Despite campaign promises, Obama donor base flush with lobbyists

In June 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama declared that his campaign would “not take a dime from Washington lobbyists.” Obama and his deputies have repeated that promise many times since then. But a Daily Caller survey of campaign disclosures found that at least five of the 27 individuals and couples who have collected more than $500,000 for the Obama 2012 campaign are closely tied to lobbying firms.

Obama’s top fundraisers, called “bundlers,” pool donations from friends and colleagues while placing the entire contribution under their own name. It is unclear whether the unknown individuals who channeled their donations through the bundlers have lobbyist ties, but the five bundlers themselves either run lobbying firms or lead and direct businesses that hire lobbyists.

Many politicians say they don’t take money from lobbyists, but Obama campaign staffers have been especially vigilant in making sure they don’t accept K Street money, said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the advocacy group Public Citizen.

“Obama’s the only one who has taken it to the point where he said if they’re a hired gun as a registered lobbyist he doesn’t want them on his campaign or raising money for his campaign,” Holman said. “No other presidential candidate has done that.”

In a 2012 fundraising letter to supporters, the Obama campaign wrote, “Our campaign doesn’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs.”

But “lobbyist” is a narrowly defined term.

U.S. citizens have a constitutional right to lobby the federal government, said Holman, but they must formally register themselves as “lobbyists” if they meet any one of three criteria: receiving $5,000 for lobbying or spending $20,000 on lobbying within a 90-day period, contacting two or more government officials during a calendar year, or devoting 20 percent or more of their working hours contacting government officials.

Americans passing one of these means-tests must register with either the Secretary of the Senate or the Clerk of the House of Representatives, depending on which house they lobby. But people who keep their lobbying activities below those benchmarks can avoid registering, even as they advocate for commercial, professional and industrial interest groups.

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