As the current chairman and former CEO of Martin Marietta Materials, Stephen Zelnak Jr. has spent plenty of time in both corporate boardrooms and in the halls of government.
Zelnak ran Raleigh-based Martin Marietta for more than a quarter-century before stepping down as CEO at the end of 2009. During that period he worked with Republicans and Democrats, as the health of Martin Marietta, which provides the crushed stone, sand and gravel used to build roads, subdivisions and commercial buildings, is closely tied to state and federal infrastructure spending.
Now Zelnak, 67, is back in the public eye as a member of the Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based advocacy group that has the stated mission "to educate Americans on what business needs to restore dynamic job growth."
The alliance's members include nearly two dozen CEOs, formerCEOs and high-ranking corporate executives, including Jim Anthony, CEO of the Raleigh real estate firm Anthony & Co., and Fred Eshelman, founder and executive chairman of Wilmington-based drug research firm PPD.
"I'm concerned about the direction of the economy," Zelnak said last week during an interview at Martin Marietta's Raleigh headquarters. "My concern is we're doing great damage to the free-enterprise system."
As for how we got to this point, Zelnak is equally disparaging of both the current administration and its predecessor. George W. Bush inflicted eight years of "benign neglect" on the economy, he said, while the Obama administration is pursuing a "socialist, activist" agenda.
Zelnak, who is a registered Republican, said the alliance is nonpartisan and includes both Democrats and Republicans. It plans to do no lobbying or campaigning for any particular politician or party this election season, he said.
Thus far the alliance has launched a website, www.jobcreatorsalliance.org, and met with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. A media day is planned for March in Washington to boost the group's profile.
The alliance's goal, Zelnak said, is to offer policy advice from the perspective of people who've built companies and created thousands of jobs over the years.
The alliance's nonpartisanship is sure to be questioned by some, particularly since its members include two outspoken conservatives: Art Pope, CEO of Variety Wholesalers, and John Allison, the retired chairman and CEO of BB&T Bank.
Pope has used his foundation to finance numerous Republican candidates and conservative causes. Allison is a devotee of author Ayn Rand, a staunch opponent of government intervention in the economy.
Many of the alliance's stated policy positions - a desire to repeal Obama's health care initiative, lower the corporate income tax rate and roll back burdensome regulations - are clearly more in line with Republicans than Democrats.
As for what type of specific policy reforms need to be adopted to put people back to work, Zelnak said businesses, particularly small businesses, need long-term consistency in the policies coming out of Washington - no easy task given the current level of partisanship and turnover in the nation's capital.
While Zelnak believes regulation is necessary, he said the pendulum has swung too far. Government needs to tweak its current regulatory structure to be smarter and less costly to businesses.
Although Zelnak built Martin Marietta into a $2 billion business, these days he's a small-business owner. He and his son, Brent, have a holding company, ZP Enterprises, which owns a machine shop in Apex and has a majority stake in similar companies in Charlotte, Salisbury, and Huntsville, Ala.
Zelnak said too many of the policy decisions in Washington are being made by people who have "never saddled up and run anything."
Of course, many leaders in Corporate America have come under withering criticism for their own behavior during the years that led up to the global economic collapse, a fact that Zelnak readily acknowledges.
"We're a business voice of reason as opposed to a business voice of greed and corruption," he said of the alliance.
Whether that voice will have any influence remains to be seen. Zelnak said the group has no intention of meeting with members of the Obama administration directly, and it will be trying to get its message out during an election year when political action committees are expected to fill the airwaves with their own messages.
