Congressional Jaunts : Lobbyists: Resorting to a Subtle Sell

As a bevy of swans glided across a pond edged with tiger lilies, nine Republican U.S. senators joined 150 business lobbyists and their spouses at the genteel Williamsburg Inn resort on a June weekend for tennis, golf and dinner parties.

Companies paid $2,000 apiece--more than $300,000 in all--for the right to have their legislative advocates mix informally with the lawmakers, who paid nothing for the weekend. No bald lobbying was apparent--merely the subtle kind of rapport-building that opens doors back in Washington. The senators profited too, raising thousands of dollars for their reelection campaigns this year.

Meanwhile, on the South Carolina coast 400 miles away, a related scene unfolded at the lush Kiawah Island Resort, although the lobbyists’ prey were not members of Congress but their aides. A group of life insurance companies, seeking higher taxes on rival firms, staked 17 staff members of Congress’ tax-writing committees--and their spouses or other companions--to an all-expense-paid weekend.

Lectures, Golf Games

Mornings, the Democratic and Republican aides heard scholarly lectures on why the multibillion-dollar changes in present tax laws are needed. Afternoons, the aides played golf with insurance lobbyists on a spectacular course literally crawling with alligators. Evenings, all hands enjoyed lavish dinners.

Driven by the ever-higher stakes of government policy decisions and a ceaseless effort by lobbyists and members of Congress alike to skirt the rules designed to curb money’s impact on public policy, the players are no longer content with the traditional techniques of the trade: Meeting with congressmen in their offices, handing campaign contributions to them at Washington fund-raising events and paying them large fees to make speeches are no longer considered enough.

Always Pick Up Tab

For many lobbyists, resorts such as Kiawah Island offered new opportunities for plying their art. Golf, tennis and skiing trips are legion, as are seminars, fund-raisers and nights on the town in fancy settings outside Washington. Lobbyists always pick up the tab but they are not always the instigators. The lawmakers themselves sometimes do the organizing, with the lobbyists as eager participants.

“It’s much easier to get guys to meet with our people if it’s fun for them and their wives,” said a transportation lobbyist, speaking anonymously. “We’ve got them for two or three days, so they can’t get away from us.

“And it’s hard for them to tell us no,” he added, “after we’ve spent that much time, money and effort on them.”

“Sure, the trip is a bribe,” said a House Ways and Means Committee aide invited to the Kiawah Island Resort. “It’s the only way the (insurance companies) are going to get us to spend eight hours hearing them talk about an extremely complicated issue.”

In the wake of the Korean lobbying scandal a decade ago, Congress enacted ethics rules designed to prevent lawmakers from turning business trips into vacations at special-interest expense. Common Cause, the citizens lobby, contends that the rules are being widely abused and need tightening.

“These opportunities for lobbyists to establish personal relationships with members of Congress are simply not available to most average constituents,” said Common Cause Vice President Randy Huwa.

Two such constituents, retired Procter & Gamble executive William O. Coleman and his wife, Tookie, were also playing golf last weekend at Kiawah Island. They reacted indignantly when a reporter told them that congressional aides and insurance industry lobbyists were playing together just behind them on the same course.

“They shouldn’t be coming down here to tell their story,” Coleman, a politically active Republican from Cincinnati, said of the insurance lobbyists. “It costs too damn much money and there is no way those aides can reciprocate. They are obligated” to the companies.

Tookie Coleman gave a what’s-the-use shrug. “It’s so prevalent,” she said, “they don’t know how bad it is.”

See Nothing Wrong

Most lobbyists and lawmakers see nothing wrong with the resort doings.

“An ethics problem?” asked Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) at a convivial cocktail party kicking off the Williamsburg Inn festivities. “I never had anybody ask the question. This is just people having a good time.”

Financial disclosure statements of senators, House members and their aides are bulging with lists of privately reimbursed trips to resorts and other tourist meccas stretching from the Bahamas to Hawaii. Most excursions last several days and include spouses.

The total number of such trips is not known because only lawmakers and highly paid aides are required to file the disclosure statements with ethics committees. Most aides who made the Kiawah trip, for example, will not have to report it because they earn less than $64,397 a year, the threshold for disclosure. The exact value of the trips--many of them obviously worth thousands of dollars--cannot be determined because recipients need not disclose dollar figures.

For lawmakers, one attraction of the trips is that the expense reimbursements do not count against the ceilings Congress has set on the amount of speaking fees a member can accept--no more than $26,850 a year in honoraria for House members and $35,800 a year for senators. Legislators who give out-of-town speeches usually receive fees of up to $2,000 in addition to air fare, lodging and meals.

Magic Words

“Charity event,” “fact-finding trip,” “fund-raiser,” “seminar,” “speaking engagement”--those, the records show, are the magic words that enable many legislators to skirt rules banning lobbyist-sponsored trips.

For example, two popular winter stops for senators--a tennis tournament in Arizona and a skiing derby in Utah--are billed as charity events. Corporate contributions, after expenses, go to medical charities but the annual events also provide lobbying opportunities for the corporations that sponsor them and vacations for the senators and their families who participate.

Senators help organize both affairs.

Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) provides the names of tennis-playing senators to the John Gardiner Tennis Ranch in Scottsdale, a resort that overlooks Paradise Valley from the side of Camelback Mountain. The resort then issues invitations and lines up corporate sponsors for the four-day program of tennis, cocktail parties and banquets.

Fourteen senators from both political parties, including Republican Pete Wilson of California and his wife, went to the 1987 tournament, according to latest disclosure statements, “but we normally get 24 to 28,” said organizer Leni Koliambas.

Corporations such as Dow Chemical Co. and Time Inc. pay sums ranging from $3,000 to more than $10,000 for the right to send executives to the event, which ended up donating $273,000 to a Phoenix hospice this year.

“I know some people think these corporate sponsors come here just to talk to senators,” Koliambas said. “I’m sure there must be something going on, but really most of these people are very serious about their tennis games. The play is very intensive.”

Records show that the Edison Electric Institute, the electric utilities’ lobbying arm, picked up air fare to and from the tournament for Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and his wife. General Electric Co., a major defense contractor, did the same for Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), top-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), working with a promotion-minded chamber of commerce, helped found the four-day “Senators Ski Cup” at a resort in Park City, Utah. A Garn aide, Mary Thiriot, takes a six-month leave of absence every year to serve as the event’s paid organizer.

Nine senators entered the 1987 Ski Cup races. Among them were Sens. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), Heinz and Warner, all of whom had just played in the tennis tournament at Scottsdale.

Thirty-four corporate sponsors, including American Express and Delta Air Lines, underwrite the ski event with contributions ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.

“Executives get a chance to ski with senators on teams and mix at social gatherings,” said Garn’s top aide, Jeff Bingham. “It’s a relaxed environment. They don’t do any lobbying there. What they do is get acquainted, so that if they have an issue later, they can come back and present their case.”

Hospital Donation

The nonprofit entity that runs the event donated more than $100,000 to a Salt Lake City children’s hospital this year.

Records indicate that many trips to desirable places combine a paid speech or fact-finding activity--often a plant tour--with substantial time for relaxation.

Last year, Rep. Glenn English (D-Okla.) and his wife spent three days in Boca Raton, Fla.; three days in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va.; four days in Naples, Fla., and five days in Sun Valley, Ida., all courtesy of the Chicago Board of Trade, the National Agricultural Chemicals Assn., the U.S. Telephone Assn. and other corporate sponsors.

The congressman gave three speeches, receiving $2,000 in honoraria, and played in a charity golf tournament.

Similarly, the National Assn. of Realtors treated Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.) to a four-day trip to Palm Springs in March--and then paid for another four-day jaunt to Honolulu in November last year. Cheney, who ranks third in the House Republican leadership, picked up a $2,000 speaking fee on each trip.

When Rep. Roy Dyson (D-Md.) and two aides made a “fact-finding” weekend trip to New York last spring, a defense contractor planned to foot all expenses, including limousine service, $170-a-night hotel rooms for each man and tickets to the Broadway hit “Phantom of the Opera.” The only duty for Dyson, a House Armed Services Committee member, was to attend briefings at a Unisys Corp. plant.

But after one of his aides, Tom Pappas, committed suicide on the trip in the wake of an unfavorable newspaper story, Dyson decided to pay about half of the $2,000 tab himself, including the theater tickets. “It was out of the goodness of his heart,” a spokesman explained.

New York also was the scene of a business-and-pleasure weekend last September for Sen. James A. McClure (R-Ida.), senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Texaco Inc., which has a substantial interest in legislation before the energy panel, supplied air fare, lodging, food and opera tickets for McClure and his wife and also paid the senator a $2,000 honorarium to give Texaco executives “an overview of the energy situation,” according to a McClure aide.

The Williamsburg Inn affair was a fund-raiser organized by Sens. Nickles and Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) to benefit seven of the 12 Republican senators running for reelection this year. With lobbyists growing weary of the barrage of fund-raisers in Washington, the senators dreamed up the tennis-and-golf festival as a way to perk up donations from the lobbyists’ political action committees.

“The contributors get to do more than stand around a smoky hotel room in Washington,” Nickles said. “Here, there’s a little golf and tennis. They might as well have fun.”

“It’s a great place to play golf,” declared Sen. Chic Hecht (R-Nev.), who drove to the resort from Washington with William Kendall, a lobbyist for Manville Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. “If money comes in, all the better.”

Happy Mood

Lobbyists interviewed at the resort were in no less happy a mood.

“When you have this many senators together at a plush place, it’s a big attraction,” said a lobbyist for a financial firm, who asked not to be identified. The event was harmless, he asserted, because “there’s not a guy here who doesn’t know one of these senators.” However, he acknowledged, if a lobbyist did not attend, “it would make a difference.”

The Kiawah Island bash for congressional aides was the latest round in a fierce tax fight between two groups of life insurance companies, one owned by stock investors and the other by policy holders.

The stocks and mutuals, as the two groups are known, are taxed differently because of their differing financial structures, and each claims that the other does not pay its fair share in taxes. The mutuals pitched their case for changing the law to congressional aides at recreational seminars in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., before the stocks struck back at Kiawah Island.

Richard S. Belas, top tax aide to Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said after the weekend was over: “This was the cleanest type of program I ever heard of. No attempt was made to push a particular viewpoint.”

However, materials in an inch-thick notebook used at seminar lectures strongly suggested that mutual companies are undertaxed. A reporter who briefly attended one morning lecture by American University law professor Andrew D. Pike was ejected by insurance lobbyists William Shands and Gayle B. Wilkins. “This is a private meeting,” Shands said.

Later, Shands, Wilkins and lobbyists for Kemper Life, Lincoln National Life and American General Life played golf at picturesque Turtle Point with aides to Dole, Heinz, Sen. Spark M. Matsunaga (D-Hawaii), Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly (D-Conn.), Rep. Hal Daub (R-Neb.) and Rep. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

“The only thing the lobbyists forgot to give us was a case of golf balls,” quipped an aide whose shots frequently found the water hazards. “I fed two dozen to the alligators.”