K Street: Chamber Is Coy on Campaign Effort
Chamber Is Coy on Campaign Effort
After publicly vowing earlier this year to raise and spend more
than $30 million to help elect business-friendly candidates and
push legal reform in the 2002 elections, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce has become more tight-lipped about the effort. Chamber
President Thomas Donohue stressed in an early-October address
that the chamber “is committed to challenging the class-action
trial lawyers on all fronts.” But the Institute for Legal Reform-
the chamber affiliate that runs the electoral project called the
Litigation Fairness Campaign-declined to say how much was being
spent on advertising and get-out-the-vote operations in judicial
and attorney general races around the country, or for efforts to
sway Congress into passing legislation on class-action reform,
medical malpractice, and asbestos liability. “We’re not
discussing any plans whatsoever,” Michael Schick, the institute’s
director of communications, told National Journal.
Several sources familiar with the campaign, however, say
that a joint fundraising drive by the chamber and the Business
Roundtable has raised about $20 million so far. That’s a smaller
amount than was expected, though hardly a number to sneeze at.
The money is being spent to bolster Supreme Court and attorney
general candidates in Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Michigan,
Mississippi, and Texas, sources said. Judicial candidates in a
few other states such as Ohio and Wisconsin may also get some
help.
The campaign is now being coordinated in part by Stanton
Anderson, a partner at McDermott, Will & Emery who has worked in
the past for Donohue and the chamber. Anderson came aboard after
Jim Wootton decided recently that he would step down as the
institute’s president after Election Day. Wootton is still
actively involved, sources said, but not quite as much as he had
previously. Wootton, a lawyer, is still considering options for
the future, including moving to Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, a law
firm whose client list includes the chamber.
Meanwhile, another pro-business group that played a role
in judicial elections in 2000, Citizens for a Sound Economy, has
pulled back from the judicial sphere this year. CSE says it is
focusing instead on bolstering pro-business turnout in the Senate
races in New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Texas. -Peter H.
Stone and Louis Jacobson
Qorvis Chief Takes Heat for the Saudis
House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind.,
socked it to Qorvis Communications founder and managing partner
Michael Petruzzello last week at a hearing on American children
abducted and held in Saudi Arabia. Petruzzello, who has a
multimillion-dollar public-relations contract with the Saudi
government, testified for the kingdom. The hearing focused on
cases of American-born children kidnapped by their Saudi Arabian
fathers, taken to Saudi Arabia, and refused the right to leave
the country. In some cases, Burton said, the children have been
physically abused. Burton asked Petruzzello whether he thought
Americans were being held against their will. Petruzzello pleaded
ignorance: “These are very complex matters and matters of
international law, which I really don’t have a full grasp of.”
Burton charged that the Saudis have not helped to solve the cases
and have engaged in “disinformation and PR stunts.” In an
interview, Petruzzello declined to comment on the hearing, but he
said the Saudis were being unfairly singled out, noting that out
of 1,100 active cross-border custody disputes between citizens of
the U.S. and other countries, only 11 involve Saudi citizens.
Petruzzello said the cases amounted to disputes where each parent
had been awarded custody by his or her own court system. The
Saudis, he added, have proposed a resolution mechanism to the
State Department. -Shawn Zeller
Was It Consulting, or Lobbying?
Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon’s government-
relations work after he retired from Congress in 2001 has been
the subject of critical news reports back home. The Arizona
Republic reported October 4 that Salmon had not registered under
the 1995 federal Lobbying Disclosure Act while he represented the
Cty of Phoenix as an executive vice president at APCO Worldwide,
a Washington PR and lobbying firm. The city paid Salmon $150,000
for his efforts. Salmon also worked for the Phoenix suburb of
Paradise Valley, but registered for none of his clients. The
newspaper quoted three members of the Arizona congressional
delegation, who said they’d met with Salmon to discuss
congressional funding for Phoenix transportation projects. Salmon
spokeswoman Camilla Strongin told National Journal that Salmon
did not meet the standard for registration under the 1995 act and
hadn’t urged members of Congress to take a position on specific
votes. “These were consulting contracts, not lobbying contracts,”
she said, adding that Salmon has since severed all of his client
relationships. -S.Z.
Adelphia Hires Tauzin’s Former Aide
Facing a probe by the House Energy and Commerce Committee,
scandal-ridden Adelphia Communications recently retained Wallace
Henderson, a lobbyist with Public Strategies in Washington and a
former aide to the committee’s chairman, Rep. W.J. “Billy”
Tauzin, R-La. The committee told Adelphia and other troubled
companies over the summer that it was launching a review of board
performance and corporate governance and had requested internal
documents. In late July, the Securities and Exchange Commission
issued a complaint charging several Adelphia executives with
fraud; some of the same executives also face federal criminal
charges. Henderson says that he was hired mainly to “monitor” the
committee and to handle communication needs for Adelphia on
Capitol Hill. -P.H.S.