The sector has lost key champions such as Ike Skelton and the late John Murtha. Is defense defenseless?

The defense industry is in the fight of its life, but many of its longtime champions on Capitol Hill are retired, dead or in jail.

Of the 30 largest House recipients of defense industry campaign donations since the 1990 election cycle, only 11 are still serving in Congress, according to a POLITICO analysis of federal data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. It’s the same story in the Senate, where 14 of the top 30 recipients over the same time period still serve.


And many observers admit that the remaining industry defenders aren’t the defense giants who once walked the halls of Congress.

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Talk about bad timing: Monster spending cuts are set to hit the Pentagon and domestic agencies Friday and in turn take a major whack at the defense contractors’ bottom lines.

That’s left Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other major firms scrambling to cultivate a new crop of defenders.

“Are we missing people who understood our industry and understood our contribution to our national defense? Yeah, absolutely,” said Dan Stohr, a spokesman for the Aerospace Industries Association, the defense contracting industry’s leading trade group. “Losing those kinds of people does hurt.”

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The biggest recipient of defense industry largesse over the past two decades, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), died in 2010, while Pentagon favorites like Reps. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) have all retired, though Hunter’s son and namesake now holds his father’s seat.

Former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) is near the end of an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal bribery, fraud and tax evasion charges. Cunningham was an industry favorite — receiving a total of $878,000 in campaign contributions since the 1990 election cycle.

Meanwhile, many of the bets the industry made in the 2012 cycle didn’t pan out. Scott Brown, the defense contracting industry’s leading Senate recipient last year, lost his reelection race. Two other big recipients also lost: George Allen (R-Va.) pulled in $133,000 in donations and Todd Akin (R-Mo.) received $125,000. Two of the top 10 House recipients from the last cycle — Democrats Silvestre Reyes of Texas and Mark Critz of Pennsylvania — are also no longer around to stick up for defense.

Veteran defense industry allies have also been drying up in the Senate with the loss of Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who was defeated in 2008, and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who died in December, and former Sens. John Warner (R-Va.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

“Turnover is the nature of the business,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith told POLITICO. The Washington state Democrat received $201,000 in the 2012 cycle from the defense industry, putting him in the top five among House lawmakers.

While lawmakers do come and go, industry officials acknowledge they are in a bind.

Even as the defense contracting industry knows it’s going to shrink, political action committees and individuals connected to the firms are giving more than ever to congressional candidates. Campaign donations from aerospace big guns Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and others totaled a record $27 million for the 2012 election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

While several companies declined to talk about their political giving strategy, some defense lobbyists said the industry focused donations in the 2012 cycle on lawmakers who could give them political cover and help thwart cuts to specific programs if Congress and the White House couldn’t avert sequestration.

The lobbyists conceded they are looking to cultivate new relationships since lawmakers aren’t necessarily lifelong members of the House and Senate Armed Services panels, unlike lawmakers who hold on tight after they score slots on the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees.

Northrop Grumman said it’s been busy connecting for the first time with a large number of new lawmakers, particularly members who represent districts where Northrop Grumman employees live and work. “We’re spending a lot of our time introducing ourselves to members and their staff, educating them on who we are,” said company spokesman Randy Belote, who added Northrop Grumman cutsAsked about the turnover that’s left the defense contracting industry without some of its best allies in office, Belote replied, “We’re very practical. We look at who’s there. I don’t have a view on what’s gone on in the past.”

checks only to lawmakers who request its support.

AIA’s Stohr said the loss has forced the defense industry to connect with a new crop of committee leaders and rank-and-file members who have large contracting industries in their states and districts.

“It’s incumbent on us to, among the people who are stepping forward, to find the ones who are most aligned with our interests and are willing to lead,” he said. “That’s really where it hurts is the folks who have the gravitas to lead on these issues in many cases are the ones who we’ve lost over the last couple of years.”

“It’s just a matter of the changing demographics of the members of Congress and having to deal with it,” Stohr added.

On the House Armed Services Committee, Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), ranking member Smith, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and other GOP and Democratic members collected about $4.4 million in the 2012 election cycle from the defense contracting industry. On the Senate side, the most recent election cycle was helpful to several members running for another term, including Democratic Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.

But Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has questioned how the defense contracting industry spends its money. Told that Sens. Stevens, Warner and Inouye all had received more contributions than he, Inhofe replied, “You named three and I’m surprised any of the three would be big recipients. I’m wondering why. Maybe that tells you something about not the influence, but the judgment, of these people. Why would they support Warner when he’s been against them all the time?”

“I guess they don’t appreciate me,” Inhofe added.

With recent Senate turnover, Inhofe is now in the top 10 recipients from the defense industry. But he said their donations are “apparently not enough.”

“I’m not joking,” he said. “I think that goes to show that they really aren’t the heavy hitters that everyone thinks they are. It sounds good to say, ‘Oh, the defense industry, or the oil industry.’ That’s the other one that is supposed to be making all these contributions. But they really don’t have that much [influence].”

Presented with his defense contracting fundraising totals in the Senate (nearly $435,000 since 1990), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said several times that he was still “way down” compared with his colleagues. He’s No. 11 among active senators, behind Inhofe ($450,000) and ahead of Sen. Susan Collins ($430,000).

“I think our obligation is to do the best we can for the country and for our constituents,” Reed said. “The relative role of any sector in political participation, that’s a nice topic for analysis. I’m just trying to do my best here.”

Asked if defense industry contractors’ contributions had helped at all in the sequestration fight, Reed replied, “We’ve been listening on these issues to the secretary of defense, to the [Joint Chiefs] chairmen, those are the experts. It’s not about individual contractors. It’s about what’s in the best interest of the national security of the United States and in particular are we doing all we can do to ensure the men and women of the armed forces have the resources they need? That’s the bottom line to me.”

But the defense contractors’ business decisions — like where to locate plants — can have a major effect on individual lawmakers looking to keep precious defense jobs in their districts. Even Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) isn’t immune. Boehner unsuccessfully battled in 2011 to keep a jet engine project that would have been built in a town that is just outside his southwest Ohio district.

Not all lawmakers believe the industry donations are about saving a line in the Pentagon’s budget.

“What it says is Florida is an expensive state to campaign in,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, who has raised $705,000 from defense contractors since the 1990 cycle.

And while President Barack Obama was the top recipient of defense money among senators — nearly $2.3 million, including his two presidential runs — he’s actively called for paring back defense industry spending and his White House aides instigated the sequester.

Money isn’t the reason House Armed Services Committee member Doug Lamborn ($82,000 in the 2012 cycle) backs the defense industry. The Colorado Republican said in an interview that he supports defense contractors because they add to the country’s national security.

“As long as they’re playing that positive role, I think they certainly have an important place in our society,” Lamborn said.

Second-term Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii), who raised $88,000 during the 2012 election cycle from defense contractors, said she had historic reasons for seeking her position on the Armed Services panel, not financial ones. “I’m on this committee not because I expected to raise money. I’m on this committee because I can’t see Hawaii ever not having anyone on this committee,” she said.

Brooks and Rep. Richard Nugent (R-Fla.) both cited regional job issues when describing their support of the defense industry.

“To date no one with the defense industry has lobbied me to vote for one sequestration alternative or another. I’m not sure what clout they have or don’t have,” said Brooks. “But I’m on Armed Services, I’m a member of Congress and they haven’t communicated to me what they think we should vote for or against on this sequestration.”

Brooks, whose Northern Alabama district includes the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, is among the top five House recipients for defense contractor donations during the 2012 cycle with $202,000. “I didn’t realize it was that significant. I’m pleased that people recognize that I’m strongly in favor of a strong national security and understand national defense is the No. 1 priority of the federal government,” he said.

Nugent, a second-term Florida Republican who has three sons in the Army, reveled in his low contribution figures not just from defense contractors — $4,000 in the 2012 cycle — but “across the board on all of it.”

“I don’t worry about the major defense contractors,” he told POLITICO. “I worry about the ones I have back in my district that support the majors. These are the small guys that can’t absorb a slowdown. When it starts trickling down to them and the big guys are going to cut it off, they don’t have the resources to say, ‘We’ll redirect.’ They don’t have the capital to sit there and say, ‘We can absorb this.’”