WASHINGTON - For the business group from Utah, the lobbying blitz started well before their plane touched down in the nation’s capital.
Heading to Washington to spend Tuesday urging House Republicans to take up a broad immigration overhaul, the team of Utah business leaders buttonholed several members of their state’s congressional delegation - Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, and Reps. Jim Matheson, a Democrat, and Chris Stewart, a Republican - as the lawmakers waited to board their flight Monday at the Salt Lake City airport.
“Our plea is to act now, do it now, lead,” Stan Lockhart, a former chairman of the Utah Republican Party, said in an interview Tuesday as he explained the group’s basic pitch. “Ask House leadership to lead and let’s pass what’s possible now.”
Randy Parker, chief executive of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, chimed in: “They need to act now. That’s the bottom line.”
Lockhart and Parker are part of an unlikely coalition of business executives, evangelical groups, and prominent conservatives coming together to urge House Republicans to put broad immigration legislation on the House floor, ideally before the end of this year.
On Tuesday, the group of more than 600 leaders from roughly 40 states descended on the Capitol for meetings with nearly 150 Republican lawmakers. They are largely taking aim at House Republicans who they think could support a broad immigration overhaul.
The leaders are urging the lawmakers to take a more proactive role in pushing immigration legislation to a House vote.
“Our fly-in today is about moving votes on the Hill in support of reasonable immigration reform,” Randel K. Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president for immigration and labor issues, said in a conference call with reporters. “I’m confident we’re going to move the ball forward.”
The event’s sponsors include the Chamber of Commerce; FWD.us, a political action group founded by Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook; the National Immigration Forum; and the Partnership for a New American Economy, which is led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Marriott Jr.
