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"The snap judgments piled in before the race was called: Eric Cantor\u2019s looming upset, arguably the most shocking in modern political history, owed to his support for immigration reform. Conservative activists,\u00A0boiling-mad at the prospect of what they viewed as amnesty for undocumented workers, had surged in Cantor\u2019s Richmond-area district to turn him out. The challenger himself, Dave Brat, even acknowledged the issue played a major role.\nBut as observers spent Wednesday sifting through a campaign that had received minimal attention up until election night, that picture muddied. As it turns out, Brat, an economics professor at tiny Randolph-Macon College, had scored with a much more potent, and nuanced, line of attack. He filleted the House Majority Leader by sending him up as a crony of big corporate interests seeking to preserve themselves through big government in Washington.\n\u201CAll the investment banks up in New York and Washington or whatever, those guys should have gone to jail,\u201D Brat told a May 7 gathering of the Mechanicsville Tea Party. \u201CInstead of going to jail, where\u2019d they go? They went onto Eric\u2019s Rolodex. That\u2019s where they all are, and they\u2019re sending him big checks.\u201D\nIt was a clever bit of jujitsu for a candidate whom Cantor was overwhelming 25-to-1 in campaign fundraising. More significantly, it stoked the darkest suspicions of voters already wary of Cantor\u2019s leadership responsibilities in Washington, felt as absenteeism back home: The incumbent had lost touch, the line went, because he was off courting billionaires in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, then representing the interests of the super rich back in the corridors of the super powerful.\nThere was more than a kernel of truth to Brat\u2019s critique. Cantor\u2019s rapid ascent in national Republican politics was fueled by his remarkable fundraising ability. And that ability \u2014 in Cantor, or anyone else \u2014 owes ultimately to shamelessness in asking for money and a sales job pledging the funds will support common interests of the donor and the party. \u201CA lot of these guys don\u2019t want to make the ask,\u201D one connected Republican lobbyist said. \u201CHe never minded.\u201D\nIt showed. Cantor\u2019s leadership political action committee (called Every Republican Is Crucial PAC, or ERIC PAC for short) has out-raised every other fund of its kind during this election cycle. That success allowed Cantor to rain unrivaled largesse on his colleagues. This cycle alone, he\u2019s used the account to distribute more than $1.6 million to fellow Republicans. That sum dwarfs leadership PAC giving by any other Member of Congress, including Speaker John Boehner, the next most generous, who\u2019s dolled out $715,000 over the same period, according to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics.\nWhere did it all come from? Four of Cantor\u2019s top five contributors this cycle hail from the financial services industry, by far his biggest supporter over the course of his career. And he earned the support by distinguishing himself as an unflagging champion of Wall Street\u2019s priorities on Capitol Hill. As the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress have pushed to end the capital gains treatment of investment profits earned by fund managers \u2014 the so-called carried interest tax provision \u2014 Cantor became the its most outspoken defender. More recently, he opposed one of his own when the Republican chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee proposed ending the preferential treatment in a tax code overhaul.\nThere have been smaller favors, too. Two years ago, Cantor scuttled a provision in a broader transparency measure that would have forced lobbyists selling market-moving information to investors to disclose their clients (a maneuver Brat seized on in his campaign).\nThat Cantor served as an essential cog in the machinery linking the Republican party to its big business base is clear enough from the roster of industry lobbying groups that stepped up to support his campaign. The American Chemistry Council alone plowed $300,000 into airing TV ads in the district.\nBrat made sure the support cut both ways. \u201CEric is running on one set of principles. He\u2019s running on the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable principles,\u201D he told the crowd in Mechanicsville last month. Indeed, Cantor\u2019s loss, and his subsequent decision to step down from leadership at the end of next month, means those business groups have lost a critical ally as they struggle to wrest the initiative in the GOP back from Tea Party elements.\nIn the wake of his defeat, Cantor canceled a speech he was scheduled to deliver Wednesday to the National Association of Manufacturers. Cantor has been a leading promoter of one of the group\u2019s top priorities \u2014 reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank. The typically noncontroversial measure has galvanized Tea Party opposition, with activists panning it as corporate welfare. And the critics now have a foothold with House Republicans. Among those opposing the bank is House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Texan now mulling a bid to replace Cantor in House Republican leadership."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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