Groups plan to play hardball with pols.

• Author: Cline, Ned
• Position: Capital - Manufacturing industries join hands

When it comes to business development, North Carolina is hurting, and elected leaders in Raleigh and Washington aren't listening. That's the consensus of representatives of five business and trade associations from across the state. Though they've had common goals for decades, these groups had concentrated on promoting their individual agendas. Now they're coming together in a singular cause.

It's a marriage more of necessity than desire. They've been thrown together by dismal conditions in manufacturing and related industries. In a sense, it's a matter of survival. Plans call for a series of efforts--with political persuasion high on the list--to make sure that they, and their industries' lobbyists, get the attention they desire. "Politicians may not care about your jobs, but they care about theirs," lobbyist John Yarboro told representatives Dec. 4 when they met in Greensboro to map their economic and political strategy.

The groups--Capital Associated Industries, Raleigh; Piedmont Associated Industries, Greensboro; The Employers Association, Charlotte; WCI (formerly Western Carolina Industries), Asheville; and the Manufacturers and Chemical Industry Council, Raleigh--represent more than 2,500 companies with more than a million workers and potential voters. But the raw numbers may not represent real clout.

For one thing, these groups are novices at working cooperatively. Many have never been politically active. Those that have been have focused on opposing organized labor rather than pushing an economic agenda. Most of their members are Republicans in a state that is still, from a practical stand-point, controlled by Democrats. Voter turnout is often low for workers in these trades. And, so far, there has been more talk than action.

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Even so, coalition leaders say they're determined. Since their first meeting, they have been researching candidates' positions on business-related issues and putting together specific plans for action.

Yarboro certainly wasn't alone in calling for it. "We're going to be political," Randy Snyder, president of Hanes Dye & Finishing Co. of Winston-Salem, told the group. "We don't care if it's Democrat or Republican. We're going to identify candidates who are pro-manufacturing and those who are not." Candidates could find their views on trade and other issues "stapled to workers' paychecks," quipped Jim Chesnutt, president of a Washington, N.C., textile company and chairman of the American...