The traditional fundraising advantage held by incumbent lawmakers — which Republicans have regarded as a safety wall in their effort to keep control of Congress — has eroded in many closely contested House races, as many Democratic challengers prove competitive in the race for cash.
In a year of bad omens for the GOP, the latest batch of disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission offers one more: Incumbency no longer means that embattled Republican representatives can expect to overwhelm weakly funded Democratic challengers with massive spending on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts.
No one is more finely attuned to shifts in the political breezes than the pros on K Street, where success in influencing legislation for paying clients depends on having access to the right people. On K Street, these days, Democrats are gold.
In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so. “We’ve seen a noticeable shift,” said Beth Solomon, director of the Washington office of Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm that helps to place senior lobbyists and trade association heads.
Lobbying managers have for years tended to hire Republicans because both Congress and the White House are controlled by the GOP, and access to officials at both places is lobbying’s stock in trade. But, in recent months, many of Washington’s top lobbyists said in interviews that their decision-making has been altered by an emerging consensus among election experts that the Democrats will boost their numbers in the House and the Senate in the midterm elections Nov. 7 and have a strong shot of winning a majority in the House.
It doesn’t take a fine nose to smell this much shit going down. After years of abandoning the Democratic Party, big money contributors and the lobbyists whose persuasive abilities are tied to money are moving to recapture the Democrats. How long until people begin to say again, “there’s just no difference between a Republican and a Democrat?”
Well, the shoe fits. You can’t fix the corruption problem in Congress by changing the political party that’s in power. The face of corruption will change, but the corruption itself will not. Looks like we’re going to have to be hard on the Democrats too, after they retake Congress.
Spot on J. Clifford! It doesn’t matter what political party a person hails from if they have no integrity and sell out to the corporate sector. It’s been decades in the making and it won’t be cured during this election cycle – unless we have REAL accountability and oversight by unbiased and independent people or groups. So how do we get this up and running?
Ho HO! But of course! Didn’t you KNOW? Any politician, regardless of political leaning, has three political objectives:
1. Get re-elected. You begin working on that as soon as you are sworn in.
2. Pass laws which please your constituency…after all, they voted for you last time…
3. Generate revenue for the State.
If you can do all three, and not piss the majority of the other politicians off, you go down in history as a statesman. This also occurs if you are asassinated in office…but that is not a desirable outcome, as it keeps one from following Rule #1.
Gee…I thought everybody knew that…