Lobbyists have a really bad name. And associating political opponents with them is increasingly popular as a way to imply “corruption,” “insider status” and “backroom deals.” So goes the race between Sen. Jon Tester and Congressman Denny Rehberg for Tester’s Senate seat.
What began last year as general criticism of campaign cash from and ties to lobbyists has since grown into charges of strong-arming and influence-peddling involving an industry just about everybody hates.
Since Rehberg announced that he was challenging Tester, the Republican has continually hammered the Democrat, who, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, is the No. 1 recipient of lobbyist campaign cash. Rehberg’s campaign has used the ranking to paint Tester as “hypocritical” for “lecturing Montanans about campaign spending” and dug up quotes from his 2006 campaign, in which he said, “I won’t sell Montana down the road by cutting deals with K Street lobbyists.”
But Rehberg has his own lobbyist baggage. For one, among the 435 members of the House of Representatives, Rehberg ranks ninth in lobbyist cash received. His son works for one. And the Associated Press reported that nearly three-dozen lobbyists donated about $20,000 to Rehberg’s campaign but left blank their employment on disclosure forms. Rehberg said the donors simply turned in incomplete records, but Tester’s campaign wasn’t buying it.
“This is yet another reason why Montanans cannot trust Dennis Rehberg,” a spokesman for Tester’s campaign said. “Just a few days ago Congressman Rehberg told Montanans he wants ‘100 percent transparency’ in campaigns. And now we find he hid the money he takes from Washington lobbyists.”
Last week, the Washington, D.C.-based publication POLITICO published a story that said Tester’s Democratic colleague, Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was sending word to K Street lobbyists: support Rehberg at your peril.
The story said that Montana’s senior senator has “quietly put out the word” to K-Streeters that backing Rehberg could cost them Baucus’ support.
While Rehberg’s campaign called this a “major development,” a Democrat interviewed in the story said it was business as usual.
“As far as I can tell, this is nothing more or less than what Republicans have been doing for years,” Jim Manley told POLITICO. “Democrats are just taking a page out of the Republican playbook for how to operate on K Street.”
And Baucus’ spokesperson said, “this anonymous claim made by unnamed lobbyists is not just completely untrue, it’s entirely motivated by politics.”
It’s easy to make the argument that lobbyists, along with being seedy, are a bunch of liars. Their reputations are so bad that many lobbyists refuse to call themselves lobbyists anymore. Take a look at Tom Daschle and Newt Gingrich. Daschle, the former Democratic majority leader in the Senate, is a “policy adviser.” Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House and current presidential candidate, was a “historian.”
Roll Call published a story last month on these “unlobbyists” and how they are often far worse than those in the trade with which they take pains to dissociate themselves from.
“Ironically, the unlobbyists represent what the public imagines real lobbyists to be: operating in the shadows outside public disclosure laws for a collection of murky or completely unknown interests,” Roll Call’s Kate Ackley wrote. “Yet it’s the real lobbyists, the ones who file their quarterly reports disclosing the names of their clients and roughly how much they got paid, who get the bad rap.”
Which candidate is the most influenced by lobbyists will continue to be the focus in the race between Tester and Rehberg. And who can more effectively link their opponent to the industry will almost certainly have the upper hand. But it turns out that many of those with the most sway, and who are perhaps the most unethical, in Washington, D.C. don’t call themselves lobbyists. And we won’t hear anything about them.