The Smoke Filled Room

In a rural Southern county shortly after prohibition ended, a local businessman approached an aspiring politician with a proposal. “You need two things, my friend: money and votes,” he said. “I can help you with both.”

The politician knew this man—as everyone in the county did—as the most prolific bootlegger in three states. Throughout prohibition the bootlegger had made a killing by dodging the feds, bribing the local police, and stocking the shelves of the general store’s back room or selling straight out of his truck.

“I imagine you could contribute to my campaign, sir, and I appreciate every dime,” the politician responded, “but how could you deliver me votes in this county, where the Baptist Ladies’ Temperance Club is the most active organization of voters?”

The bootlegger didn’t miss a beat.

“Those Baptists have 100 members who can endorse you, knock on doors, and register your supporters to vote,” the bootlegger explained. “All you need to do is promise to turn this county dry if elected.”

“You’d fund a man looking to turn the county dry?” the politician asked skeptically.

“Look around, friend,” the bootlegger answered. “Who needs me anymore? The general store just buys from the distributor, and the men can just go to the bar. Outlaw the stuff, and it’s like old times again! You’re the best investment I could make. And if you need to, abuse me a bit—call me a merchant of death. Just put those bars and law-abiding liquor stores out of business, please.”

The story of the Baptists and the bootlegger is apocryphal, but it’s crucial to understanding how lobbying works. And understanding lobbying is necessary if you want to understand politics and policy. Many people think business and special-interest lobbying is an occasional or peripheral factor in lawmaking. In fact, lobbying is the engine of government.

Companies spent $1.5 billion lobbying the federal government in the first half of 2008—that’s $8.3 million per day counting weekends and holidays. At that pace there’s going to be $200 million more in lobbying spending than last year, and efforts to steer bailout money to various corporate interests may well make the total far higher than even the industry’s 9.2 percent annual growth rate.

I’ve covered the lobbying game as a reporter, author, and columnist since coming to Washington DC. In addition to a greater understanding of the whole process, I’ve picked up some pretty good stories. Here I offer a few that entertain and capture the essence of lobbying, so that you, too, can understand what goes on in the proverbial smoke-filled room.

Casinos against Gambling

Jack Abramoff, the jailed super-lobbyist, did a lot of bad things, but the most devious involved Indian tribe casinos in the Delta region. The “bootleggers” here were the Louisiana Coushatta tribe of Indians, who ran a casino in Kinder, Louisiana that reportedly took in $300 million a year.

The Coushatta had a problem: the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians. In 2002 the latter tribe won state approval to open a new casino in Vinton, Louisiana, about 50 miles to the east. In a free market, if you get new competition, you fight for customers, offering specials and making your business more attractive, whereas in the lobbying world, you call on Washington to exterminate your competitor—and Indian tribes are fully submerged in the lobbying world, having boosted their lobbying efforts from $6.5 million in 1998 to $18.8 million in 2001.

That’s no surprise. Because Indian tribes are basically autonomous from their states, the law treats each differently—government benefits and special exemptions vary from tribe to tribe (and within each tribe, often from band to band). Lobbyists thrive on flexibility. If the system is rigid, there’s only so much lobbying you can do. With Indian tribes, nothing was set in stone.

For that reason, Jack Abramoff brought more and more Indian tribes to K Street.