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Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006

A lucrative connection

WASHINGTON - Kentucky farmers needed help from Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., three years ago as Congress debated a buyout of their government tobacco quotas.

The farmers ended up with the perfect lobbyist to present their case: Gordon Hunter Bates, McConnell's recently departed chief of staff and campaign manager, just getting his start in the private sector.

They signed up as clients of the brand-new Bates Capitol Group, a small firm Bates opened after he was disqualified from the 2003 race for Kentucky lieutenant governor because he had been living in Virginia. Bates charged about $350,000 in fees, and with McConnell's help, the farmers got what they wanted, a $10 billion buyout over a decade.

As the deal was approved, McConnell gave a Senate floor speech and described Bates' role as "extremely important."

"Hunter is like a son to the senator, and having that kind of access is a big help," said Danny McKinney, chief executive of the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative Association in Lexington. "Most of the work he did for us was just the two of them in a room, in private, without the rest of us."

Bates soon hired other lobbyists tied to McConnell and is now perceived as a gatekeeper to one of the most powerful figures in the Senate. His business likely will boom if McConnell, now the majority whip, replaces the retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., in January, as planned.

From his seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, McConnell has recommended about $45 million in federal funds for four of Bates' clients, interviews and public records show. The senator has filed or rewritten bills for three other clients, loosening pension contribution rules and making it harder to sue businesses.

Overall, Bates, who is 38, reports that he has charged about $2.4 million in fees to clients helped by McConnell -- more than half of the fees he reports for his first three years as a Washington lobbyist. Those clients have given McConnell about $120,000 in campaign contributions. Most did not give to McConnell until they hired Bates. They declined to say whether Bates, who asks people to give to McConnell, solicited their own donations.

In a city still touchy about the criminal investigations that surround disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, watchdogs are critical of cozy ties between members of Congress and the connected lobbyists whose special-interest work seems to pump money into their campaigns.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, says a new breed of lobbyists is especially troubling: congressional aides who go private not to market their knowledge of Congress, but to sell precious access to their onetime bosses, becoming highly paid doorkeepers.

For example, Sloan said, the high-powered Alexander Strategy Group was founded by former aides to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who resigned this year after being indicted.

"Alexander Strategy's whole raison d'tre was that they got you into the room with Tom DeLay ... until they both collapsed in scandal," said Sloan, previously a federal prosecutor and congressional aide.

In a recent interview, McConnell said he helps worthy Kentucky companies whenever he can. If much of his assistance has gone to Bates' clients, that is coincidental and unrelated to their friendship or the money Bates raises for his campaigns, he said.

"I'm not sure who Hunter's client list is," McConnell said. "I have 280 former employees. I know some of them work in this town (as lobbyists). I couldn't tell you who represents who."

Some farmers say McConnell himself sent them to Bates -- "He told us, 'You need to hire Hunter Bates, I can work with Hunter Bates,'" said Versailles farmer Rusty Thompson, a Burley Tobacco Cooperative board member -- which McConnell denied.

Bates declined to be interviewed.

In a prepared statement, Bates wrote: "Working with members of Congress to achieve outcomes that are consistent with shared vision and values is not corrupt, but rather, is a critical part of the democratic process."