The new chief of staff to health reform czar Tom Daschle was a lobbyist through late last year and will have to recuse himself from issues he worked to influence, an administration aide said Thursday. Daschle chief of staff was lobbyist

The new chief of staff to health reform czar Tom Daschle was a lobbyist through late last year and will have to recuse himself from issues he worked to influence, an administration aide said Thursday.

Daschle adviser Mark B. Childress is the second lobbyist to land in the top ranks of the Health and Human Services Department and joins at least 12 others who have found jobs in the administration — despite the president’s repeated pledges during the campaign to stamp out their influence in Washington.


As a partner at the law firm Foley Hoag, Childress represented the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and PanFlu, which sought assistance on mobile health technology issues. He will need to avoid making decisions that affect his former clients or the broader areas they represented, but Childress will not require a waiver because he did not lobby the health and human services department, the aide said.

“With broad experience in Congress and in the White House, Mark has the expertise to tackle the challenges facing our health care system,” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin said in a statement.

“He will fully comply with the ethics pledge, including recusing himself from matters and specific issues he worked on while employed at Foley Hoag.”

On his second day in office, Obama issued an executive order forbidding executive branch employees from working in an agency, or on a program, for which they have lobbied in the last two years.

Childress, however, will join a growing list of employees who will be prohibited from dealing with matters on which they lobbied within the two-year window.

Obama aides have stressed that former lobbyists make up a “tiny” fraction of the 8,000 employees who will be hired by the administration — and the president should get credit for trying to enact stricter rules than his predecessors.

“The ethical standards implemented by President Obama have been applauded by experts across the spectrum as the most rigorous in history,” Cherlin said.

Childress spent five years in Daschle’s Senate office, working as his chief counsel and policy director until the senator lost reelection in 2005.

In announcing its hire of Childress in January 2007, Foley Hoag described him as someone who “worked at the highest levels of the Executive Branch and Congress.” Childress also worked as senior counsel in the Clinton administration and general counsel on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Given his experience at the White House and on Capitol Hill, Childress is considered well-positioned to help usher one of Obama’s chief domestic priorities — overhauling the nation’s health care system — through Congress.

“The president has not only made health reform a priority for his administration, he has followed up on that commitment by choosing top-caliber people like Tom Daschle and Bill Corr to lead HHS,” Childress wrote in an introductory e-mail this week to the department staff. “While we wait for their confirmations, we look forward to working with you to promote the president's priorities and perform our mission.”

Corr, who is Obama’s pick to be deputy secretary of health and human services, was an anti-tobacco lobbyist, and will have to recuse himself from tobacco-related issues to comply with the ethics rules.

Chris Frates contributed to this story.