Influence's Blog

Political Forecasts

Last November, former Majority Leaders Dick Gephardt, a Democrat, and Dick Armey, a Republican, had a rare moment of bipartisan agreement while speaking at a DLA Piper luncheon on the upcoming election: Hillary Clinton was a lock to win the presidential race.

Ahem.

At the law firm's latest lunch on the election at the Ritz-Carlton today, the two ate crow, along with pundit Charlie Cook. "I hope none of you were at the earlier events," Gephardt said wryly. Today, all three said this looks to be a good election for Democrats, who will likely expand their majority in Congress, though Armey said he's hoping voters' fondness for divided government will give Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) a better-than-even chance of taking the presidency. Still, Armey said, as someone who "longs for small government conservatism, I'm just going to be left with the theme song from 'Hee Haw.'"

Both Gephardt and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) presidential bid, said this will be a great election for Democrats, with Gephardt forecasting that his party will pick up at least 10 House seats and three to five Senate seats.

The firm also released the results of an economic and legislative survey it conducted of its corporate clients. Read about that here.

Guys, we're watching to see if your track record improves.

Energy Tops DLA Piper Clients' Wishlist

Today DLA Piper is hosting a 2008 election analysis event featuring Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report. As part of the show, the firm’s unveiling the results of an economic and legislative survey it conducted of its corporate clients. The data “gives us a sense of where existing and potential clients are going to need our help,” says Thomas Boyd, co-chairman of DLA Piper’s government affairs group.

Drawn from a client list including such names as Kraft Foods, Lockheed Martin, Lehman Brothers, and Marriott International, some of the data mirrors other business and consumer sentiment surveys. For instance, DLA’s clients are of the opinion that the American economy will continue going to pot, and they’re not wild about the sudden jumps in the price of oil. But Jim Blanchard, the other co-chairman of the firm’s government affairs group, says he was surprised to find that a few big-ticket Washington policy issues — like the flow of money from so-called sovereign wealth funds into the U.S. economy — weren’t more pressing.

“There wasn’t much concern about trade and foreign investment,” he says. He was also surprised to find that energy policy trumped topics like health care, tax, and financial regulation policies.

The firm intends to follow up on the report, once the party conventions are over, with a more policy-specific survey, Blanchard said.

A Democratic Tax Name Goes Downtown

Pat Heck, the former chief counsel to the Senate Finance Committee and senior tax adviser to Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), has joined K&L Gates' tax policy practice. In announcing his hire, K&L Gates brags that he's worked with all three remaining presidential candidates on tax policy issues in their capacity as senators.

Heck, a former House Ways and Means staffer, ended his most recent stint on the Hill in December 2007. That means he squeaked in under the wire to avoid a lobbying moratorium imposed on senior Senate staffers, though he says it was the need to finish the alternative minimum tax patch, not the new ethics rules, that accounted for the timing of his departure.

"There’s never a good time to leave, so I decided last year was going to be my last," he says. With the upcoming expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010, major tax legislation is almost guaranteed to push through Congress, Heck notes. He's looking forward to it — and the accompanying tax policy debates in areas such as health care and carbon controls.

At K&L Gates, he joins two other former Hill tax specialists: Bill Kirk, a former Ways and Means staffer who worked for Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), and Mark Evans, an 18-year Baucus staffer who preceded Heck as the senator’s chief tax counsel.

Kirk says he expects the team will spend the rest of the year preparing clients for likely tax policy fights to come, soliciting new business, and making sure the firm is ready for the volume of work. "The plan is for more hiring, and there may be more announcements in a reasonably short time frame," Kirk adds, declining to go into more detail.

The strength of the team will be its policy work, he says, though the fact that the three men have ties with the current majority doesn't hurt. "I have a relationship with Congressman Rangel that goes back many years," Kirk says. "We're not going to run away from the facts that we had positions that directly reported to the respective chairmen, but that's not our trade."

Quinn Gillespie Picks Up McMurray

Quinn Gillespie Associates has made an addition to its public relations team: Patricia McMurray. A former television producer and editor, McMurray was most recently a director in the D.C. office of PR giant Burson-Marsteller.

McMurray’s not a registered lobbyist, but she’s no stranger to the field. Previously, she worked for the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute.

From Lobbyist to Candidate

Former Wiley Rein partner Jim Slattery is looking to make a full rotation through the revolving door. The Democratic lawyer and lobbyist, who was a member of the Kansas House delegation until the mid 1990’s, is running against incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). Making the transition back to government might not be easy — Slattery has come under fire for — you guessed it — lobbying. Roberts is trying to peg Slattery to his occupation, the AP reports, with ads claiming Slattery comes with “Gucci loafers and all.”

Slattery has suggested the attacks are a tad hypocritical, given that Roberts has collected millions of dollars in campaign contributions from some of the same industries that Slattery has represented.

Burma or Myanmar? Either Way, It's Embarrassing

It's no longer newsworthy that Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being run by a group of lobbyists. Now the question seems to have become just how embarrassing their client list will be.

In the case of Doug Goodyear, the answer seems to be fatally so. Goodyear's DCI Group, which lobbies for corporate entities like Exxon Mobil and General Motors, also served as the representative of the Burmese military junta that refused to hand over power to the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi in 1990. Under the junta, Burma has been one of the most disastrously run countries in the world — a heroin capital governed by atrocity-committing pariah authoritarians.

But just because the junta's leaders may be superstitious enough to abruptly relocate their country's capital on an astrologer's advice doesn't mean their checks don't clear. DCI represented them in 2002 for $348,000, Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek on Friday. The timing of that news report was extraordinarily bad for Goodyear — that same day, the junta was living up to its internationally reviled reputation by refusing to allow international aid workers access to the Irrawaddy Delta, where recent hurricanes may have killed as many as 100,000.

Evidently, Goodyear and McCain saw that history as problematic. By early evening, Goodyear had resigned from the campaign, and by Sunday another former lobbyist for DCI, Doug Davenport, was also packing his bags.