The Abramoff scandal has clearly got Rethugs skittish far beyond the beltway. Out here in Missouri, the Senate Rethugs' fundraising committee quickly scuttled plans for a series of breakfasts for lobbyists and their clients after Missouri Democrats shone a light on the plans.
According to an article in today's Kansas City Star, the 14 planned fundraisers were particularly egregious in that they would have allowed lobbyists to have eggs and bacon with chairmen of a different Senate committee. But in a sign of just how rattled the Rethugs are over Abramoff, they canceled the fundraisers less than two days after the e-mail invites were sent out.
More below.
According to the Star, on Tuesday, the Senate Majority Fund sent e-mail invites for the breakfast fundraisers to more than 100 lobbyists. You could attend all breakfasts for $5,000 or a single breakfast for $1,000. For that price you bought direct access to Senate committee chairmen:
The first committee up was the Senate Rules, Joint Rules, Resolution and Ethics Committee, which is led by Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields, a St. Joseph Republican.
Subsequent breakfasts would feature the heads of committees dealing with agriculture, insurance, business and environmental regulations, economic development, transportation and other topics.
The article noted that several veteran lobbyists at the Capitol said this was the first time they had ever seen a fundraiser organized around committee chairmen.
But the Rethugs plans quickly folded merely by the Dems' linking this to the Abramoff scandal:
The breakfast fundraisers were planned just as lawmakers from both parties in Washington are trying to distance themselves from lobbyists in the wake of the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal.
Missouri Democrats said the planned fundraisers showed that Senate Republicans were trying to adopt a "pay to play" system modeled after the practices that have tainted Congress. They quickly called for Republican leaders to scuttle the fundraising breakfasts.
"This is a brazen attempt by Republican senators to sell influence to lobbyists," said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the Missouri Democratic Party. "Republican senators are charging lobbyists for access to their committee chairs."
My favorite quote in the article comes from Sen. Frank Barnitz, a Dem, who said, "Lobbyists are going to expect a whole lot more than a warm plate of bacon and eggs for $5,000." (Side note: the article in the print newspaper ended with this quote, but strangely it does not appear in the online edition.)
The Missouri Rethugs denied anything unethical, of course, but said they canceled the breakfasts because they were going to be a "distraction."
To me, this incident highlights several key lessons for the Dems:
First, when calling the Rethugs on their unethical conduct, linking them to the Abramoff scandal is an effective strategy, and using the phrase "pay to play" in your charges seems to make an impact. Out here in Missouri the Rethugs pretty much do what they want, so the fact they the folded on this so quickly tells me they're really peeing in their pants. In the 2006 elections, I think that the issue of corruption and ethics will an effective one for Dems to use against the Rethugs. It will play well in the heartland.
Second, with all of the attention being focused lately on the Abramoff lobbying scandal and the charges of Rethug bribery, corruption, I was somewhat amazed that the Rethug party here decided this week to be even MORE brazen in setting up a "pay for play" system with lobbyists. That tells me that there are still a lot of Rethugs around the country going about their business as usual, perhaps due to ignorance or perhaps because they don't see the scandals in DC affecting them back at home. So we all need to follow the lead of the Missouri Dems and keep shining the light on their corruption around the country.