Dem Platform Panel to Include Two Registered Lobbyists

By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff Tue Jul 8, 6:19 PM ET

Lobbyists will be involved in writing the Democratic platform under Barack Obama, who has campaigned against special interest influence in Washington and bashed his rivals for accepting contributions from paid lobbyists.

Two members of the Democratic Party's platform drafting committee, Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO and Donna Harris-Aiken of the National Education Association, are registered lobbyists. The panelists, who will submit their plan to the party's full platform committee for ratification next month, were announced Tuesday in a joint release from the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign.

The principal author of the platform draft is Karen Kornbluh, an aide in Obama's Senate office who is married to telecommunications lobbyist Jim Halpert. Halpert has lobbied for Time Warner, Amazon, Comcast, eBay, Experian and two electronic commerce consortia in recent years, according to records filed with the House of Representatives.

Obama has made reform of Washington, particularly limiting the influence of lobbyists on the policy process, a central theme of his campaign.

"I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over, that they had not funded my campaigns, and from my first day as president, I will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in U.S. history," Obama told New Hampshire Public Radio late last year.

The Obama campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Obama does not accept contributions from political action committees or from registered federal lobbyists but he does collect money from the corporate executives who employe the lobbyists and he does allow lobbyists to bundle contributions to him, a practice that experts say can magnify their influence.

He has made an art form of blistering rivals for accepting donations from lobbyists -- first Democratic primary opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton and now presumed Republican nominee John McCain.

"John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs," Obama said recently. The independent, non-partisan Factcheck.org found that less than two percent of the money collected by McCain -- and an even smaller share gathered by the RNC -- came from lobbyists and PACs.

Obama cited those donations as a reason for rejecting public financing for his campaign after having indicated that he would accept public funds and forgo private money for the general election. Factcheck.org called his reasoning "a lame excuse" because of the small share of McCain's funds that come from those sources.

Obama and his aides have sometimes sought to draw a distinction between those who lobby for corporations and those who lobby for non-corporate interests such as the unions that Harris-Aiken and Lee represent. But at other times, the Obama camp has declined to distinguish between corporate and non-corporate lobbyists.

The inclusion of lobbyists and the spouse of a lobbyist on the platform drafting committee underscores the difficulty of finding qualified policy professionals who have no ties to organizations that seek to influence government actions.

Last month, the Obama campaign accepted the resignation of the original head of its vice presidential selection committee, Jim Johnson, after it was revealed that Johnson, a former chief of secondary home-mortgage giant Fannie Mae, had been the beneficiary of a low-interest loan from Countrywide.

Several members of Obama's inner circle are former lobbyists, including vice presidential selection committee member Eric Holder, a former Justice Department official who later lobbied for Global Crossing.

Another member of the drafting committee, Ron His Horse is Thunder, is chairman of Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota, which has hired lobbyists to obtain earmarks and pursue other legislative goals.

The Democratic Party and Obama campaign are encouraging voters to organize platform meetings and report results to the drafting committee, which will hold a hearing Aug. 1 in Cleveland and finalize its work Aug. 3. That draft will be presented to the full platform committee Aug. 9 in Pittsburgh.

The drafting committe will be headed by Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Michael Yaki, a former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Kornbluh.