Many pro-business groups, such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce, supported the plan as a free-market approach that would not have required businesses to pay.

For 31 years, the conference has been where the Republican big tent is assembled, convening disparate groups like evangelical advocates, gun enthusiasts, antitax groups, antilabor groups, pro-business groups and libertarians.

"California has caused the entire business community to stand up and take notice," the Washington Legal Foundation, a pro-business group here, says in its brief for Nike.

The Business and Professionals Alliance for Hong Kong is a pro-business political group exists in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

The pro-business groups also want to raise benefits for severely disabled workers.

Opponents took pains to describe their effort as a coalition of representatives from industry, labor and education rather than a pro-business group.

A political party linked to the Communists and a new pro-business group have won enough votes in an election to enter Kazakhstan's parliament, giving the legislature a veneer of plurality for the first time since 2007.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Richard A. Samp, a lawyer with the Washington Legal Foundation, a pro-business group, said the developments were a symptom of a larger problem.

The Long Island Builders Institute is among the pro-business groups that support the measure and deny any Machiavellian motives.

But the sudden emergence of the Unification National Party, a pro-business group led by the founder of the Hyundai conglomerate, broke the old political pattern.