President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is refunding the donations of five registered federal lobbyists who gave to the committee last year, OpenSecrets Blog has learned. Some of these refunds were triggered after OpenSecrets Blog brought the contributions to the campaign’s attention.

The Obama campaign has pledged to refuse contributions from lobbyists, continuing a policy it set during the 2008 campaign.

Research by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates the Obama campaign accepted a total of $2,250 from five federally registered lobbyists between April and September. The campaign collected an additional $4,500 from three individuals who registered as federal lobbyists shortly after making contributions.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told OpenSecrets Blog that refunds would be issued to all individuals who were registered lobbyists.

“When we catch [a contribution] from a federal lobbyist that slips through the cracks, we immediately return the contribution,” LaBolt said. “Unlike our opponents, our campaign does not accept contributions from Washington lobbyists.”

Political observers say Obama’s policy is designed to curb the sway of professional influence-seekers, and they acknowledge that any such protocol would likely have a few people slip through the cracks, especially when individual donors number in the millions — as they do in the case of Obama’s campaign.

But political science professor James Thurber said that while such a vow “a step in the right direction,” it was also “somewhat insincere.”

“He’s narrowly defining a lobbyist,” Thurber told OpenSecrets Blog,

Thurber, who is the founder and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, in Washington, D.C., noted that in order to be required to register as a federal lobbyist one must be paid at least $3,000 per quarter, make at least two contacts with senior officials and spend at least 20 percent of his or her time on lobbying.

“Most people don’t meet that,” he continued.

About 12,600 people were registered lobbyists for at least a portion of 2011, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Thurber said it’s more likely that 100,000 in Washington are involved in the advocacy and influence industry.

However, an Obama campaign aide pushed back against the notion that Obama was falling short of his promise to abstain from lobbyists’ funds.

“We don’t create the definition of federal lobbyist — Congress does,” an Obama campaign aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told OpenSecrets Blog. “And we go far beyond the law by declining contributions from them.”

Jason Hauter, who lobbies for the Gila River Indian Community’s gaming and casino interests with the high-profile firm Akin, Gump, is one lobbyist whose $250 contribution was refunded by the Obama campaign.

“If he doesn’t want my money, that’s fine,” Hauter told OpenSecrets Blog. The attorney said his firm had a conservative definition of when registration as a lobbyist was necessary,

Sara Guderyahn, who is a former legislative assistant to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), is another.

Guderyahn, whose lobbying expertise at the Sheridan Group includes child welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, education and public health, donated $250 to Obama in April at an event that she didn’t realize was sponsored by Obama’s campaign.

“It was my mistake,” Guderyahn told OpenSecrets Blog.

The three other lobbyists who slipped through the cracks of the Obama campaign compliance system include:

Kemerer declined to comment for this story, and Temple did not respond to a message left by OpenSecrets Blog. Lowery, meanwhile, told OpenSecrets Blog that his contribution was made for personal, not business, reasons.

“I am a registered lobbyist, but I’ve never had a meeting with the White House,” he said. “[My donation] had nothing to do with my professional work.”

But LaBolt, of the Obama campaign, declined to comment on the campaign’s acceptance of money from people who subsequently registered as lobbyists.

According to the Center’s research, the Obama campaign collected money from at least three individuals who were not registered federal lobbyists at the time of their donations, but who were active, registered lobbyists for a portion of 2011.

Those individuals were David McIntosh of electronic manufacturing company Siemens Corp., John Hawke from Arnold & Porter, and Dennis M. Barry, a lobbyist at King & Spalding.

McIntosh donated $2,000 to Obama on June 23, and his occupation was listed as “government affairs” on the campaign’s second-quarter filing with the Federal Election Commission. McIntosh’s name does not appear in any second-quarter lobbying filings with Congress, but it does appear in Siemens’ third-quarter and fourth-quarter reports.

On August 25, nine days after donating $500 to Obama, Hawke became a registered lobbyist, and he continued to lobby Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission for the rest of the year on finance issues for his client Federated Investors.

Meanwhile, Barry was not a registered federal lobbyist at the time of his $2,000 donation to Obama on June 14. But he had previously lobbied on behalf of hospitals from 2002 until 2010, and he started lobbying again during the third quarter, which began July 1.

Neither Barry or McIntosh could immediately be reached for comment by OpenSecrets Blog, while Hawke maintained he was not really an “active federal lobbyist.”

“We’ve got one on-going project that caused the need for me to register,” he said. “I think [Obama’s policy] was designed to address people who do substantial amounts of lobbying, which is not something I do.”

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer advocate group Public Citizen, said it was not unreasonable for the Obama campaign to keep the contributions from donors who became lobbyists after they wrote their checks.

“The campaign has decided the line is at the time of being a registered lobbyist, rather than the week before, year before, or five years before,” Holman told OpenSecrets Blog. “It is a reasonable line of demarcation. There is no indication that, or indeed even any suspicion of, lobbyists temporarily deregistering, just long enough to make a campaign contribution, and then re-registering. That would not be a sufficiently meaningful gesture, nor bring in sufficient campaign funds, to be part of the influence peddling game on Capitol Hill.”

Obama rejected money from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees during his 2008 campaign, and continues to do so now. Under his leadership, the Democratic National Committee has also pledged to abstain from money from those sources — although at least 10 lobbyists were issued contribution refunds in June after OpenSecrets Blog brought their donations to the DNC’s attention.

Obama’s vow has drawn scrutiny because it relies on the relatively narrow definition of lobbyist laid out in the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act. That has allowed his re-election effort to collect millions of dollars from bundlers who, though not registered lobbyists, are active in the influence industry.

Still, the promise has seen frequent play in Obama campaign fundraising pitches.

“We’ve always relied on each other, not Washington lobbyists or corporate interests, to build our campaign,” one recent message from the Obama campaign stated.

And it’s certainly true that small-dollar donors have played an outsized role in Obama’s fundraising.

Between April and the end of September, the date of the most recent campaign finance reports, Obama collected 47 percent of his more than $88 million raised from people who donated $200 or less.

Yet, people in the influence game have also played a role.

While Obama does not have any bundlers who are registered lobbyists raising money for his re-election efforts, five bundlers who work for lobby shops have collected a minimum of $1.05 million for Obama and the DNC through the end of September. (These bundlers are not themselves registered to lobby.) And employees of lobbying firms who are not registered lobbyists have donated more than $80,000 to the Obama campaign, according to the Center’s research.

By contrast, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has no such prohibitions. He’s collected $206,550 from lobbyists and employees of lobby shops, according to the Center’s research. And eight registered lobbyists have bundled about $1 million for his campaign.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California-Irvine, told OpenSecrets Blog that lobbyist-bundlers are more worrisome than a handful of donors who became registered lobbyists after they made contributions to Obama.

“I’d like to see lobbyists get out of the business of bundling, and a commitment to presidential candidates not to have them bundle,” he wrote in an email to OpenSecrets Blog.

“The fact that candidate Obama took contributions last time from state lobbyists and law firm members whose partners were lobbyists didn’t seem to hurt his reputation as a reformer — nor did his opting out of the campaign finance system,” Hasen added. “And of course, if his opponent is Governor Romney, well Romney is much more likely to take heat for not disclosing his bundlers — as George W. Bush, John McCain and Obama did — than Obama will for this.”

Center for Responsive Politics researcher Sarah Bryner and reporting intern Seth Cline contributed to this report.



For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]

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