K-Street Connection Legal, But 'Dumb'

The latest case in point? Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, last week reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi summoned some of Washington’s top Democratic lobbyists to a fancy new Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill to discuss the upcoming mid-term elections.

No foul there. You can’t win elections without sound strategy, and no one expects wellto-do Washington insiders to dine at Burger King. But the story gets more interesting.

As it turns out, the meeting aimed to recruit these lobbyists to help 16 vulnerable House Democrats, including Reps. Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague of New Mexico, raise campaign cash.

Again, this is not unprecedented. Like it or not, Democrats and Republicans have courted K Street – the famed downtown Washington thoroughfare where many lobbyists set up shop – to help with congressional fundraising for years.

But here’s where t he arrangement gets, shall we say, questionable. The lobbyists attending the dinner were assigned to specific members and asked not only to help with fundraising, but also networking and to provide actual campaign assistance, including “ground messaging.”

“It was not just a fundraising ask,” Roll Call reported one lobbyist in attendance as saying. “It was also to help out with campaigns.”

The problem with lobbyists actively helping members get elected is that it makes the members in question appear beholden to the lobbyist helping them.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said there is nothing illegal about the arrangement. But she called it “misguided” and “dumb.”

“It causes a huge appearance problem,” she told me in a telephone interview Thursday.

Sloan said a lobbyist who helps a vulnerable member get elected is pretty much certain to get his or her phone call returned.

“This is good business for the lobbyists,” Sloan said.

Jon Barela, a Republican challenging Heinrich for the 1st District seat, and Steve Pearce, a Republican who is challenging Teague to reclaim the 2nd District seat he held from 2002 until 2008, pounced on the Roll Call story last week.

“How could Martin Heinrich ever try to tell New Mexico voters, with a straight face, that he can go to Washington and be an independent voice for them, or that their interests matter more to him than D.C. special interests?” Barela asked in a press release.

“It’s not surprising that Pelosi handpicks lobbyists to run Teague’s campaign,” Pearce said in a statement provided to the Journal. “Teague’s problems with voters stem from his votes on behalf of special interests. More Washington insiders cannot cure that problem.”

Before Republicans get too outraged about the Pelosi/ DCCC lobbyist strategy, they might pause to recall a little something called the K Street Project.

The K Street Project, spearheaded by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and GOP strategist Grover Norquist in the mid-1990s, leaned hard on Washington lobbyists to donate heavily to Republican candidates or risk losing access to GOP power brokers on Capitol Hill. The project also aimed to put Republicans in top K Street lobbying jobs. The K Street Project was disbanded amid intense criticism in 2006.

The point is, the K Streetcongressional campaign connection is a rare example of bipartisan cooperation in the nation’s capital.

Heinrich and Teague, both of whom belong to the DCCC’s “Frontline” program to help raise money and protect vulnerable members, downplayed the Roll Call story.

Heinrich’s campaign manager, Alan Packman, said the freshman congressman will be working with former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Robert Raben, now a lobbyist who works on behalf of numerous advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations. Some of Raben’s clients include the Breast Cancer Fund, Fisheries Survival Fund, Hispanic Bar Association, and Human Rights Campaign.

“Mr. Raben has simply been asked to help the congressman raise money and make new contacts,” Packman said Friday. “Any assumptions or inferences that suggest otherwise are just not true.”

Teague’s spokeswoman, Kara Kelber, said her boss has not yet been informed which lobbyist is assigned to help his campaign.

“It is really limited to fundraising and introducing the congressman to networks of people he hasn’t met,” Kelber said. “I do know that just like any other candidate, we have a campaign team responsible for strategy and running the campaign – and there has not been, nor will there be in the future, any lobbyists on that team.”

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