Rick Santorum
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Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is interviewed by a media before to creation a plead during a plead stop during a Beacon Drive-In on Jan. 18, 2012 in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is interviewed by a media before to creation a plead during a plead stop during a Beacon Drive-In on Jan. 18, 2012 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Photographer: John W. Adkisson/Getty Images
Soon after Dan Glickman became head
of a Motion Picture Association of America in 2004, he began
to hear from studio lobbyists that U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of
Pennsylvania and other Republicans weren’t happy about it.
Glickman, a Democrat, didn’t fit into Republicans’ skeleton to
place some-more members of their celebration on K Street, a tenure used for
Washington’s lobbying corridor. Once they filled those jobs, the
former Republican aides and lawmakers could approach plead cash
back to their aged bosses on Capitol Hill.
The operation became loosely famous as “The K Street
Project,” and it concerned lawmakers operative in tandem with
partisan-friendly lobbyists to boost plead donations and
drive common agendas.
Santorum “was kind of a crusader and positively wanted to
extend a strech of regressive Republicans into K Street,
which is usually a flattering useful organisation of people,” said
Burdett Loomis, a domestic scholarship highbrow during a University
of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, who has complicated a project.
While campaigning for president, Santorum portrays himself
as a claimant of a operative category who grew adult as the
grandson of a spark miner. Opponents of a former senator accuse
him of being a Washington insider incompetent to repair a complement he
helped design.
Insider Versus Outsider
“He became a high-powered lobbyist,” pronounced Texas
Representative Ron Paul during a presidential plead in New
Hampshire on Jan. 7 in a anxiety to Santorum’s post-
congressional career in that he warranted millions as a consultant
to businesses and organizations advocating in Washington.
When reporters in Ridgeway, South Carolina, final week asked
about accusations that a 16-year maestro of Congress who rose
to a third-highest post in a U.S. Senate is a Washington
“insider,” Santorum laughed.
“Ha!” he said. “You demeanour during my record. I’ve been as much
of a reformer, and someone who has been means to shake things up
both from a inside and a outward softened than anybody else.”
His plead didn’t respond to requests for criticism for
this story.
Santorum’s purpose in a K Street Project enclosed regularly
coordinated meetings with Republican-leaning lobbyists.
Glickman’s Hiring
In 2004, he met with other senators to plead Glickman’s
hiring as arch executive officer of a film courtesy group,
which is one of a many desired trade organisation posts because
of a income of about $1.3 million and entrance to Hollywood’s
biggest stars and studio heads.
“We talked about creation certain that we have fair
representation on K Street,” Santorum told a journal Roll
Call in 2004. “I acknowledge that we compensate courtesy to who is hiring,
and we consider it’s critical for care to compensate attention.”
The plan was started by Grover Norquist, an anti-tax
activist, in 1989 in an bid to fill some-more lobbying jobs with
Republicans.
The name after came to be compared with Santorum’s
lobbyist meetings and a together bid by former House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to boost a upsurge of campaign
donations to his party.
DeLay kept a book on his bureau table in that organizations
were dubbed “friendly” or “unfriendly” formed on their
contributions, according to a 1995 Washington Post story. He was
convicted by a Texas jury in 2010 of illegally funneling
corporate income to assistance elect Republicans to a state House in
2002.
Senate Agenda Discussed
At his biweekly Tuesday morning meetings, Santorum would
share information about a legislative bulletin and field
questions from lobbyists, pronounced Norquist, who attended one of
them in 2002. He estimated there were 30 to 40 Republican-
leaning lobbyists.
Santorum’s meetings frequently enclosed pursuit discussions,
according to dual people who attended and spoke on condition of
anonymity since they didn’t wish their organizations to be
dragged into a presidential campaign.
Santorum didn’t gaunt on groups to sinecure Republicans a way
DeLay did, a people who attended a Senate meetings said.
Still, he done no tip of his enterprise that they do.
“The K Street Project is quite to make certain we have
qualified field for positions that are in town,” Santorum
said, according to a Nov 2005 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
story. “From my perspective, it’s a good supervision thing.”
Disavowing a Project
A year later, Santorum disavowed a plan during his
2006 re-election competition as he faced glow from Democrats who said
it was partial of a “culture of corruption.”
“We don’t have a K Street Project,” Santorum said,
according to a Washington Times news in Jan of that year.
He mislaid his Senate chair to Democrat Bob Casey Jr.
Santorum, Norquist and DeLay “were aiming during most a same
thing,” pronounced Loomis. “They had opposite levers from which
they could during slightest theoretically try to accurate some kind of
retribution if their wishes weren’t adhered to.”
In a box of a film courtesy association, the
retribution competence have been a detriment of a $1.5 billion taxation break
pending in a House. “We could never infer that one approach or
another,” Glickman said.
Glickman, a former Clinton administration agriculture
secretary, pronounced he didn’t have any personal exchange with
Santorum during a time. He reached out to a Santorum staff member
and pronounced his attribute eventually softened with the
Republican care in a House and Senate. Member companies
urged him to sinecure some-more Republicans, and he did.
Low-Level Hiring
Lost in a speak of high-profile jobs is a fixation of
lesser-known Republican congressional staff members on K Street,
Loomis said.
For instance, during slightest 23 of Santorum’s former aides left
Capitol Hill to turn lobbyists, according to information collected by
the Center for Responsive Politics, that marks political
giving. They went to work for companies and trade groups
including a Bond Market Association, a National Retail
Federation and a American Hospital Association.
“Their sponsors were a Santorums and DeLays of the
world,” Loomis said. “That competence have had as most of an impact
overall as some of a bigger names.”
Over a march of Santorum’s congressional career,
lobbyists ranked 10th among his groups of donors, contributing
$731,937 to his campaigns, according to a center’s data.
To hit a contributor on this story:
Kristin Jensen in Washington at
kjensen@bloomberg.net
To hit a editor obliged for this story:
Jeanne Cummings at
jcummings21@bloomberg.net
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