Watchdogs Monitor Party Circuit

Publication: Congressional Quarterly

Shawn Zeller
August 25, 2008

Lobbyists beware: Watchdog groups are making the rounds to monitor convention-goers’ compliance with new ethics rules and call attention to events where corporate sponsors wine and dine members of Congress and their aides.

“We’re expecting these lobbying organizations to try to evade the rules,” said Craig Holman, a legislative representative at Public Citizen. His group has recruited like-minded convention delegates to attend events and plans to alert reporters to parties it thinks step over the line. The Sunlight Foundation has launched its “Party Time” project and is keeping tabs on lobbyist-sponsored soirees. Democracy 21 is also keeping an eye on corporate events.

The watchdog groups are unhappy that convention partying is in high gear despite the new lobbying law and new House rules that were supposed to put more distance between lawmakers and lobbyists.

Earlier this month, the Sunlight Foundation released a list, compiled by the Washington lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, of 400 parties and other functions scheduled for the two party conventions. It lists scores of events by lobbying firms, corporations and advocacy groups.

At previous conventions, such parties were often spectacles featuring bands, fine food and free-flowing alcohol, where lobbyists schmoozed with members and congressional staff. While some of the excesses have been curtailed, the events this year are still lavish affairs.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, for example, is honoring one of its own senior counsels, Vernon Jordan, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Tuesday morning. Hogan & Hartson is throwing late-afternoon receptions at One Tabor Center throughout the week. Washington’s top-grossing lobbying firm, Patton Boggs, has scheduled a Tuesday night party at Bar Standard.

Some hosts are seeking to limit exposure by making events “off the record,” meaning reporters who attend must agree not to use information or quotes from the event.
Rules and Loopholes

Under guidelines issued by the House and Senate ethics committees earlier this year, members can attend lobbyists’ receptions if no meal is served and no individual member of Congress is named as the honoree. But the lobbyist-provided meal ban does not apply if an event is “widely attended” — meaning that more than 25 people are there who are not lawmakers or congressional aides — and the lawmaker or aide’s attendance is “appropriate.” That means a legislative aide who handles banking issues should not dine at an event focused on farm policy. But there are exceptions even to those limits, and in some cases lawmakers can be treated to sit-down dinners with small groups of lobbyists.

Lawmakers who are convention superdelegates are free to partake in events open to large numbers of delegates, such as those AT&T is sponsoring at the Grand Hyatt’s Pinnacle Club honoring state delegations.

The rules are waived for charity fundraisers. One hot ticket this week, Tuesday night’s poker tournament at Coors Field, is sponsored by the Poker Players Alliance, which wants Congress to repeal a 2006 law restricting Internet gambling. The event will benefit paralyzed veterans.

There are a variety of other exceptions. The House guidance, for example, bars members from events honoring a single lawmaker. So sponsors need only add a second honoree. Visa and US Bank are hosting a Wednesday afternoon reception honoring House Democrats elected in 2006.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said the House rule interpretations, which the Senate did not follow, fly in the face of the 2007 law. “If House members try to use that guidance to justify parties, we’re just going to go to the public and explain what the actual rules are and make the case that’s a violation,” he said.

The Senate bars members from attending parties honoring senators but allows them to be honored if they speak at the events. Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar , for example, will be the featured speaker Tuesday at an event at Zengo, an upscale sushi restaurant, sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.

There is a dispute over whether lobbyists can help finance an event honoring a lawmaker if the primary sponsor does not lobby. Kate Smith, a Hogan & Hartson attorney, contends that the rules allow such a scenario. Wertheimer calls that “a phony interpretation designed to cheat.”

Criminal and civil penalties can now be imposed against violators. But Nancy Watzman, director of the Sunlight Foundation’s project, said she hopes to shed light on Washington’s influence culture. “We will keep an eye out as to whether people are breaking the rules. And we will be exposing even those parties going on within the rules.”