The Town That Thirsts for Money

On the morning after the latest guilty verdicts were handed down in the long-running crackdown of Capitol corruption, lobbyist David G. Ackerman gave each of his employees a bumper sticker. “Don’t tell my mother I’m a lobbyist,” it read. “She thinks I play the piano in a whorehouse.”

An old joke. But Ackerman and his colleagues around the Capitol were foraging for any joviality last week after Clayton R. Jackson had become the first major lobbyist to be convicted in the FBI sting. “You’ve got to poke fun at yourself a little bit,” Ackerman says.

Ackerman is one of the good guys among the 1,055 registered lobbyists at the Capitol. He’s clearly a player of the system who arranges campaign contributions, but he’s a lobbyist who relies on arguing merit more than dispensing “juice,” unlike Jackson. At age 46, Ackerman has worked in and around the Capitol--for elected officials or in lobbying--all his adult life and is proud of it.

“I’m not the least bit shy about saying I’m a lobbyist,” he says. “I work for special interests. But everybody is part of a special interest, and they’re all represented here. That’s how the process works.”

But if you talk awhile with Ackerman or any lobbyist who conscientiously tries to operate on the up and up, you’ll find that he has become increasingly frustrated with how the process really is working. It is being driven by the legislators’ thirst for campaign contributions--and the potential quid pro quos they just might buy.

More than $80 million was spent by 1992 candidates for the Legislature, according to the secretary of state. And, says Ackerman, “I’ve never seen a year like this one. We actually ran out of (contribution) money.”

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Ackerman now has sitting on his desk invitations to 21 fund-raisers this month, a light period. During the heaviest time--the end of the legislative session, when bills were flying through both houses and the lawmakers could take advantage of the lobbyists’ hunger for access--Ackerman had 64 invitations in one 10-day stretch. The average tab was $500 per head.

“On one night we had 15,” he recalls. “We call them ‘grip and grin.’ You sign in, put on the name tag, head toward the legislator, make sure they know you’re there. They say ‘thank you for coming.’ And you’re off to the next one.”

But Ackerman, who lobbies for contractors and marinas, says he is careful not to discuss pending legislation while delivering a check. One never knows these days who may be wearing an FBI wire. However, he may say something like this to the lawmaker: “There are some issues I’d like to talk to you about and I’d like to call and set up an appointment.” Even that may be skirting close to the line.

The main reason Ackerman buys tickets to these receptions, he says, is “so when I’m running down a corridor in the Capitol and calling out to a senator, when he turns around, he knows who I am.” Or, if the senator already knows, the contribution is a reminder that “I’m still around and I care--and my clients care.”

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The present system worries George R. Steffes, who owns the second-biggest lobbying firm in the capital. Steffes, 58, began his lobbying career pushing bills for then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, and nobody among his profession is more widely respected.

He is especially critical of the newer legislators, many of whom ran for office espousing reform. “They look at lobbyists almost solely as money conduits,” Steffes says. “It used to be they’d at least also look to us for information and expertise. Now, they don’t want to hear what my clients have to say about the issues. They just want their money.”

What especially disturbs Steffes is that many lobbyists are feeling compelled to spend more time generating campaign money from their clients and less time arguing the merits of legislation.

And anyone who doesn’t see that all this is having a corrupting influence on the Legislature--even if it is legal--is kidding themselves. There is a symbiotic relationship between contributions and votes.

“It’s very rare that actual words are spoken,” says one legislative insider. “It’s an assumption there will be mutual back-scratching. It’s that subtle. Certainly it’s never a quid pro quo. It’s not bribery. It’s the way relationships develop and continue to work.”

Concedes Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), one of the more acclaimed rookies: “No matter how honest and well-meaning a legislator is, we are human beings. And if you know your election and future career depend, in part, on how much you raise for the next election, it’s very difficult to separate the impact of a large contribution from a policy decision. That’s common sense.”

And that’s telling it like it is.