Keeping the world safe for beer: David Rehr has made the NBWA a political force in Washington - National Beer Wholesalers Association - Interview

Modern Brewery Age, Sept 9, 2002 by David K. Rehr

We are very methodical. We consult with the state association execs on the ground, we talk with the local beer wholesalers, and we have the candidates fill out questionnaires. It's not just a knee-jerk thing, where "this guy is a Republican, so we should help him." I don't think that would serve the interests of beer wholesalers or the industry very well.

I would think some Republican candidates might be pro-small-business, but not pro-small-beer-business.

That's exactly right. The selection and support of candidates is a lot more complicated than it might appear. We try to look at as many aspects of the candidates as we can. We are always striving to get the person that we believe will be most pro-beer-wholesaler.

Will a pro-business agenda be tougher to pursue this fall?

There is certainly an emerging back-lash among people who are upset at these CEOs who are raping their companies.

Since none of these companies are beer companies, is the industry insulated against this back-lash?

We are protected in the specific, but I worry about the aggregate. A lot of people don't like business as it is, and the more they read about this stuff, the more angry they will get. What I worry about is that someone will look at the CEO of Worldcom and the CEO of the local beer wholesalership, and think "They are both pretty much the same."

Luckily beer is a pretty nuts and bolts industry, about production and distribution. There aren't these astronomical sums of money involved...

Exactly. The beer industry is very profit oriented, but our people are in this for the long term, so they are not inspired by greed. Which is good.

And we haven't had a brand that went from zero to a trillion dollars, and people able to get in and out quickly and make a killing. It's not that kind of business.

What else is happening legislatively?

In the long term it will be dependent on the November election. If we get the right result in November, we could be on an upward path.

There is some discussion about malternative advertising, and that may flare up before November. Equalization won't be happening any time soon. Jim Jeffords has been promised a vote in the full Senate on a national forced deposits bill. That will be killed in the House, but we have to make sure that doesn't get any traction. At the end of the day, it will be killed, but when we get into these battles, I always aggressively go after these people. I don't want anyone to think, "we'll wait to the next Congress and push it even further." I don't want us to bleed from the death of a thousand cuts over the next ten years.

And ergonomics is raising its ugly head again. Senator John Breaux has fielded a bill that our people think is worse than the Clinton ergonomics bill. Worse, in that it will be more expensive to implement.

Does this bill rejigger the previous incarnation of ergonomics?

Well, they are not supposed to do that, according to the process that we used to repeal ergonomics last year. Breaux's people talked with organized labor to put something together, and ended up with something even more onerous. It had no chance of passing the House, but it will get labor all fired up.