In this case, I think Tom would tell you it was a dismal result.”
Not one to back down, Mr. Donohue has ordered his political team to “figure out what happened” and to try harder in 2014, said Scott Reed, his senior political adviser. But publicly, Mr. Donohue is changing the subject. He has always been a man of big ambitions, and his latest is to secure an immigration overhaul, long a priority for business. A deal he cut with Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., on a new visa program for low-skilled workers helped produce a bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in May.
Mr. Donohue rarely mentions President Obama by name, and in casual conversation allows that he had a better relationship with another Democrat, Bill Clinton. (“You get in a big fight with him one morning, and then two days later you’d be over there for a drink.”) He refers to Mr. Obama as “the president across the street” — a phrase that Mr. Reed says is “not a disrespectful thing,” but a reflection of Mr. Donohue’s position.
“That’s the institution speaking,” he said.
Immigration is one issue, at least, on which the chamber and the Obama administration might come together. Businesses of all stripes want the immigration system improved. High-tech companies like Facebook want access to skilled foreign workers. Large-scale farms want to hire Mexican and other migrants. Small businesses want a stronger electronic employment verification system, to shift the burden of making sure workers are legal to the government and away from employers.
It is now up to Mr. Donohue to deliver. And while he waves off talk of retirement — “If you see me in a box with flowers around it, I’m only thinking about retiring” — there is no question that an immigration bill could be a legacy item, a capstone to his long career.
WHILE big, wealthy companies help keep the chamber afloat — “We have to raise $5 million a week to run this place,” Mr. Donohue says — advocating for small business is perhaps more popular with the public. So one morning in April, Mr. Donohue could be found holding court at America’s Small Business Summit, the chamber’s annual gathering for small-business owners, who come to network and lobby their lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Like all things Donohue-related, the meeting was a slick production, with hefty corporate support and Washington-insider speakers like Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Bob Woodward, the Washington Post journalist. In the exhibit hall, representatives of T-Mobile and FedEx handed out trinkets.
Mr. Donohue used his keynote address to exhort the audience to “defend and advance a free-enterprise system” whenever it “comes under attack” and to give politicians in Washington — the words “Republican” and “Democrat” never pass his lips — a piece of their minds.
“It’s about time,” he thundered, “that our leaders in Washington start making the tough decisions that we pay them to make!”
Nor does Mr. Donohue show much deference to the current president of the United States. The chamber’s headquarters sit across Lafayette Square from the White House, and in May 2010, with unemployment near 10 percent, Mr. Donohue festooned the building’s grand, Corinthian-columned facade with four banners spelling J-O-B-S in red, white and blue block letters, each 23 feet, 4 inches high.
Three years later, the banners are still up. During a recent interview in his office, an expansive suite with black walnut paneling, Mr. Donohue offered a blunt explanation for why he hung the sign facing President Obama’s home. “So he’d have to look at it every day,” he said, lowering his voice to a theatrical growl.
That the head of the chamber would openly relish needling the president of the United States speaks to the wholesale transformation that this 101-year-old trade association has undergone on Mr. Donohue’s very aggressive watch.
Over the last 16 years, Mr. Donohue has used his considerable talent for fund-raising to build the once-struggling chamber into a free-enterprise research outfit, Supreme Court advocacy group and lobbying powerhouse. The chamber’s lobbying operation alone spent $136 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; the next-biggest spender, the National Association of Realtors, spent less than a third of that.
At 74, with his Kennedyesque mop of white hair and a Brooklyn accent, Mr. Donohue comes off as part street fighter, part showman and part head of state. He zips around town in a chauffeured Lincoln and flies around the globe in leased private jets. His salary, $4.9 million in 2011, makes him the second-highest-paid trade association chief in Washington, after the head of the Edison Electric Institute, according to CEO Update, a trade magazine.
“He’s got a little theater in him,” Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman and a onetime amateur actor, says of Mr. Donohue.
“He’s like the Energizer Bunny,” said John W. Bachmann, senior partner at Edward Jones and the past chairman and current treasurer of the chamber’s board, calling Mr. Donohue’s salary a “bargain.”
Yet, while increasing the group’s influence, Mr. Donohue has also plunged the business lobby into partisan politics. That move has infuriated many Democrats, made some local chambers uneasy and produced an embarrassing flop in the last Congressional elections. The chamber spent millions in an unsuccessful bid to wrest the Senate from Democrats; of 12 chamber-backed Republicans, nine lost.
“They got their clock cleaned,” said Mr. Tauzin, an outside adviser to Mr. Donohue. “It was a bold idea. Bold ideas either succeed boldly or fail dismally. In this case, I think Tom would tell you it was a dismal result.”
Not one to back down, Mr. Donohue has ordered his political team to “figure out what happened” and to try harder in 2014, said Scott Reed, his senior political adviser. But publicly, Mr. Donohue is changing the subject. He has always been a man of big ambitions, and his latest is to secure an immigration overhaul, long a priority for business. A deal he cut with Richard L. Trumka, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., on a new visa program for low-skilled workers helped produce a bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in May.
Mr. Donohue rarely mentions President Obama by name, and in casual conversation allows that he had a better relationship with another Democrat, Bill Clinton. (“You get in a big fight with him one morning, and then two days later you’d be over there for a drink.”) He refers to Mr. Obama as “the president across the street” — a phrase that Mr. Reed says is “not a disrespectful thing,” but a reflection of Mr. Donohue’s position.
“That’s the institution speaking,” he said.
Immigration is one issue, at least, on which the chamber and the Obama administration might come together. Businesses of all stripes want the immigration system improved. High-tech companies like Facebook want access to skilled foreign workers. Large-scale farms want to hire Mexican and other migrants. Small businesses want a stronger electronic employment verification system, to shift the burden of making sure workers are legal to the government and away from employers.
It is now up to Mr. Donohue to deliver. And while he waves off talk of retirement — “If you see me in a box with flowers around it, I’m only thinking about retiring” — there is no question that an immigration bill could be a legacy item, a capstone to his long career.
WHILE big, wealthy companies help keep the chamber afloat — “We have to raise $5 million a week to run this place,” Mr. Donohue says — advocating for small business is perhaps more popular with the public. So one morning in April, Mr. Donohue could be found holding court at America’s Small Business Summit, the chamber’s annual gathering for small-business owners, who come to network and lobby their lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Like all things Donohue-related, the meeting was a slick production, with hefty corporate support and Washington-insider speakers like Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Bob Woodward, the Washington Post journalist. In the exhibit hall, representatives of T-Mobile and FedEx handed out trinkets.
Mr. Donohue used his keynote address to exhort the audience to “defend and advance a free-enterprise system” whenever it “comes under attack” and to give politicians in Washington — the words “Republican” and “Democrat” never pass his lips — a piece of their minds.
“It’s about time,” he thundered, “that our leaders in Washington start making the tough decisions that we pay them to make!”
