The Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry has long been one of the lobbying heavyweights at the state Capitol. But after the initial euphoria of the Republican takeover at the Statehouse in the early 2010s, the association has occasionally found itself pushed aside as GOP lawmakers have pursued more populist initiatives.

The division was exposed most dramatically during a 2021 special session on COVID-19 mandates that left many in the business community seething about what they saw as undue interference in employers’ affairs and for creating a new avenue for workers to sue if they were fired for refusing to get vaccinated. Legislative leaders, meanwhile, were put out by the Chamber rallying allied groups to fight the measures tooth and nail until they finally passed in a narrower-than-usual fashion in a post-midnight vote.

The abrupt resignation over the weekend of Bradley Jackson after more than eight years as the Tennessee Chamber’s president and CEO presents the association with an opportunity for a leadership reset and a push for renewed influence among Republican lawmakers — and potentially in the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Bill Lee in 2026. But if the choice to succeed Jackson as the head of the organization fails to strike the right balance with lawmakers, the 112-year-old Chamber could find itself pushed into the margins on Capitol Hill.

Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the most recent print edition of The Tennessee Journal. Read the full newsletter here.

Before taking over the reins in 2016, Jackson was the Chamber’s chief lobbyist as Republicans took control of both legislative chambers for the first time since Reconstruction. Along with Gov. Bill Haslam’s election as governor in 2010, the new political reality provided an opportunity for the business community to pursue reductions in regulations, fight what it saw as abuse of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act of 1977, dial back workers’ compensation benefits, restructure corporate taxes and place caps on damages from lawsuits.

But the Chamber also mounted defensive battles against measures intruding on the rights of businesses, such as proposals to prohibit employers from banning workers from storing firearms in vehicles parked on company lots and imposing requirements to check new hires’ immigration status through the federal E-Verify system.

The advent of the tea party movement spawned Republican candidates who actively campaigned against the priorities of the business community, a trend that has blossomed alongside Donald Trump’s emergence on the national political scene.

COVID flash point

The disconnect between the business community and movement conservatives came into focus during the 2021 special session on COVID-19 mandates, when the supermajority charged ahead on a bill to ban businesses from requiring vaccines for customers or workers despite concerns from employers that the measure could place them in direct violation of federal rules, which they argued could open them up to costly litigation.

The Chamber early on began contacting lawmakers to register concerns about the state encroaching on private businesses’ authority over employees and customers entering their facilities. The lobbying effort outraged House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, because Chamber officials hadn’t informed his office of their plans to wade into the issue.

Meanwhile, the business lobbyists complained that much of the COVID-19 legislation was negotiated behind closed doors. Lawmakers were upset when what they considered to be the final version of the legislation wasn’t accepted as a fait accompli. “Where were they the last couple of months?” Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, demanded during a floor debate.

After marathon negotiations, exemptions were built in to allow entities that could show their federal funding might be endangered — such as government contractors, hospitals and institutions of higher learning — to continue to require shots. But remaining in the bill were controversial measures allowing people fired for refusing to follow COVID-19 rules to collect unemployment benefits and creating a cause of action for workers to sue their employers for violating the new law.

The business community had been caught off guard because Lee — a member of the state Chamber when he ran his family’s HVAC company before being elected governor — told them weeks before that he opposed government interference into private companies’ affairs. The governor also suggested that if a special session became inevitable, he would issue the call so he could limit its scope.

But once it became clear that skeptics could no longer keep the COVID-19 session from happening, the governor decided he was better off staying out of the matter and deferred to fellow Republicans in the General Assembly. As it happened, lawmakers for just the third time in state history called themselves into a special session and left the door wide open to bills of all types.

During the debate, business lobbyists were stunned that their positions were most articulately expressed by Democrats like Nashville Sen. Jeff Yarbro, while Senate Republican Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin made the astounding acknowledgment that they were moving forward even though the bill ran “contrary to some of the tenets that we’ve held very sacred.”

When it finally came up for a vote on the last day of the special session, the omnibus (often mispronounced as “ominous”) bill passed with just 22 votes in the 33-member Senate and 58 of 99 House members — a far cry from the usual GOP margins.

It was far from the slam Sexton had expected when he led the charge for the special session, though the measure’s passage was seen as a key move toward giving Republican lawmakers political cover from voters who had come to oppose pandemic-related restrictions.

Mending fences

After Jackson took over leadership of the Chamber in 2016, he was credited with mending relations with both the chambers of the state’s four largest cities and those representing smaller communities around Tennessee. He also helped place the state Chamber in a leadership position vis-a-vis its city counterparts, which some critics have sometimes seen as doing the bidding of local government officials rather than the priorities of its member companies.

Jackson also presided over weekly Friday meetings with lobbyists for like-minded organizations ranging from the state chapter of the National Federation for Business to the Tennessee Road Builders Association. A focus of the gatherings was to present a united front on bills before the Legislature that they either supported or opposed. Attendees said Jackson was careful not to let the meetings become a forum for disagreements between the sometimes competing interests among the various participants.

Some members of the business community praised Jackson for making it a priority to seek the best possible relations with Republican lawmakers despite the occasionally adversarial mood. Others felt he was too willing to bend over backward to accommodate legislators instead of trying to take a firmer approach toward them when they were pursuing legislation at odds with the Chamber’s interests.

Union fighting

As Chamber president, Jackson took a leading role in the lobbying effort that placed a proposed amendment before the voters to enshrine the state’s 75-year-old “right to work” law into the Tennessee Constitution.

While anti-labor attitudes run deep among the Republican supermajority, wavering support among the rank-and-file had proponents sweating at the end of the 2019 session about whether the resolution would get the necessary two-thirds majority when it came up for a final vote in the House. A full-court press helped get 67 green lights on the board — just one more than the minimum needed. Jackson later served on the leadership committee of the 2022 campaign to get the measure approved at the polls, where it prevailed with 70% of the vote.

But the Chamber and Republican politicians were unable to replicate their past successes in blocking the United Auto Workers from organizing the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga. After narrow defeats in 2014 and 2019, the UAW won a historic victory there in April, its first among foreign owned automakers in the South. The union followed up the win by gaining recognition earlier this month at the $2.6 billion Ultium Cells plant in Maury County. The joint venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution had received $78 million in state grants in 2021.

Money matters

The Tennessee Chamber’s PAC has given $565,600 to state candidates since the 2010 campaign cycle, ranking it 48th among the biggest donors during that time frame. By contrast, the Chamber was just two spots and $33,700 ahead of the total given by former Comptroller Justin Wilson.

Meanwhile, 20 PACs gave more than $1 million, and 10 companies’ committees donated more than the Chamber: FedEx ($1.95 million), AT&T ($1.6 million), Advance Financial ($1.4 million), HCA Healthcare ($1.3 million), BlueCross BlueShield ($1.2 million), Jack Daniel’s ($1.2 million), Amazon ($903,700), Comcast ($901,300), Check Into Cash owner Jones Management Services ($645,500) and private prison operator CoreCivic ($611,000).

The Chamber could take a more active role in campaign contributions — a currency understood all-too-well by lawmakers — but it would be a potentially risky proposition to use the PAC to lob attacks at recalcitrant lawmakers. Outside groups like the Club for Growth caused great consternation by flooding the zone with millions of dollars’ worth of ads during the most recent primary. But the national outfit doesn’t have to deal with the General Assembly on a day-to-day basis, so it has little to lose by making enemies of those upset at its tactics. The Chamber and its donors don’t have the same luxury.

Dealing with Sexton

It remains to be seen whether Sexton decides to get behind a candidate to succeed Jackson as head of the Chamber. The House speaker has raised eyebrows for pursuing a legislative agenda that has included restricting the authority of third-party pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, that has resulted in federal litigation by McKee Foods, the Hamilton County-based maker of Little Debbie snacks. Sexton also unsuccessfully tried to add Centene Corp. as a fourth managed care organization for TennCare despite losing out on its bid.

Sexton doesn’t take kindly to lobbyists who work against his priorities, and he’s not averse to killing off unrelated bills to send a message. A Sexton ally in the Chamber might ensure smoother relations, but it could come at the cost of the association’s independence.

Who’s next?

The Chamber has yet to indicate who will serve on a search committee and what its criteria will be. Jackson’s two predecessors, Catherine Glover and Deb Woolley, were hired from out of state. Before that, former television journalist and onetime head of the Tennessee Business Roundtable head Dave Goetz was the organization’s president. Goetz, who liked to wear a pig lapel pin on his jacket (a reference to a long-ago quote by a state GOP chair denouncing “bizpigs” in the party), left the group to serve as finance commissioner for Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Before his time as a lobbyist for the Chamber, Jackson worked as a legislative liaison for the Finance Department and as a researcher for legislative finance committees. Jackson’s time with the Democratic governor’s administration (and briefly as a contract lobbyist for Bredesen deputy Dave Cooley) has led to muttering among Republicans — even though 96% of the association’s political donations have gone to GOP candidates during his tenure.

The Chamber’s board is large and not traditionally very heavily involved in the outfit’s day-to-day operations. Jackson’s departure came as a surprise, so there is no obvious succession plan. The Chamber is likely to want to hire an interim CEO while a wider search is conducted. There appears to be a recognition that the stakes are high.