Surprisingly good article about corporate lobbying. The original paper version also had a bargraph showing his major contributors, by industry.
Sorry about the formatting. This is how it came off the Globe web page.
-Aram
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Gore's lobbyist contributors reap access
By Walter V. Robinson and John Aloysius
Farrell, Globe Staff, 1/26/2000
[Image]ASHINGTON - What's wrong with the
government? It's in the vise-like
grip of monied special interests and their
influential lobbyists who corrupt
decision-making, to hear some presidential
candidates tell it. Vice President Al
Gore, however, has largely abstained from
joining that chorus.
A closer look at Gore's political and
personal retinue may help explain why:
Many of the vice president's close
friends, former aides, and senior campaign
advisers work as lobbyists and strategists
for corporate clients who often get access
to the White House and Gore's office - and
sometimes get profitable results from
regulators who operate under Gore's
oversight.
Gore raised $28 million for his
presidential campaign last year. That's
less than half the $67 million that Texas
Governor George W. Bush raised. But Gore,
not Bush, is the favorite of Washington
lobbyists. They gave Gore more than
$600,000 in 1999, and their clients
donated millions more to his campaign and
the Democratic Party.
To be sure, Washington lobbyists curry
favor with both parties, more often to the
benefit of Republicans. But Democrats
close to Gore have carved out a special,
growing niche: representing new-tech and
high-tech firms whose prospects often
depend on regulatory decisions. And on
technology issues, Gore is the
administration's gatekeeper.
In two cases, major contributors, with
help from lobbyists with close ties to
Gore, walked off with windfall decisions
from regulators. In 1997, Teligent Inc.
was awarded additional microwave bandwidth
that by some estimates was worth close to
$1 billion. In 1998 and 1999, Teligent
contributed more than $200,000 to
Democratic Party committees, and officials
of the company have raised tens of
thousands of dollars for Gore's campaign.
And then there's Network Solutions Inc.,
which had exclusive rights from the
government to award Internet domain names.
When other companies demanded that the
monopoly be ended, the firm hired Gore's
former domestic policy adviser, Greg
Simon, as its lobbyist. In a decision
worth untold millions to NSI, regulators
initially opted for the status quo,
leaving NSI in control of domain names.
Even a decision last year to open the
domain business to competition was shaped
to preserve NSI's preeminence.
There is no evidence that Gore himself was
involved in either decision. But it is
clear that the web of relationships among
lobbyists, their clients, the White House
and the Gore campaign is mutually
beneficial: Friends of Gore are earning
millions in fees to represent clients who
want access to the White House, or to
agencies like the Environmental Protection
Agency and the Federal Communications
Commission, where Gore has a hand in
appointments and policy. And critical to
Gore's political success, these friends
and their clients have raised millions of
dollars for Gore's presidential campaign
and Democratic Party committees.
A spokesman for Gore, Chris Lehane,
asserted yesterday that the vice president
has never made a decision that was not
based on the country's best interests.
Sometimes, Lehane noted, Gore's decisions
work against the interests represented by
his friends.
As for the substantial contributions from
both Teligent and Network Solutions,
Lehane said, ''Al Gore has more than
120,000 contributors, who are proud to
support him because of his leadership.''
Gore's official actions and decisions do,
as Lehane suggests, sometimes disappoint
lobbyists who know him. But that would
seem inevitable. On many
telecommunications and technology issues
nowadays, lobbyists who trace their
political lineage to Gore's office can be
found representing opposing sides.
Lower-tech industries, some considered
untouchable by some lobbyists, have also
steered business to Gore's friends.
Masterminding Gore's campaign strategy are
a longtime friend, Carter Eskew, and a
pollster, Harrison Hickman, who had
pivotal roles crafting the tobacco
industry's $40 million ad campaign against
antitobacco legislation. Among Gore's
largest campaign donors are Washington
lobbying firms that earn millions
representing tobacco interests and
companies that have pollution issues
before the Environmental Protection
Agency.
Lehane deflected questions about Eskew's
tobacco industry work. ''Carter Eskew is
now helping to promote the vice
president's antitobacco agenda,'' he said,
adding that Eskew is not unlike someone
who played for the New York Yankees and
then was traded to the Red Sox. ''Now,
he's playing for the Red Sox,'' the
spokesman said.
Eskew and Hickman did not return telephone
calls.
The fact that money buys ''access'' in
Washington is nothing new, though the
system is now so awash in corporate
donations that some candidates, and even
some corporate leaders, are crying for
change.
Bush, for example, has raised millions of
dollars from the industrial, professional,
and corporate interests that are regulated
by the Texas state government. Senator
John McCain, who has elevated the campaign
finance reform issue to first-rank status,
seeks donations from industries he
oversees as chairman of the Senate
Commerce Committee, and in one recent case
interceded with regulators in a way that
benefited a major contributor. And Gore
himself has attacked former New Jersey
senator Bill Bradley for acting in the
Senate on behalf of home state
pharmaceutical companies.
''Money follows power. When a company
needs someone in a position of power to
help them out, it's a very good time for
them to take out the checkbook and make a
political donation. That's the way
Washington works,'' said Larry Makinson,
executive director of the Committee for
Responsive Politics, which maintains a Web
site (www.opensecrets.org), where
donations and lobbying revenues can be
tracked and compared.
The evident intersection between Gore's
fund-raising, lobbying, and the companies
queuing up to hire his friends is all the
more surprising after the buffeting he
took in the 1996 campaign fund-raising
scandal.
Back then, Gore was known as the
''solicitor in chief'' for his zealous
pursuit of donations from special interest
groups targeted by the Clinton-Gore
reelection campaign. Along with Clinton,
Gore hosted White House coffees that were
followed by substantial contributions. He
used his own office to solicit campaign
donations. And for months, he maintained
that he didn't know that an event he
attended at a Buddhist temple in
California was a fundraiser. Investigators
later discovered that the event was used
to move cash from Asia into the campaign.
This time around, Gore's contributions are
carefully vetted. Nonetheless, much of the
money he has raised come from officers of
companies whose interests coincide with
Gore's areas of official responsibility.
What's more, lobbying reports examined by
the Globe show that Gore's office is often
listed as a lobbying stop for Gore's
friends, on issues that include
telecommunications, computer technology,
tax credits, biotechnology, drug company
concerns, and environmental quality
disputes. Since 1996, the television
networks alone have spent several million
dollars on lobbyists on issues like the
''V'' chip, which limits access to violent
TV programming, with Gore's office getting
much of the lobbying attention.
Of the 19 companies whose executives have
donated the most in individual
contributions to Gore's campaign, seven
are Washington lobbying firms. Moreover,
lobbying and campaign finance records show
that 15 of the 19 firms have also made
unrestricted ''soft money'' contributions
to Democratic Party committees during
Clinton's second term of office. The
total: $3,376,690.
One highly successful lobbyist, Tony
Podesta, even has a Web site that invites
readers to conclude that he wields
considerable influence at the White House
- which friends say he does, sometimes
aggressively and often effectively. On the
site, Podesta's firm boasts how he
''gained the ear'' of the White House on a
key tax issue and arranged meetings with
Clinton for broadcast executives and
sessions with ''key policy makers.'' The
site also includes a trade publication
news article describing Podesta's
late-night role helping the White House
plot anti-impeachment strategy.
Podesta's brother, John, has been White
House chief of staff since November 1998.
Podesta.com, the company where John and
Tony once toiled together, has 53 lobbying
clients, and revenues of about $8 million
last year, up from about $6 million in
1998.
In an interview, Tony Podesta said he
sometimes does not go near the White House
for weeks at a time. But there have been
times, he said, when he spends every day
in a given week at the White House. But,
he said, ''I've gotten no client into the
White House who the White House didn't
want there.'' And Podesta said he never
contacts his brother on behalf of any
client.
''It's not like we helped elect Bill
Clinton and Al Gore and then hung out a
shingle,'' Tony Podesta said. ''We started
this business when George Bush was
president, and we'll still be here if his
son becomes president.''
Gore did not invent the Internet, as he
once claimed. But the industries driving
the new economy often treat him as if he
had. And with good reason: No one in
government, arguably not even President
Clinton, has more influence than Gore over
the direction of the technology
revolution. And some of Gore's friends
have his ear on those issues, even as they
earn millions for advising companies eager
to affect those decisions.
For example, Roy Neel, a close friend and
former chief of staff to Gore, is
president of the US Telephone Association,
which represents the interests of the Bell
operating companies in Washington. In
1998, Neel was paid $1.2 million by USTA,
according to a survey by the National
Journal.
USTA, in turn, retains another former
chief of staff to Gore, Peter Knight, as
its lobbyist, for $200,000 a year. Knight,
who has long been Gore's most prodigious -
and controversial - fund-raiser, is also
Bell Atlantic's chief lobbyist, at another
$280,000 a year. Two months ago, Knight
took a leave from his lobbying firm as a
way to mute criticism of his multiple
roles.
One member of a lobbying firm, speaking on
condition that neither she nor her firm be
identified, said she was troubled by
overtures to potential high-technology
clients.
Often, she said, some of those with Gore
connections present themselves as advisers
to the president and vice president, note
that they frequently attend White House
meetings, and even say that they can get
Gore to appear at client company events.
Even if they cannot affect the outcome,
she said, Gore's friends can claim access
to inside information from the White House
staff. ''That in itself is very valuable
to clients,'' she said.
Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media
Access Project, a public interest law firm
that specializes in technology issues,
said he is troubled by what he calls the
''monetarization of politics,'' but said
he sees no evidence that the outcome is
tipped in cases involving Gore's friends.
Part of the reason: Both sides in any
major telecommunications dispute are often
represented by lobbyists with ties to the
vice president. ''They nullify each
other,'' Schwartzman said.
Gore, Schwartzman concluded, ''makes his
own decisions. But the vice president
wants to see his friends be successful and
wealthy. And he wants them to contribute
to his campaign.''
Two recent issues, perhaps more than any
others, illustrate how easily political
money fuels the perception that special
interests exert undue influence on policy.
The first involved the recent Clinton
administration decision to reverse course
and permit the export of high-end
encryption technology. Initially, the
White House had agreed with the Justice
and Defense departments that US national
security interests could be damaged by
such exports.
Jack Quinn, a former Gore chief of staff
and Clinton legal counsel, was paid at
least $680,000 by Americans for Computer
Privacy, cobbled together to get the ban
lifted.
John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff,
said yesterday that Quinn's lobbying did
not affect the decision. What turned the
administration around, Podesta said, was a
realization that technological
breakthroughs had eclipsed longstanding
policy.
One industry official with intimate
knowledge of the decision supported
Podesta's explanation. But the official,
who declined to be quoted by name but is
sympathetic to Gore, said presidential
campaign fund-raising loomed over the
discussions of the case.
The computer industry, the official
explained, was united on the issue, at a
time when Gore was competing mightily with
Bush for Silicon Valley political
contributions. To have the administration
at odds with the industry on the issue, he
said, could have transformed more of the
high-tech world into Bush supporters.
The other issue involved lobbyist Tom
Downey, a onetime Democratic House
colleague who is sometimes described as
Gore's closest friend - and the only
lobbyist who Lehane acknowledged has
lobbied Gore personally on issues. Downey
clients include the Merck drug company,
which according to lobbying records gave
Downey an unspecified number of stock
options in 1993, the year that Gore took
office as vice president.
Starting late in 1996, Merck led a drug
industry offensive designed to prevent
South Africa from implementing legislation
to acquire patented AIDS drugs at
below-market cost for the 3.2 million
South Africans who are HIV-positive. A
day's dosage of the drug cocktail often
costs more than a worker there makes in a
week.
Records show that Downey lobbied Gore's
office and Podesta's firm lobbied the
White House, State Department, and the US
trade representative for the drug
industry.
The Clinton administration, where Gore
heads a US-South Africa relations group,
backed the drug companies, even imposing
trade sanctions on the country, freezing
any action for more than two years. A
State Department memorandum, although
noting that the United States understood
the need for the medicine, declared: ''The
US government nonetheless made clear that
it will defend the legitimate interests
and rights of US pharmaceutical firms.''
The drug firms have funneled hundreds of
thousands of dollars into national
Democratic campaign coffers since Clinton
became president, noted James Love, the
director of the Consumer Project on
Technology, which has pressed the
administration to take a humanitarian
approach to the issue.
Last fall, after US AIDS activists had
embarrassed Gore several times by
disrupting his campaign events over the
issue, the White House altered course,
negotiating a settlement that will allow
South Africa to acquire the drugs at low
cost.
Yesterday, Gore spokesman Lehane cited the
issue as one on which Gore took a position
counter to the interests of a friend's
corporate client. But Love said the
lengthy delays prompted by the
administration's support for the drug
industry have had tragic consequences.
''It's morally repugnant to help campaign
contributors in a situation like this,''
Love said. ''How else can you explain why
the US would impede access to cheap
medicine in Africa, which is in the midst
of a health crisis of historic
proportions? This is not something that
makes you proud to be an American.''
Kathleen Hennrikus of the Globe Staff
contributed to this report. Walter
Robinson's email address is
[log in to unmask] John Aloysius
Farrell's email address is
[log in to unmask]
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston
Globe on 1/26/2000.
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
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