Business-Industry Political Action Committee Founded as First Corporate PAC

The Business-Industry Political Action Committee is founded in August 1963 as the first business political action committee, with initial funding and staff provided by the National Association of Manufacturers, establishing corporate infrastructure for direct political campaign contributions and candidate support. BIPAC is formed by NAM affiliates as an “independent, nonpartisan group to serve as political action arm for American business and industry,” though a 1966 Tobacco Institute memo describes it as “then operated by the National Association of Manufacturers,” revealing corporate control behind claims of independence. While described as “a pale shadow of COPE,” the AFL-CIO’s political arm, BIPAC’s 1963 founding establishes the template for business political action committees that would proliferate after the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 legalized corporate-funded PACs. The formation demonstrates that corporate interests were already building political infrastructure for direct electoral involvement in the early 1960s, contradicting Powell Memo narrative that business lacked political organization. BIPAC precedes FECA by 8 years and the Powell Memo by 8 years, proving corporate political machinery existed before either the legal framework or the strategic blueprint that supposedly created it. The PAC’s founding by NAM, which had opposed labor unions and progressive legislation since 1895, represents systematic corporate political mobilization responding to labor’s success with political action committees since the Congress of Industrial Organizations formed CIO-PAC in 1943. BIPAC establishes infrastructure allowing business to elect “business-friendly” candidates, demonstrating corporate political capture efforts were well underway throughout the 1960s before Powell’s 1971 call for business to acquire and use “political power” aggressively.