This New York Times article explores the aftermath of the fall of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who was recently convicted of corruption charges. Sen. Inouye is mentioned in the article. Recently, Sen. Inouye’s name has come up in connection with the Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham scandal in several news articles and blogs. Defense contractor Mitch Wade cooperated with prosecutors and provided tens of thousands of documents about his corrupt dealings with members of Congress. Journalist Seth Hettena wrote in the Voice of San Diego:
A sentencing memo filed by Wade’s attorneys says he also aided the government in its investigation of “at least five other members of Congress” under investigation for “corruption similar to that of Mr. Cunningham.” According to sources with knowledge of the investigation, these five include Sen. Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), Rep. Allan Mollahan (D-W.Va.), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), outgoing Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.), and former Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla).
Here’s that New York Times Article about Stevens:
December 22, 2008
With Stevens’s Fall, Pipeline for Lobbyists Shuts Off
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON – Until recently, there were few better ways to start a lobbying career than by leaving the office of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.
With 40 years of seniority on important Senate committees, Mr. Stevens, a Republican, wielded unrivaled power over industries like fishing, forestry, communications, aviation and the military, steering billions each year to pet Alaskan projects like Eskimo whaling, missile defense and even salmon-based dog treats called Yummy Chummies.
His power made his good will a valuable commodity on K Street, where many lobbying firms are located. During the past five years, just nine lobbyists and firms known primarily for their ties to Mr. Stevens reported over $60 million in lobbyist fees, not including other income for less direct “consulting.” The most recent person to leave his staff to become a lobbyist reported fees of more than $800,000 in just the last 18 months.
So when Alaskan voters narrowly rejected Mr. Stevens’s bid for re-election last month, just days after a jury convicted him of federal ethics violations, it was in some ways like the closing of the plant in a company town.
“It is sort of a miasma of ‘Wow, no Ted Stevens tomorrow?’ ” said Ronald G. Birch, his first chief of staff and the informal dean of what might be called the Stevens lobby.
Mr. Birch was the first person to open a Washington office specializing in lobbying the senator, and one of his partners is the senator’s brother-in-law, William H. Bittner, who has shared a series of profitable real estate investments with Mr. Stevens as well.
Although his law firm has a big practice in Anchorage, Mr. Birch said, “I would be Pollyannaish if I didn’t think some of our clients would say: ‘Thank you very much. We are going to go find Obama’s new best friend.’ ”
Others turned to dark humor, lashing out at the voters who cut off the main wellspring of the political pork that Alaskans – and their lobbyists – have enjoyed for so long. “They don’t understand the connection between Ted and the way of life they have come to take for granted,” read one e-mail message circulating among former Stevens staff members on K Street. “For those of us long on the dole, the coming reality will take some getting used to.”
Through a spokesman, Mr. Stevens declined to comment. He will be succeeded in January at the start of the new Congress by a Democrat, Mark Begich.
Mr. Stevens’s former aides are hardly the only Washington lobbyists to rise and fall with a single Congressional patron. Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Michigan Democrat first elected in 1955, long sustained a coterie of lobbyists sometimes known as the Dingell Bar. They, too, are feeling the pinch at the moment from his recent loss to Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, of the gavel as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
But Mr. Stevens – Alaska’s “Uncle Ted” – is in a class by himself. For most of the last decade he was a dominant voice on both the Senate appropriations and commerce committees, which govern federal spending and business regulation. He had formed such a tight alliance with Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a Democratic counterpart on both panels – they called each other “brother” or sometimes “co-chairman” – that their influence barely waned when one or the other party lost power.
“One of the things that made a Stevens lobbyist so valuable is that he could deliver,” said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers who studies the Senate. “When somebody who had his ear said something would happen, it usually happened. You could really trade on it. It was the coin of the realm.”
Mr. Stevens’s preference for one lobbyist over another was big news in industry trade publications, and he did not hesitate to exert his influence.
When his friend and former aide Mitch Rose was angling for a job as president of the National Association of Broadcasters three years ago – one of the loftiest perches on K Street, which had paid its previous occupant more than $1 million a year – Mr. Stevens and his staff all but threatened to shut out any other hires. “Regardless of what the N.A.B. does or doesn’t do, Senator Stevens’s go-to guy on broadcasting issues will still be Mitch Rose,” a top Stevens aide, Lisa Sutherland, told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, warning that Mr. Rose’s rival “starts with a serious handicap, not knowing the issues and not knowing the people.”
When the group passed over Mr. Rose nonetheless, Mr. Stevens toasted his protégé to a room of communications industry lobbyists at a start-up party for his new one-man lobbying shop. Bolstered by the endorsement, Mr. Rose reaped more than $1.2 million in lobbying fees over the next nine months, according to his filings.
And what of the discussed boycott? To maintain an open line to Mr. Stevens, the association hired Ms. Sutherland, who left Mr. Stevens not long after delivering those warnings to open her own one-woman consulting and lobbying shop, Creative Government Solutions. After working for Mr. Stevens for more than 20 years, virtually her entire career, she has reported nearly $900,000 in lobbying fees over the last 18 months, including more than $200,000 in fees from the broadcasters. Other clients include Motorola, U.S. Telecom and the National Business Aviation Association, all with important interests before Mr. Stevens.
Ms. Sutherland, who declined to comment, is married to a lobbyist, Scott Sutherland. He works for the hunting and conservation group Ducks Unlimited, for which Mr. Stevens has allocated more than $3 million in federal spending since 2005 to map Alaskan wilderness. A spokesman for the organization said the project and its financing had nothing to do with the Sutherlands’ marriage.
Mr. Rose, who worked for Senator Bob Dole for four years before spending nine years with Mr. Stevens, noted that he had broadened his contacts on Capitol Hill by spending six years as a lobbyist with the Walt Disney Company immediately after leaving Mr. Stevens’s office in 2000. “When I was at Disney we dealt with a lot of people,” Mr. Rose said. “Stevens was only a part of it.”
Earl Comstock, a lobbyist and former Stevens staff member known for his close ties to the senator, represents a mixture of telecommunications and fishing companies as well as Alaskan concerns like Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, the Charter Halibut Task Force and the city of Kodiak.
Mr. Stevens’s departure “certainly isn’t helpful,” Mr. Comstock said.
“But I am not an access lobbyist; I am an issues lobbyist,” Mr. Comstock continued, saying clients hired him because of his policy expertise.
Sometimes, Mr. Comstock explained, his job was to translate clients’ arguments into the terms of most interest to the senator: the sometimes-parochial interests of Alaska. “Part of the reason why someone might hire me is to help them figure out a way to say, ‘Even though this is not directly an Alaskan issue, here is why you ought to be interested,’ ” Mr. Comstock said.
Mr. Stevens “was progressively parochial,” Mr. Rose agreed.
“If you were rolling out a new wireless technology, ‘Could it be demoed in Alaska?’ ” he said. “That was always the catechism.”
Critics have charged that Mr. Stevens assisted his aides-turned-lobbyists with federal money in more direct ways, too. He earmarked money to buy a property in Seward owned by one, to build a bridge connecting Anchorage to properties owned by two and to help the brother of a former aide-turned-lobbyist start the Arctic Paws salmon dog treat business. “We have Ted Stevens to thank for it,” the brother, Brett Gibson, told The Associated Press in an interview about his business.
Several clients represented by Stevens specialists said that they had hired their lobbyists only for their policy expertise, without regard to connections. But some acknowledged privately that they were rethinking their lobbying contracts now that Mr. Stevens is leaving the Senate.
“The word I would use is access,” said Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau, explaining his city’s decision to hire a former Stevens aide, John Roots, to lobby the senator on its behalf. As for whether the city would retain Mr. Roots after Mr. Stevens had gone, Mr. Botelho added, “I am not prepared to say.”
(Mr. Roots said he did not expect his business to suffer, emphasizing that he had not worked for Mr. Stevens since 1995.)
Jim Whitaker, the mayor of the borough of Fairbanks, said his municipality currently retained two lobbying firms, Mr. Birch’s firm and another called Blue Water Strategies, because of their ties to Mr. Stevens. He had observed the cluster of Stevens-related Washington lobbyists and considered it “something to take advantage of,” he said. But Mr. Whitaker is considering discontinuing those contracts. “I have thought about it,” he said. “I am in a wait-and-see mode.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/washington/22stevens.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=print
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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