GA GOP Governor-Elect Nathan Deal’s Transition Team Is Comprised Of State’s Top Special Interests And Lobbyists
Few states were impacted by last week’s Republican victories as much as Georgia. In addition to defeating Blue Dog Rep. Jim Marshall (D), Republicans seized control of every single state-wide office and expanded powerful majorities in the legislature, giving them a position of strength they have not had in modern political history.
Former Rep. Nathan Deal (R) won the governor’s race 53-43, handily defeating former Gov. Roy Barnes (D). During the campaign, Deal had to overcome numerous serious investigations and allegations of corrupt behavior, including his history of exerting political influence to win no-bid contracts for businesses he had a financial stake in. Many good government watchdogs worried that a Deal governorship would continue to use political means for the private profit of special interests tied to Deal.
This morning, the Deal campaign released a list of staffers who comprise his transition team. The list reads like a who’s who list of some of the state’s top special interests and lobbyists — people who have represented corporate giants ranging from Georgia Power to Goldman Sachs. Here are a few highlights:
- Rogers Wade: Wade is leading the transition team. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation (GPPF), a far-right local think tank which seats numerous corporate special interests on its board. Before joining GPPF, Wade was a “senior partner in the public affairs firm of Edington, Wade and Associates.” While there, he represented “over half of the Fortune 100 companies from throughout the United States and Europe.” He is also the former vice president of Watkins Associated Industries, a “national company with major holdings in transportation, development, seafood processing, insurance and communications.”
- Pete Robinson: Robinson is the Chairman of Troutman Sanders Strategies, a major Atlanta-based lobbying firm. The firm has in the past defended major polluters and employers fending off labor abuse lawsuits.
- Joe Tanner: Tanner is the president of Joe Tanner & Associates, another Atlanta-based firm heavily involved in lobbying. His firm has served such clients such as WellStar Health System and energy giant Georgia Power.
- Monty Veazey: Veazey is what the Center for Public Integrity calls a “hired gun” — a former legislator who was quickly snapped up to be a lobbyist soon after he left office. He has lobbied on behalf of the Georgia Industrial Loan Association and Kraft Foods, among other corporate clients.
- Rob Leebern: Despite the fact that Deal spent much of his campaign attacking Washington, D.C., he has hired a D.C.-based lobbyist to work on his transition team. Leebern, like Robinson, does lobbying work for Troutman Sanders Strategies.
- Dan Lee: Lee, like Veazey, is a “hired gun.” Shortly after leaving office, he lobbied for such clients as the Corrections Corporation of America, United Healthcare, Goldman Sachs, and New South Energy.
The Deal campaign maintains that none of the transition team members will engage in lobbying activities while they are working for the Governor-elect. Yet the fact remains that Deal has chosen some of the state’s most well-connected conduits for corporate influence in government to staff the team that will be moving him into the Governor’s mansion. If anything, it appears that Deal is signaling to the state’s special interests that pay-for-play is well and alive in the state’s capitol.
What Are Lobbyists Telling Republicans About Health Reform?
Following Tuesday’s midterm elections, both parties have indicated that they wanted to re-visit the Affordable Care Act, but the skeptic in me doesn’t think that they’ll agree on anything beyond the 1099-reporting requirement and even that holds its own difficulties. Assuming of course, that repeal is a non-starter — The Hill’s Mike Lillis reported earlier today that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) reiterated that the effort would go nowhere in the Senate — what other health initiatives will the new Congress consider?
Health care industry and employer lobbyists who, in anticipation of the midterm wave, have shifted their campaign contributions to Republicans this election cycle, may provide some clues to what lawmakers are hearing about the affects of reform and other health priorities. And so what follows is only a partial list of their concerns and demands:
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: The industry doesn’t expect Republicans to reopen the doughnut hole, but it does want Congress to “reauthorize the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or PDUFA, which allows companies to pay fees to the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate product reviews.”
LARGE EMPLOYERS: “They don’t want to repeal it,” said Geoff Manville, principal in Mercer’s Washington Resource Group. “But large employers for their part want to amend the law and make changes, largely around provider payments and delivery-system reform.” Big employers “would like to see more aggressive pay-for-performance measures that aim to improve patients’ health results while reducing costs in the Medicare program, he said. “That’s the 800-pound gorilla that drives the entire health-care system.”
INSURERS: “The insurance industry is working to persuade the next Congress to roll back a roughly $ 70 billion tax on insurance companies that takes effect in 2014, saying it will disproportionately hit small businesses that insure their workers. It also wants lawmakers to allow insurers to widen the rating bands that dictate how much more insurers can charge older customers. Insurers also want to tackle the growth of health costs by enacting a new measure to give robust protections against medical malpractice lawsuits to doctors who follow certain “best practice” guidelines.”
HOSPITALS: The American Hospital Association formally came out “in support of Sen. Cornyn’s bill to repeal reform’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).” “America’s hospitals support the repeal of IPAB because its existence permanently removes Congress from the decision-making process and threatens the long-time, open and important dialogue between hospitals and their elected officials about the needs of local hospitals and how to provide the highest quality care to their patients and communities,” they wrote in a letter.
DOCTORS: “The American Medical Association (AMA) is warning of ‘a catastrophe’ if lawmakers don’t step in to block the 23 percent cut, which is scheduled to take effect Dec. 1, and another 6.5 percent cut that’s due a month later.”
Meet The Corporate Chairmen: Incoming Committee Chairs Have Deep Ties To Lobbyists And Big Business
One of the results of Tuesday’s Republican takeover of the House of Representatives is the future installation of new chairmen in the chamber’s various committees. While none of the upcoming chairmanships are set in stone — members have to run and be elected to chair committees — it is generally true that ranking members of these committees are the ones most likely to take over.
Today, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity (CPI) released a report titled “The Chairmen: New House Leaders Have Familiar Ties to Business, Revolving Door,” which takes a close look at the likely incoming chairmen of the various House committees. The CPI report finds that most of the likely incoming chairs “have deep ties to the business community or the industries they will soon oversee.” Here are some of the highlights of these possible chairmen with “deep ties” to lobbyists and big business:
- Likely House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chairman Rep. Bill Young (FL): Young’s top Political Action Committee (PAC) donations over the past two election cycles read like a list of the nation’s top defense contractors. He has received $ 32,500 from Raytheon, $ 25,000 from General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, and $ 20,000 from Boeing and Honeywell International. Additionally, at least five of his staffers have gone on to work as lobbyists. Last year, he requested earmarks for “earmarks for companies that hired three of his former staffers as lobbyists. The same companies, along with senior executive staff, contributed about $ 145,000 to Young’s campaign that same year.”
- Likely Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Howard McKeon (CA): McKeon, whose committe would also deal with defense-related issues, is also a major recipient of defense industry PAC money. In the past two election cycles, he has received $ 40,000 from General Atomics, $ 34,000 from Lockheed Martin, and $ 32,500 from Northrop Grumman. He is a co-founder of Congress’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus, which backs the construction of military vehicles that Northrop Grumman manufactures within his district. His former legislative assistant Hanz Heinrichs has “lobbied on behalf of Alcoa, Boeing, and Ashbury International Group.”
- Likely Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Spencer Bachus (AL): Bachus’s top PAC contributors are Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which have given him $ 45,000 and $ 35,000 respectively over the past four years. He has in the recent past made a specific request of financial lobbyists to give more to Republican candidates, saying Democrats “hammered” the financial industry with their financial regulatory reform legislation.
- Likely Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (CA): Mica, the likely incoming chairman of the committee dealing with the country’s transportation infrastructure, has been a magnet over the past four years of PAC donations related to the industries the committee regulates. That includes $ 40,000 from BNSF Railway Company, $ 33,000 from Union Pacific Corporation, and $ 25,000 from CSX Corporation.
- Likely Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Doc Hastings (WA): Hastings is in line to run the committee that “oversees federal land use and public water resources.” A number of industry PACs that would be overseen by the committee have contributed generously to the congressman. In the last two election cycles, Weyerhaeuser Company, a timber firm, has contributed $ 20,000. Bechtel Group, which is a major construction company and has interests in water systems, has contributed $ 17,000. American Crystal Sugar Company, an agricultural cooperative, has given the same amount. Martin Doern, Hastings’s former Legislative Director, is now a lobbyist for Portland General Electric.
- Likely Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Joe Barton (TX): Barton’s most famous act of corporate fealty is apologizing to oil giant BP for government effots to hold it accountable following the company’s oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Barton has received $ 37,500 from the PAC of oil giant Koch Industries since 2007. At least half a dozen of his former staffers have gone into lobbying work. In 2008, he secured “$ 2 million earmark for Carbon-Carbon Advanced Technologies, a company located inside his district. He secured the firm another $ 3.2 million in 2010.”
CPI notes that eight “of the 14 candidates for the committee chairs got the majority of their campaign funds since 2007 from special interest PACs.” It also goes on to note, interestingly, that “the top contenders are all men. Nearly all are white,” and when it comes to social demographics, “the likely Republican chairs don’t look much different than the Democratic counterparts they are replacing.”
Prostitutes changing johns, or something like that: Health-care lobbyists seeking out Republicans
House Republicans say healthcare groups that backed the Democrats’ overhaul bill are trying to rekindle their hot-and-cold-relationship with the GOP.
The health industry’s effort to make nice with Republicans is both reflective of how Washington works and how much the political winds have shifted since Barack Obama’s inauguration early last year.
House Republicans felt shunned by their allies in the medical sector in 2009 as Democrats basked in their electoral victories that gave them control of Congress and the White House since 1994.
Nearly two years after Obama’s triumph and six months after the passage of health reform, the mood in the nation’s capital and beyond has changed dramatically.
Isn’t there some disease lobbyists get when they sleep around so flagrantly?
Prostitutes changing johns, or something like that: Health-care lobbyists seeking out Republicans
House Republicans say healthcare groups that backed the Democrats’ overhaul bill are trying to rekindle their hot-and-cold-relationship with the GOP.
The health industry’s effort to make nice with Republicans is both reflective of how Washington works and how much the political winds have shifted since Barack Obama’s inauguration early last year.
House Republicans felt shunned by their allies in the medical sector in 2009 as Democrats basked in their electoral victories that gave them control of Congress and the White House since 1994.
Nearly two years after Obama’s triumph and six months after the passage of health reform, the mood in the nation’s capital and beyond has changed dramatically.
Isn’t there some disease lobbyists get when they sleep around so flagrantly?
Lobbyist: Obama attacks on lobbyists good for business
A reader flags an eyebrow-raising extchange at an Atlantic forum last week with lobbyist Heather Podesta:
HEATHER PODESTA: Vilification of the lobbyist has been very good for business.
RON BROWNSTEIN: Because what, its convinced people that you may be more important that you are, is that what you’re saying?
PODESTA: I’ll let people draw their own conclusions. But clearly as recent campaigns have focused on the insiders in Washington and looking to change the way business is done. Folks start to ask the question, ‘Well, how is business done in Washington? And do we have a seat at the table? Are we part of that working group that’s trying to figure out a technical change or a consensus product?’ So, the attention brought to lobbyists definitely has led to more interest and being involved in Washington. The other thing is, Obama has been very active on the legislative front to tackle health care, financial reform. These are major, major issues. I think the lobbying numbers would actually be higher if people hadn’t start to play games with who is a lobbyist and who isn’t a lobbyist. Because we have been vilified, people don’t want to wear the scarlet letter. And there are rules and laws as to what is required in terms of registering and people are playing games.
The exchange comes after the 13:00 mark.
Lobbyists Lose Money When Former Bosses Leave
A new study from the London School of Economics found that politically connected federal lobbyists experienced a “sizable drop in earnings when their old bosses left Congress.”
Center for Responsive Politics: “Overall, the researchers found that lobbyists’ earnings dropped by 24 percent upon the departure of one of their former employers in either the Senate or a senior position within the House. This decline represents about $ 177,000 per year for the lobbyist — and the decrease in revenue persists for three years after the politicians exit.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Lobbyists Lose Money When Former Bosses Leave
A new study from the London School of Economics found that politically connected federal lobbyists experienced a “sizable drop in earnings when their old bosses left Congress.”
Center for Responsive Politics: “Overall, the researchers found that lobbyists’ earnings dropped by 24 percent upon the departure of one of their former employers in either the Senate or a senior position within the House. This decline represents about $ 177,000 per year for the lobbyist — and the decrease in revenue persists for three years after the politicians exit.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Lobbyists Lose Money When Former Bosses Leave
A new study from the London School of Economics found that politically connected federal lobbyists experienced a “sizable drop in earnings when their old bosses left Congress.”
Center for Responsive Politics: “Overall, the researchers found that lobbyists’ earnings dropped by 24 percent upon the departure of one of their former employers in either the Senate or a senior position within the House. This decline represents about $ 177,000 per year for the lobbyist — and the decrease in revenue persists for three years after the politicians exit.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
Lobbyists Lose Money When Former Bosses Leave
A new study from the London School of Economics found that politically connected federal lobbyists experienced a “sizable drop in earnings when their old bosses left Congress.”
Center for Responsive Politics: “Overall, the researchers found that lobbyists’ earnings dropped by 24 percent upon the departure of one of their former employers in either the Senate or a senior position within the House. This decline represents about $ 177,000 per year for the lobbyist — and the decrease in revenue persists for three years after the politicians exit.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
