SALON

Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012 4:00 PM UTC

Romney attacks Newt as “lobbyist”

Even as he goes after Gingrich for working for Freddie Mac, Romney has surrounded himself with lobbyists

By

Topics: 2012 Elections, Lobbyists, Lobbying, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, ,

Romney attacks Newt as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)

Part of the aggressive new Romney campaign offensive against Newt Gingrich is to attack Gingrich for having been a lobbyist. The irony of the strategy is that Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with multiple registered lobbyists at the highest level of his campaign.

“Over the last 15 years since he left the House, he talks about great bold movements and ideas,” Romney told a Florida crowd this week. “Well, what’s he been doing for 15 years? He’s been working as a lobbyist, yeah, he’s been working as a lobbyist and selling influence around Washington.”

In fact, Gingrich has never been a registered lobbyist — a distinction that Gingrich invoked in the Monday night debate — but his “strategic advice” work for Freddie Mac looked a lot like what can be colloquially described as lobbying, or at least something close to it.

And Gingrich’s work for healthcare companies in his post-congressional career looks even more like lobbying than the Freddie Mac consulting. The Times reported in November:

In a variety of instances, documents and interviews show, Mr. Gingrich arranged meetings between executives and officials, and salted his presentations to lawmakers with pitches for his clients, who pay as much as $200,000 a year to belong to his Center for Health Transformation.

When the center sponsored a “health transformation summit” at the Florida State Capitol in March 2006, lawmakers who attended Mr. Gingrich’s keynote speech inside the House chamber received a booklet promoting not just ideas but also the specific services of two dozen of his clients. Executives from some of those companies sat on panels for discussions that lawmakers were encouraged to attend after Mr. Gingrich’s address.

Romney is now suggesting that Gingrich did not register as a lobbyist when perhaps, by law, he should have.

But this line of attack is undermined by the fact that the Romney campaign is chock-full of people who have been lobbyists. They include:

  • Former Sen. Jim Talent, a Romney surrogate and co-chairman of a top Washington lobby shop, Mercury Public Affairs, which has recently worked for big banks and the coal industry. (We explored Talent’s recent background here.)
  • Charlie Black, an informal Romney advisor who is easily one of the best-known Republican lobbyists of his generation. Black has recently lobbied for Boeing, WalMart and the financial services industry.
  • Ron Kaufman, who, according to the Globe, has been traveling with the Romney campaign and providing strategic advice. He was formerly chairman of the Dutko Group Worldwide.
  • Former Rep. Vin Weber, a Romney policy advisor and also managing partner at Clark & Weinstock.

The lobbyist question is not a new one for Romney. Back in his first presidential run in 2007, he famously got into a verbal tussle with an Associated Press reporter who challenged Romney’s claim that lobbyists were not running his campaign. The must-see video of that exchange is here.

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations