Politics

Despite campaign promises, Obama donor base flush with lobbyists

Chris Goodnow Contributor
Font Size:

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.

One of the non-lobbyists, Michael Kempner, is CEO of the federally registered lobbying firm MWW Group. But as an individual, he’s listed in President Obama’s donor rolls as simply being from Cresskill, New Jersey. Kempner founded and runs the lobbying firm, which generated over $4 million dollars in lobbying revenue last year according to opensecrets.org, a website that tracks money in American politics. MWW’s website describes the company as “one of the nation’s five largest public relations agencies.” It has over 100 clients, including large corporations such as Target, McDonald’s, JetBlue Airways, and United Healthcare.

The U.S. Senate’s lobbying disclosure database contains more than 1,400 documents related to organizations for which MWW’s employees have lobbied federal government agencies over the past twelve years. During the first quarter of 2011 alone, MWW collected over $500,000 in lobbying fees from healthcare providers, local communities and universities.

Another non-lobbyist, attorney Robert Sherman, is listed on the Obama donor rolls merely as a resident of Boston. In fact, Sherman is a “founding shareholder” of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s 20 largest lobbying firms. Sherman’s company has earned over $122 million in lobbying fees since 1998. According to the Senate’s lobbying disclosure database, it has engaged in more than 3,000 separate transactions for lobbying services during the past twelve years.

Former New Jersey governor and non-lobbyist Jon Corzine, who donated $24,900 to the Democratic National Committee last October, is Chairman and CEO of MF Global Inc., a derivatives broker-dealer with over $42 billion in assets. MF Global has hired lobbying firm Delta Strategy Group at least eighteen times since 2008, and paid the company more than $350,000 to monitor regulatory activity at Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to Senate records.

Philanthropist and non-lobbyist Jack Connors, who held a $38,500-per-couple fundraiser for President Obama in May, is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Partners Healthcare System, a non-profit hospital conglomerate and the largest healthcare provider in Massachusetts. Partners has hired numerous lobbyists — at a cost of more than $6.5 million since 2008 — to lobby both houses of Congress, the National Institutes of Health, the White House, and other government agencies.

The Senate’s lobbying disclosure database contains more than 70 lobbying registration forms outlining Partners’ numerous efforts to secure stimulus funds, lobby against Medicare and Medicaid funding cuts, and urge “changes to Medicare hospital reimbursement policies.”

Silicon Valley billionaire and non-lobbyist Marc Benioff, who held a $3 million fundraiser for President Obama last April, is CEO of the “enterprise cloud computing company” Salesforce.com, which has lobbied on its own behalf for privacy, data breach, and cybersecurity concerns. Since 2006, Salesforce.com has spent $637,000 to lobby the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of State, and other government agencies.

The presence of these informal lobbyists in Obama’s donor base is unsurprising, said Michael Malbin, the Executive Director of the Campaign Finance Institute.

“President Obama has branched money from people who are partners of firms that do lobbying all along. He has done this despite saying that he wouldn’t raise money from lobbyists. It’s not in itself a main issue.”

Despite the bundlers’ ties to lobbying firms, Malbin commented that the Obama campaign has done nothing illegal, and that it should be commended for its transparency.

“President Obama has chosen to disclose [his bundlers] voluntarily. The bigger question is why aren’t the other campaigns doing so? All of them ought to be required under law to do it.”

Holman said lobbyist money and influence continues to be a strong force in national politics, even as candidates promise greater attention to ethics.

“When it comes to any activity in Washington,” he said, “almost everyone is associated with a law firm or group that lobbies.”

Liz Sauchelli contributed to this report.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel