Keenan Steiner writes:

But a review of the record, and interviews with a former colleague as well as with a congressional staffer to a key senator pushing the legislation, do not support his claims and suggest that, in this case at least, Abramoff may be exaggerating his clout…

Abramoff’s lobbying advice looks back to the summer of 2004, when the tax loophole-closing legislation had passed both the House and the Senate.

Here’s where I must disagree: the thing is…I didn’t have a job in the summer of 2004. In fact, my firm, Greenberg Traurig, had fired me in March of that year.

And that’s just the beginning of the inaccuracies in Steiner’s post.

Fact-checking is important. But in seeking to undermine what I’ve written, the Sunlight Foundation, a champion of lobby reform and political accountability, misses the point. I’m not exaggerating my clout – I’m trying to tell the truth.

I named seven senators who we targeted with what were, essentially, bribes: Chruck Grassley, R-Iowa, Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Jim Bunning, R-Ky., Tom Daschle, D-S.D., John Breaux, D-La., and Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. These bribes were more than “junkets” as Steiner writes, and the targets encompassed more than the seven legislators themselves. As I’ve made clear in my book and elsewhere, I didn’t just provide travel opportunities or campaign contributions, but also tickets to games and meals at my restaurant. The targets weren’t just members, but also, and especially, their staff. The checks we rounded up were often from employees of these clients, and many times were directed to party organizations and PACs.

Does the Sunlight Foundation believe that meals and tickets aren’t bribes? Do they contend that my staff and I raised no money for these members or their designated party beneficiaries.

Steiner writes:

From the time the Senate passed its bill until it became law in October 2004, Abramoff himself, who gave nearly $100,000 to federal and state campaigns in 2003 and 2004, did not donate to five of the seven senators’ campaigns, according to Influence Explorer.

Again, this is because I was no longer employed nor donating – this all happened after I was done lobbying. Targeting of these senators – by a wide variety of means – took place in 2003. This timeline error is repeated throughout the article, obscuring the facts he uses.

Steiner also points out that my “short list of clients, excepting Tyco, gave $15,500 to campaigns and committees of Grassley, Daschle and Lincoln, and almost all of that came from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, not exactly a corporate player.”

It’s important that those of us looking to fix the system understand that corporations could not make contributions to federal campaigns, so we asked our clients to solicit donations from individuals. Bundling campaign contributions makes their ultimate source much easier to hide.

For an idea of how this all works, see this Washington Post infographic.

Sunlight interviews Neil Volz, a former member of my team who was convicted of conspiracy. Volz says that for me to call our contributions “bribes seems to be quite an exaggeration.” That’s the entire thesis of his book, which he is now promoting and his viewpoint corresponds with that of someone who might work on the Hill: that the gifts lobbyists like me ply members and staff with are signs of friendship, not bribery. I think this headline from the Onion says it all.

I find it unfortunate that the Sunlight Foundation appears to be endorsing this approach – if they contend that the conveyance of tickets, meals, and contributions by lobbyists to public servants, with the full expectation that they will do the bidding of the lobbyist is not a bribe, then we have a serious problem within the reform community.

Steiner interviewed Grassley spokeswoman Jill Kozeny who called my work influencing Grassley “pure baloney,” and noted that “fundraising is entirely separate from Sen. Grassley’s policy operation.”

What do you think Grassley’s staffer would say? And how can fundraising really be entirely separate from policy?

Steiner fails to mention the work done by one of my former staffers, Todd Boulanger, who ingratiated himself with Grassley so that the two became running and breakfast buddies.

The bribery I explained in my post (and that I used for years to get my clients what they want) is complicated, sneaky, and oftentimes entirely legal. The Sunlight Foundation should know that – and should know that the only way for us to fight to fix the system is to target that kind of everyday Washington corruption – together.

Wrong.

Snatching bailout money has not been the only success of banking lobbyists. They have also managed to defeat other tax assaults throughout the past few years. And, in a stunningly candid boast, their top lobbyist, James Ballentine, executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, feels they’ll have no problem dispatching the tax-raising effort yet again.

“It’s been a nonstarter the last couple years. I don’t expect there to be any movement by Congress to bring this up. If there is, we’ll employ grassroots as necessary and go from there. We can only go on the history of how it’s been received and it’s not been received well,” he said. “If we get some sense of movement, we will act accordingly. We don’t plan to do anything aggressive at this point.”

Perhaps no one mentioned to Mr. Ballentine that the deployment of grassroots pressure by lobbying firms is usually best kept quiet.

When Congressmen suspect that the citizen-armies in their districts are being whipped up by lobbyists, they usually ignore them. Robo-calls, form letters, blast emails, and other grassroots devices are quickly detected by argus-eyed Congressional staff, and discounted as meaningless. That a seasoned veteran like Mr. Ballentine would feel confident enough to discuss this weapon in his arsenal with such candor is refreshing, if not unwise. I certainly was less open to such discussion when I was a lobbyist.

In my former job, when confronted with a vexing lobbying challenge, I would organize and deploy grassroots activists to whip up a firestorm against our opponents. Every lobbyist dreams of replicating the legendary shutdown of the Capitol achieved by the homeschooling movement in the 1990s after the Clinton Administration threatened their movement.
Some issues lend themselves to grassroots campaigns – homeschooling works well — but others require contrivance and connivance to whip up support. Often, lobbyists will hire vendors to dispatch blast emails and robocalls in the hopes of bombarding Congressional offices with citizen fury. But, it’s tough to buy a crowd. And their calls are usually not very heartfelt.

When I lobbied for Tyco Corporation, we were faced with a problem somewhat similar to that which Mr. Ballentine confronts. The House and Senate had separately passed tax bills which retroactively placed a multi-billion dollar levy on my client. We had to scramble to remove these provisions in conference, and decided on a good-cop, bad-cop approach. In Washington, we plied our congressional targets, including Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Craig Thomas (R-WY), Bill Frist (R-TN), Jim Bunning (R-KY), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Breaux (D-LA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AS), with all manner of contributions and largesse (in other words, bribes!) and in their states and districts we tried to turn on the grassroots machine. We would quantify for the Senators how many jobs the company provided in the state, the impact of Tyco companies on state commerce, how many vendors were in the state and even how many shares of Tyco stock were owned by citizens of the state.

But we found it impossible to entice employees to pick up a phone to call their congressmen.

Moreover, even were we able to get the line foreman, riveter, secretary, or storage clerk to call a congressman, they usually were impassive advocates at best. Most workers in a company don’t view it as their job to lobby for their company. So, Ballentine’s legion of bank-tellers, account reps, and armored car drivers might not be the most effective army in this battle. Even were his grassroots consultants able to rally customers who fear an increase in bank fees, how many would take their time to call Washington in defense of an institution they likely loathe?

In the Tyco effort, I found that getting the employees or customers of Tyco’s myriad subsidiaries to take up their cudgels was a futile effort, so I took a different tack: I went for the vendors. Based on my experience raising political armies to assist my Indian tribal gaming clients, I knew that vendors are the most highly motivated defense force out there. If you were selling Tyco reams of paper each year, or tons of computers, or even oodles of noodles, you didn’t want to lose that contract. If you were head of the company providing janitorial services, or doing renovations or a million other things, you were going to take the time to pick up a phone and call a Congressman. And that call was not going to be some unfocused persiflage. You were going to laser in with strong talking points and focused passion.

These were the calls worth a million robo-calls.

Once my bewildered client acquiesced and gave me the list of the thousands of vendors of the hundreds of companies they owned, I had my army. We facilitated the calls from these business owners and watched with glee as our previously stubborn opponents tripped over themselves to support our position. We won the battle for our client. I, of course, ultimately lost the war.

I don’t know if the American Bankers Association grassroots effort is anything more than a fig leaf. It’s likely they are paying consultants a fortune to turn out the feckless robo-calls and form letters, rather than doing the kind of work we did. Probably, the grassroots threat by Mr. Ballentine is just cover, while the banks ply Congress with the main product they keep in their warehouses: money.

“A U.S. senator from South Dakota helped add millions to a Pentagon program his wife evaluated as a contract employee. A Washington congressman boosted the budget of an environmental group that his son ran as executive director. A Texas congresswoman guided millions to a university where her husband served as a vice president.

“Those three members are among 16 who have taken actions that aided entities connected to their immediate families.”

This is the same arrogance that brought me down. To the public, these 16 members would argue till they are blue in the face that what they are doing is justified, appropriate and even good for the nation, and especially their districts.

And some of them might even believe it.

Take, for example, the Washington congressman described above. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) was chairman of a subcommittee that allowed him to secure millions in federal funds to clean up Puget Sound. That doesn’t sound all that bad, right? Turns out his son, David Dicks, soon after became director of the Puget Sound Partnership. The father and son worked in tandem, with the congressman directing tens of millions to his son’s agency – there were no competitors for the funds.

Dicks didn’t own up to these earmarks:

“Your kids are going to do things that you have been involved with,” Norm Dicks said. “I don’t think there was a conflict. We are all trying our best to restore Puget Sound.”

In my days lobbying, we would try to show a member of Congress how our goals were their goals, that it would benefit them politically at home. For these earmarks, they don’t need to be told it will benefit them at home. Some of them are literally paving the streets outside their houses!

The lofty perch on Capitol Hill leads these members to think they can do what they wish, including benefiting their family and friends with earmarks. I would bet that not one of them thought they would get caught, even though there is an army of journalists and investigators looking for this stuff. They do it because they can do it.

But in their hearts, I have to believe they know better.

I’ll be posting more serious pieces next week. But, for now, I just want to say how honored I am to join Nick Penniman, Josh Silver, and the gang at United Republic in the vital effort to effect real reform in Washington.

It is a privilege for me to add my insights and experience to their strong and sagacious team and I look forward to working with them to reveal to our nation the way Washington really works.

There is a rising tide of outrage in our land about the abuse in our system. Sadly, in my former life as a lobbyist, I participated in this dysfunctional and byzantine world. But now, in these pages, and with my other efforts, I intend to do what I can as we all attempt to repair our democracy.

So I hope you come back to the Republic Report often, and that you do whatever you can to help broadcast and amplify the good work being done here.