Reform Bill Prompts a Frenzy of Lobbying

A few months ago, the president of the California Assn. of Long Distance Telephone Companies sent members an unusual ultimatum:

Give $100,000 in political contributions to key policymakers in Washington, he said, or risk a telecommunications reform bill that would let new competitors into the lucrative business of providing long-distance telephone service.

“We have no guarantee that the president will veto the legislation,” wrote Jeff Buckingham, president of the Sacramento-based association. He urged members to pony up at least $1,000 for President Clinton’s campaign treasury.

“Raising a healthy contribution for his fund-raiser,” Buckingham wrote, “will go a long way toward demonstrating the viability and wide diversity of our industry.”

Even in the rough-and-tumble world of Washington politics, few lobbying campaigns have been as massive and relentless as the one over the bid to reform the nation’s 61-year-old communications laws.

So great are the financial stakes and so intense is the lobbying that it has practically paralyzed the congressional negotiators who are trying to hash out the differences between the separate bills passed earlier this year by the House and the Senate.

The negotiators have met only three times in largely unproductive sessions. In the latest development, House negotiators late Wednesday proposed repealing the broadcast-cable cross-ownership ban and allowing TV broadcasters to own a group of stations that reach more than 35% of households nationally. House and Senate negotiators had previously agreed to a 35% cap.

For the most part, the leaders of the talks have left it to small groups of staff members to try to resolve the many remaining differences, a strategy that has reduced but not eliminated the influence of the lobbyists.

“You have so little control once they go into these meetings,” said Philip Quigley, chairman of Pacific Telesis Group, who flew to Washington on Tuesday for some personal lobbying. “I just felt I needed to be here, to walk the halls myself.”

Ameritech Chairman Richard Notabaert was also in town as the regional telephone companies fought to keep the list of requirements for their entry into the long-distance business--the bill’s biggest remaining sticking point--within the limits already approved by the House and Senate.

The Washington-based political watchdog group Common Cause estimates that the telecommunications industry as a whole has contributed $39.5 million to congressional candidates during the past decade in their battle for less federal regulation.

Telecommuncations interest groups have enlisted such diverse figures as former actress and model Donna Rice and former Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker III (R-Tenn.) to ply the halls of Congress on their behalf.

The lobbying effort has spawned a congressional investigation as well as popularizing a Washington practice known as raising Astroturf support--that is, creating artificial grass-roots uprisings by overwhelming lawmakers with bogus letters and telegrams.

“Anybody in this town who has a pulse has been hired by either the long-distance coalition or the Bell operating companies,” said Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio).

The measure that has spawned this lobbying frenzy would deregulate the television, cable, long-distance and local telephone industries.

The long-distance industry has fielded a dream team that includes Baker; Marlin Fitzwater, White House press secretary under President George Bush; and former Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.).

The Baby Bells have pressed their case with President Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff Roy Neel, ex-Labor Secretary Lynn Martin and Ralph B. Everett, former chief counsel of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Broadcasters have deployed former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Richard Wiley, among others.

Organizations opposed to smut on the Internet have enlisted Rice, who appeared briefly in No Excuses jeans ad campaigns after her relationship with former senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart was revealed. Now married and known as Donna Rice Hughes, she serves as communications director for the anti-cyberporn group Enough Is Enough.

“Donna has been extremely effective,” said Dee Jepsen, president of Enough Is Enough. “She’s a bright, capable woman.”

Members of Congress and their aides say they have seldom seen anything like the lobbying over the telecommunications bill.

“This is a fight between the rich and the very wealthy,” said Dennis Fitzgibbons, an aide to Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan. “They have a lot at stake.” Dingell is the ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee.

The antics have ranged from the lighthearted to the hard-nosed.

The 3,500-member National Burglar & Fire Alarm Assn., concerned that lawmakers were about to allow Ameritech Corp., one of the seven regional telephone monopolies, into their lucrative business, sent several conference committee members a loaf of bread with a note reading: “Don’t take the bread off of our tables.”

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, CBS President Peter Lund and Eddie Fritts, the head of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, early this month met with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to urge him to let broadcasters acquire free of charge the airwaves they will need to make the transition to digital TV delivery.

A few days later, representatives of the Baby Bells met with David Wilson, chief of Dole’s staff. Within a few hours, Dole wrote a terse letter to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) urging him to support telecom reform.

“Many gains could be compromised, if not lost, should the conference on telecommunications continue to consider regulatory solutions that are clearly outside the scope of either bill,” Dole wrote.

For months, political observers said, the Baby Bells outclassed the long-distance industry, which relied too heavily on House Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.). Bliley, whose district includes a big AT&T; plant, initially allowed Gingrich to control the telecom reform bill in the House.

Finally the long-distance industry began courting the White House. Sources said talks with White House officials were instrumental in getting Clinton to write a letter to Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), ranking minority member of the Senate Commerce Committee, in late October attacking key provisions of the telecom measure.

From the beginning of the year, lobbyists for the coalition and the Baby Bells have ranked as the most aggressive influence peddlers on Capitol Hill. They dispatched $200-an-hour lawyers to pack the audience in the hearing rooms.

When congressional leaders tried to force lobbyists to stand in line for hearing room seats rather than reserve seats in advance, companies paid as much as $1,000 a day to hire people to stand in line for them.

During the summer, lawmakers received plastic bags stuffed with thousands of telegrams bearing the names of individuals and urging them to join the long-distance industry in opposing the bill. A Washington-based group called the Competitive Long Distance Coalition took the credit.

Then lawmakers contacted the telegram writers and discovered that many had never authorized a telegrams in their names denouncing the telecom bill and that some had never heard of the legislation. At least one telegram was found to bear the name of a Chicago man someone who had been dead for months.

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Times staff writer Amy Harmon contributed to this report.