Lawmaker praised for his 100 percent, pro-small business voting record

PHOENIX, Ariz., July 7, 2010 – The political action committee of Arizona’s leading small business association today announced its endorsement of State Rep. Frank Pratt for re-election to his Legislative District 23 seat in the Arizona House of Representatives.

“Representative Pratt has a fundamental appreciation of the fact that small businesses are not smaller versions of big businesses, but instead have distinctively different difficulties in remaining solvent,” said Farrell Quinlan, NFIB/Arizona state director, who listed taxes (more than 80 percent of small business owners are single filers, meaning personal, not corporate, tax rates matter more to them), healthcare (less than half of small business owners in America can afford it), and regulations (small business owners pay almost twice as much to comply with the same regulation as big businesses do) as the three biggest differences.

“Every legislator claims to be a friend of small business, but when it comes time to vote on issues vital to Main Street, mom-and-pop enterprises, Frank Pratt has been a man of his word time and time again. We are honored to have him as an ally and thank him for his perfect 100-percent, pro-small business record in the last session of the Legislature.”

Endorsements of incumbents were based on 15 votes taken during the 2009-2010 Regular Session of the Arizona Legislature that NFIB supported or opposed. NFIB/Arizona represents 7,500 member businesses.

The political clout of small business is more influential than most people know:

In April, the Pew Research Center released a study on the negative and positive views people hold on various American institutions. Small business came out first, 39 percentage points higher than labor unions, 46 points higher than large corporations, and 49 points higher than banks and financial institutions.

Small business owners comprise 15 percent of all registered voters in the U.S., by comparison union voters make up 11.9 percent. When small business employees are added, the small business voting bloc swells to 43 percent.

The most common public affairs and political activities in which small employers engage, according to the NFIB Research Foundation, include initiating discussions with employees regarding the impact of a policy issue on the firm.

Voters prefer candidates supported by small business by a margin of 3 to 1 over those supported by organized labor, according to the Winston Group.
 
Source:  http://www.nfib.com/arizona/nfib-in-my-state-content?cmsid=5203