5 lobbyists assume key posts at parties' national conventions

ByABC News
August 5, 2008, 11:53 PM

WASHINGTON -- As vice chairman of the host committee for the Democratic convention in Denver, Steve Farber is one of the key fundraisers for the $40.6 million in private money needed to stage the event a goal he says he expects to reach this week.

At the Republican convention in St. Paul, Anthony Foti is director of external affairs, handling relations with businesses, interest groups and politicians at every level of government.

Both also work for lucrative lobbying firms in Washington. Farber is a founder of the No. 15 firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, while Foti is a lobbyist for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which was the second-highest grossing firm last year, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have both criticized lobbyists' influence in Washington and adopted policies that limit the roles of lobbyists within their presidential campaigns. Still, five lobbyists three Republicans and two Democrats are in key positions helping to organize and raise money for the political parties' conventions this year.

'Not very transparent'

Unlike their campaigns, the candidates don't have complete control over the party conventions, whose committees and staff were largely in place before the party primaries were decided. Farber, for example, has been a member of the host committee for more than two years, host committee spokesman Chris Lopez said in an e-mail.

Lobbyists have been involved in such behind-the-scenes convention work for many years to help build and cement connections with politicians, says James Thurber, a political scientist at American University who teaches classes on lobbying.

"Does that matter? Yes, because it influences decision-making in Washington, and it's not very transparent to the American public generally," Thurber says.

Farber and other lobbyists who are at work on the conventions don't see it that way.

"I can't imagine anyone gaining influence through working on a political convention," says Blake Hall, general counsel for the committee organizing the Republican convention, which is Sept. 1-4. Hall is an Idaho lawyer who is registered in Washington to lobby for one client, a contractor cleaning up toxic and radioactive waste at the Energy Department's Idaho National Laboratory.