By Robb Mandelbaum
After years on the sidelines of the health care debate, progressive small-business owners have finally roused themselves. The
Main Street Alliance, a nascent national network of state small-business groups that back reform along Democratic lines, proclaimed last week Stand With Small Business Week of Action. In several states the alliance held rallies and news conferences and showed commercials, all meant to shore up sympathetic legislators — and put pressure on less sympathetic ones. At least one event marked a significant shift on Capitol Hill: a Blue Dog Democrat came out in unambiguous support for a government-run “public option” for health insurance.
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The Main Street Alliance formed last year, when small-business organizers in Idaho and a handful of other states decided to join forces and cultivate new movements elsewhere. “When we first went door to door to small businesses in Idaho, we found very different stories coming from them than what you would hear from the N.F.I.B. or the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” explained the alliance’s network director, Sam Blair. “Small businesses were telling us three things: We really want and need health care reform, and we need it soon. The second thing is we’re willing to contribute to good health care for our employees. And thirdly, we found a surprising level of support for a wider number of choices on the table, including a public plan.”
Today the alliance claims 8,000 to 10,000 members in 15 states, according to Mr. Blair — including nearly 500 in Iowa, said Sue Dinsdale, an organizer for
Iowa Citizen Action Network, which runs the Iowa Main Street Alliance. It just organized a new group in Arizona, and has designs on other states. And while that’s a fraction of the membership of, say, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Main Street Alliance has won outsize influence among Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are eager for the support. Five alliance members have testified at six Congressional hearings since just April — including Mr. Draper, who
appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee in June.
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It was not until Mr. Draper opened an e-mail message urging business owners to write a letter to the editor of the local paper and complain about Senator Charles E. Grassley’s
hostility to the public option that Mr. Draper was moved to action. “The No. 1 rule at the store is reply to every e-mail,” Mr. Draper recalled. Then he looked into the position of Senator Grassley, an Iowa Republican. “His main point was that the public option would be an unfair competitor to the private industry,” Mr. Draper said. “Which I thought was strange, because all I had heard before was that private industry was so much superior to something like Britain’s
National Health Service. Either they’re going to do a job well enough to run the private industry out of business, or they’re going to do a job so poorly that nobody will want it. It can’t be both at the same time.”
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