Capitol Anthrax Scare Hinders Lobbyists

The anthrax and terrorism scares have accomplished something on Capitol Hill that good-government reformers could not: They have slapped new limits on the access that legions of lobbyists have to members of Congress.

The anthrax-riddled congressional mail service has halted. Many lawmakers have been shut out of their contaminated office buildings. Tightened security has banished outsiders from key parts of the Capitol.

All that makes it much harder for influence-peddlers to contact--or even locate--the people they are trying to influence.

“It’s terrible,” said James Albertine, who heads the American League of Lobbyists. “You can’t lobby Congress when you can’t get indoors, when committee hearings are being held in townhouses, when they are not in their offices.”

The situation has sent lobbyists stampeding to political fund-raisers to get face time with the powerful.

“If you want to get a message to some member of Congress, you go to his fund-raiser,” said Howard Marlowe, a lobbyist who represents a number of cities. “It’s off the Hill, no threat of anthrax . . . so it’s a relaxed environment. It’s a better place to lobby than Capitol Hill.”

Indeed, after a brief post-Sept. 11 moratorium on fund-raising in deference to the somber national mood, fund-raisers are back with a vengeance. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee actually raised more money this September than it did in September 1999.

“The president said we should all get back to business, and our business is politics,” said Jim Jordan, the campaign committee’s executive director.

To be sure, special interests are still having plenty of influence over legislation. For example, corporate fingerprints are all over the tax cut approved by the House last week. Private airport security lobbyists are swarming the House this week to kill legislation federalizing the jobs of baggage screeners.

But the new Capitol security measures and the chaos created by the anthrax cleanup are forcing lobbyists to devise new ways to make their cases. A Rolodex of cell phone numbers is now more valuable than ever. Lobbyists who cannot wander the halls of the Capitol have taken to hanging out on the marble steps outside. Lobbyists who are former members of Congress have an edge because they retain, even in retirement, the right to wander freely through the Capitol.

“For those of us who are former members, this is a boom period,” said former Rep. Robert Walker, a lobbyist who once was a House Republican from Pennsylvania.

Security Tightened After Sept. 11 Attacks

The first limits on lobbyists’ access came with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many thought that the Capitol was also a likely terrorist target, and Capitol police responded with a big increase in security precautions--including new limits on outsiders wandering around the buildings.

The discovery of anthrax in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) brought more changes. House and Senate mail came to a screeching halt: None has been delivered since Oct. 15. A few days later, every House and Senate office building was shut down, putting members and their staffs far out of reach of their offices, faxes and phones. Most of the buildings have since reopened, but two major buildings remain shuttered--including one that houses half the members of the Senate.

Lobbyists say they have tried to keep tabs on their pet issues via e-mail, fax and telephone. But even those high-tech alternatives to mail and shoe leather have had their limits. Some displaced aides have found it impossible to read their e-mail from their temporary digs. And some lobbyists argue that there is no high-tech substitute for the kinds of casual, face-to-face encounters that come only with trolling the halls of Congress.

“Those public buildings are like 7th Avenue is to the garment district: People conduct business there when they are not even meaning to,” said Michael Lewan, a former congressional aide who now lobbies for corporate clients.

Although some reformers argue that legislation is better written without special interests breathing down Congress’ neck, lobbyists say limits on their access deprive Congress of information they need to write good laws.

“If there are people who are working in hideaway rooms without much information at their fingertips, that is not necessarily a formula for good government,” Walker said.

A meeting that Albertine and other lobbyists had scheduled with the office of the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms was canceled. The meeting, to discuss concerns about post-Sept. 11 limits on lobbyists’ access to congressional buildings, was scheduled on the same day that congressional office buildings were closed for anthrax screening.

Lobbyists were operating at a particular disadvantage if they were trying to influence the final version of the anti-terrorism bill that cleared Congress last week. The details were being drafted just as the House and Senate were shut out of their offices for the anthrax sweep. Lewan said he thought that made it harder for him to make the case for some of his clients.

“It was impossible to find Senate Judiciary Committee staff, who were all over the place,” Lewan said. “When you are negotiating the fine points of the law, you need to talk to people. A comma or semicolon can make all the difference in the world.”

Albertine has found that the indefinite freeze on congressional mail has hampered his ability to promote an amendment to a pending tax cut bill. The strategy for getting the measure into the economic stimulus legislation had been to get a large number of members to sign a “Dear Colleague” letter endorsing the bill, via mail.

The difficulty of reaching people gives a big edge to the lobbyist with the best connections, the most personal relationships with congressional staff. That’s the value of someone like Kenneth Kies, former staff director of the Joint Tax Committee, who now is a top tax lobbyist with PriceWaterhouse Coopers. He worked hard to get a break for multinational financial services companies in the House tax cut bill.

“I haven’t found it to be all that difficult,” Kies said. “In an odd way, it’s easier when you do reach a member because they aren’t hearing from other people, so they have more time.”

But for other lobbyists, they are increasingly finding that fund-raisers are the place to go to hit up lawmakers.

“Attendance is up,” said veteran lobbyist Tom Korologos. “It used to be you’d send your third- and fourth-junior people to [fund-raisers] to pick up your name tag and say you were there.”

Lawmakers Resume Fund-Raising Events

Although many fund-raisers were canceled or postponed immediately after the terror attacks, they have fully resumed now. The House and Senate campaign committees have resumed direct mail solicitation of donors. Indeed, even in the midst of the Sept. 11 crisis, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee managed to pick up 10,000 new donors from a prospecting letter sent out just before the attack. And individual members of Congress are holding events to make up for lost time.

“My fax is red hot--it’s going all the time,” Albertine said. “And right now, the only time you can have that good face time is at fund-raisers.”

Indeed, some argue that for all the difficulties lobbyists face, they may still have an edge over members’ constituents--whose primary means of communicating with lawmakers is through the mail.

“Lobbyists can still find the members, but constituents can’t,” said Dan Maffei, spokesman for Democrats on the heavily lobbied House Ways and Means Committee. “They have gotten no letters from anybody. The people still have their voice very much muted.”