The IFA acknowledged that defeating Weil would be an uphill battle considering he’d been confirmed in the Senate previously, said Jonathan Slemrod, a partner with Harbinger Strategies, a lobbyist that represents the IFA.
“To counteract this, we leaned heavily on franchise business people to weigh in directly with their Senators beginning in June of last year, immediately after the nomination was submitted” to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he said.
The group knew that Sinema, Manchin, and Kelly understood the franchise business model, and targeted them “to communicate our views to those offices on the hill and in Arizona and West Virginia, and it is clear that they listened,” Slemrod said.
The IFA connected with freelancers, truckers, wholesalers, gig workers, and other groups to oppose the nomination, he said. “We found common cause with these stakeholders over the last 300 days with the goal of defeating cloture in a bipartisan way.”
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