Kansas Republican Watkins, ousted amid voter fraud charges, returns to Congress as lobbyist

Former Rep. Steve Watkins is back in the U.S. Capitol, this time as a lobbyist.

Watkins, a Kansas Republican who represented Kansas’ 2nd Congressional district for one term before his ouster in the 2020 election, first registered as a lobbyist in July, to focus on the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Authority. Later filings show he’s working on disaster recovery relief and relations between the U.S. and Lebanon.

It is not uncommon for former members to become lobbyists. A study by Public Citizen, a nonprofit that pushes for stronger ethics in government, found that around 50% of former members of the 115th Congress – between 2017 and 2019 – who found jobs outside of politics ended up registering as a lobbyist.

It’s more unusual when the former member served for only one-term after losing a primary while shrouded in allegations of voter fraud.

Watkins, a scandal magnet from the time he launched his campaign, entered a diversion agreement on three felony charges for voting in the wrong city council race in Topeka’s 2019 municipal election shortly after leaving office.

In the agreement, he admitted that he voted in the wrong district and lied to a Shawnee County detective who investigated it.

A little less than a year after admitting guilt, Watkins registered a company called Huxley Rock LLC with the Kansas Secretary of State’s office. The address he used for its registration is the same Topeka address he used to vote in the wrong city council district.

Huxley Rock is a one man firm. Watkins’ LinkedIn page says it specializes in business and political consulting. He waited more than two years after leaving office before registering as a lobbyist, a longer than the required one-year “cooling off” period before former representatives can start lobbying members of Congress.

When registering, lobbyists have to check a box indicating whether they have been convicted of any state or federal crimes involving “bribery, extortion, embezzlement, an illegal kickback, tax evasion, fraud, a conflict of interest, making a false statement, perjury, or money laundering.”

Watkins, who technically was not convicted because of his diversion, even though he admitted guilt, checked “no.”

“It is a loophole if you only have to check off the box upon conviction,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. “If there was some sort of agreement that you had violated ethics rules, that should also qualify for that check off, but it doesn’t. The law is written in a way that it only applies to convictions.”

So far, Watkins has only registered to lobby on three issues.

He first registered in July, indicating that his one-man shop would be working for a lobbying group called GovBiz Advantage, Inc., which is run by Duane Gibson, who once worked as a staffer for the House Transportation Committee and Alaska Republicans in the House and Senate.

Gibson did not respond to an email requesting comment on his firm’s work with Watkins.

Watkins is working for two companies through GovBiz Advantage – Radia, which wants him to lobby on the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, and Fortress, which wants Watkins to lobby on disaster recovery.

The reauthorization is largely handled by the House Transportation Committee, which is run by Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, and the Senate Commerce Committee.

Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, serves on the Senate Commerce Committee. His office said they have not taken any meetings with Watkins.

In his first quarterly report, Watkins said he made less than $5,000 for his work with GovBiz Advantage. He won’t have to file for this quarter until the end of the year.

He has also registered to lobby on U.S.-Lebanese relations for Omar Harfouch, a businessman and composer from Lebanon, according to his personal website.

Harfouch says he pushes for a “Third Lebanese Republic,” a push for more secularism in Lebanon’s parliament.

While it is unclear how Watkins and Harfouch were connected – Harfouch did not respond to a request for comment – there are photos of the two making their rounds in Congress on social media.

Watkins has not registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice. While the Foreign Agent Registration Act says someone must register if they’re working for a non-U.S. citizen who lives outside the U.S. – Harfouch lives in Paris – there are exemptions for lobbyists if they’re working for a nongovernmental person, according to the Congressional Research Service. Harfouch does not hold office in Lebanon.

Watkins has plenty of experience in the Middle East. He went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served five years of active duty for the U.S. Army, and saw combat on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He then went on to work as a military contractor, primarily in Afghanistan, until returning to the U.S.

This January Watkins also began working as a special officer for transatlantic affairs for Raphael Dakik, a lawyer who says he is a member of the royal family of Afghanistan, which was toppled in 1978. Dakik aims to restore the monarchy in Afghanistan, where U.S. attempts to establish a democracy recently fell to the Taliban.

Watkins did not respond to a voicemail requesting comment.

While he only served one term in Congress and lost the 2020 Republican primary to current Rep. Jake LaTurner, Watkins appears to have capitalized on his short stint in office.

But both his campaign and brief tenure were shrouded in scandal. The Star in 2018 reported that Watkins exaggerated his role at a business where he worked, claiming he owned a company he built from scratch. He didn’t.

Days later, the Associated Press reported that Watkins had exaggerated his credentials, including a false quote about his leadership role while hiking Mt. Everest during an earthquake in Nepal.

After narrowly winning a heavily Republican district, the cloud of scandal followed Watkins to Washington. When he lost reelection in 2020, he was facing charges for voter fraud and the House Ethics Committee was conducting an investigation into the allegations of voter fraud.

It’s unclear how much Watkins will be able to grow his lobbying and consulting business, given his history in Congress.

“Members, who had the reputation for knowing the system and how it worked, and having a reputation for having good relations with their colleagues, and had a reputation for bipartisanship, and had a reputation for being good legislators, those people were in demand,” said former Rep. Jim Slattery, a Democrat who represented the same Topeka area seat as Watkins between 1983 and 1995. “But people that did not have necessarily a good relationship with their colleagues were not in demand.”

Holman said people want former lawmakers to work for them because they’re seen as having valuable inside connections, knowing staffers and knowing fellow members of Congress. He said a former lawmaker’s calls might get picked up more frequently.

But there’s a limit to the desirability of any lawmaker.

“First of all, he’s only been there for one term,” Holman said. “So that makes him not quite as valuable. And then he’s got an ethics scandal looming over him. And that further lowers the premium that he would get from a lobbying firm.”