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The Committee to Restore Dealer Rights, led by dealers Tammy Darvish, Jack Fitzgerald and Alan Spitzer, spent much of 2009 lobbying for legislation that would provide an arbitration process for dealers who were stripped of franchises and dealerships during the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors.
It was an uphill battle.
The Obama administration's auto task force was convinced that GM and Chrysler had too many dealerships, which the task force viewed as a cost burden and a major obstacle to restructuring the two companies successfully. Congressional testimony by ranking executives from GM and Chrysler seemed to support the government's view.
By summer, the dealer rights committee and its allies were building support in Congress but they needed backing from industry veterans who shared their view that dealerships are independent businesses that are an asset, not a cost, to manufacturers.
The book Grand Theft Auto, written by Spitzer of Spitzer Automotive Group in northeast Ohio and his daughter Alison Spitzer, gives an insider's view of the committee's role in the politicking that led Congress to pass a bill giving the rejected dealers a right to arbitration.
The following excerpt tells about how the committee tried to change the minds of incoming car czar Ron Bloom and Brian Deese, the 31-year-old economic wunderkind who was tapped by the administration to help revamp GM and Chrysler.
Late in the afternoon of Thursday, July 16, from our corporate offices in Elyria, [Ohio] Jim Vella, our COO, and I sat and watched the voting on C-SPAN. It was a close call, but the bill passed a roll-call vote, 219-208. It was on to the Senate.
A few weeks earlier, on June 18, our first sponsor and supporter in the Senate, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had introduced our bill, (S....