The donation disclosures released this week by the Federal Election Commission highlight a number of murky areas where candidates take special-interest cash despite pledges not to. John Buckley, chief executive officer of Subject Matter, a sprawling lobbying firm that represents corporate clients, such as health insurance giant UnitedHealth and oil giant BP, is an O’Rourke donor. Buckley, however, is not himself a registered lobbyist.
Some donations clearly cross the threshold. The FEC disclosures show that O’Rourke also received money from Amy Thomas, a federal lobbyist for the American Public Power Association, as well as from Patrick Killen, a registered state lobbyist for Chevron in New Mexico.
Booker appears to have closely followed his no federal lobbyist rule. The campaign revealed on Monday that it had returned a $1,000 from Kristen Ludecke, a federal lobbyist for PSEG, the largest utility company in New Jersey. But the Booker campaign continues to embrace corporate lobbyists that register under state and municipal registration guidelines. His campaign received campaign funds from multiple lobbyists working at Mercury Public Affairs; Dennis Marco, a local health care and pharmaceutical lobbyist; and from Dennis Culnan, a New Jersey lobbyist closely tied to the Norcross family political machine.
The Harris campaign received the most registered lobbyist donations of any Democratic presidential campaign that has said it would not take the cash.
The long list of state- and municipal-registered lobbyists giving to the Harris campaign includes Leecia Eve, a Verizon lobbyist in New York; Alex Tourk, an Airbnb lobbyist in San Francisco; Alexander Clemons, who represents AT&T; Cliff Berg, registered to lobby on behalf of Novartis, Cemex, and Visa; Darrell Campbell, a South Carolina lobbyist for Pfizer, Juul, HCA health care and Duke Energy; Emily Giske, a former Democratic National Committee superdelegate who lobbies for Cigna, IBM, and Google; Jennifer Wada, a charter school lobbyist; and Justin Ross, a Maryland construction and real estate lobbyist.
Other lobbyists who gave to Harris fall into the gray area of unregistered influence peddlers. William Castleberry is not technically registered, but he is an influential Facebook lobbyist who oversees the Menlo Park, California, company’s expansive state-level government affairs operations; he gave $2,700 to Harris. Matthew Gerst, who gave $500, falls into similar territory: He leads the regulatory lobbying for CTIA, a trade group for wireless-telecom companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, but is not registered to lobby.
Democrats across the board have raised huge sums of grassroots money this cycle, in large part by promising that they will reject cash from Super PACs, corporate PACs, and lobbyists.
“Our campaign is not taking a dime from corporate PACs or lobbyists — and that was a very deliberate choice. Yes, it means we are leaving money on the table. But that’s ok with me,” Harris wrote in an email to supporters in February.
The Harris email made clear the purpose of the lobby donation ban: “I never want there to be any question about whether I’m listening to the people or corporate lobbyists. The answer will always be the people.”
