Midterm elections 2010: outcome for business is still anyone's guess.

• Author: Barlas, Stephen
• Position: Cover story

The congressional election season is shaping up as one of the most consequential in recent years as poll after poll points to a big change in the balance of power coming to the U.S. Congress.

What does it mean for business and which are the key races and committee chairmanships to watch?

While several thousand union members were gathered on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Aug. 12, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka assailed former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, the former eBay Inc. chief executive as "two clueless CEOs."

Both Fiorina and Whitman are running as Republicans--Fiorina for the U.S. Senate and Whitman for governor--in California, a state with a 12.3-percent unemployment rate. But they are both running as something else: Experienced business people with laudable private-sector experience.

It's an election season where poll after poll shows the electorate rejecting federal government solutions and embracing private-sector approaches. Trumka's attack on Fiorina and Whitman underlines the political challenges for U.S. companies in the 2010 November elections.

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A persistent political theme, with the vote only a month away, is that any association with Washington is potentially toxic for incumbents or those otherwise seen as big spenders. Voters--pundits and polls have already determined--are tired of "politics as usual" and yearning for something new, different and far more effective than what they've recently seen.

Given the enormous stakes, the elections of 2010 could prove the most critical in more than a generation. And that could provide a decisive advantage for business leaders who've entered congressional races this year, as well as for policies that can be viewed as "pro-business."

Candidates' Quality Matters

Executives of companies large or small, including financial officers, generally want to see candidates elected to the U.S. Senate and House who have met payrolls, prepared budgets in tough times, submitted financial statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and know the difference between FASB and FINRA.

Such experience will come in handy when Congress reconvenes amid serious challenges in January, calling for a tough reduction in the federal deficit and a jolt on behalf of jobs.

Bill Schneider, the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst professor Public Policy at George Mason University and CNN's senior political analyst since 1990, says that "In principle, business experience is helpful because there is only one big rule in this election: Anyone associated with government is bad. It is good to be a minister, in the military and a business person, because business people are considered outsiders, and being a business person means being untainted, unless you work for BP, or if you were responsible for layoffs or shady deals. Those candidates will have a problem."

But there are different hues of "shady." Even the most successful executive has a track record with a couple of blips, matters of judgment as opposed to ethics, which leaves her or him politically vulnerable, depending on how well the opponent--or the press--makes the case...