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And Who's Vetting McCain's Veeps? A Former Lobbyist, Natch
June 10, 2008 1:23 PM
And amidst all this back-and-forth, parsing and equivocating about Jim Johnson, the man who is vetting Sen. Barack Obama's vice presidential hopefuls, we now ask: who is vetting Sen. John McCain's would-be heirs to the throne?
The only reason any of us even know that former Reagan White House counsel Arthur Culvahouse is helping McCain vet his Veep possibilities is because Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told The Hill last month.
“It’s Arthur B. Culvahouse, that’s who’s heading the search,” Alexander said, spilling the beans.
Culvahouse is a partner at O’Melveny & Myers and despite McCain's past anti-lobbyist posture, A.B. Culvahouse has been in the past a quite successful lobbyist -- though he is not one currently.
According to lobbying reports (you can read them HERE), Culvahouse lobbied Congress, the Justice Department and the White House and Department of Justice for a group pushing tort reform, the Civil Justice Reform Group, which the liberal group Public Citizen says has worked to weaken the rights of consumers, describing it as "a coalition of general counsels from more than 50 of the Fortune 100 firms."
Time Warner hired Culvahouse in 2003 to lobby Congress to continue the moratorium against internet taxation -- which many states and localities say hurts their ability to provide effective government services, and many small business say is unfair, as once argued by Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt back when he was governor of Utah.
Aerospace titan Lockheed Martin retained Culvahouse in 1999 to lobby for a Senate bill that would have enabled the Secretary of Transportation to give Lockheed Martin and other companies financing for the companies to develop "commercial space transportation vehicles with launch costs significantly below current levels."
Culvahouse has occasionally lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae -- which Obama VP vetter Jim Johnson helmed, of course. Records indicate Culvahouse lobbied Congress, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development on regulatory issues concerning Fannie Mae. (This may be why we haven't heard the McCain folks hit Obama about Johnson's controversial time at Fannie Mae.) Culvahouse also lobbied the Senate to obtain approval by the Federal Housing Finance Board of Fannie Mae’s Mortgage Partnership Finance Program, records show.
The McCain campaign would not agree to answer questions about the appropriateness of McCain -- who once described himself as having taken on the "iron triangle of money, lobbyists and legislation" -- securing the help of one of the rungs of that triangle in vetting his possible No. 2.
- jpt
June 10, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (22)
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Are lobbyist bad people? If so, why don't the Congress ban all lobbyist?
Posted by: Tyrone | Jun 10, 2008 1:45:54 PM
With approximately 35,000 registered lobbyists in Washington, it is hard to walk a block without bumping into one. After all, it is money and lobbyist that rule Washington. And Obama is not going to change Washington.
Posted by: Mary | Jun 10, 2008 1:43:44 PM
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