Wonkette

Every week, I answer your questions about how laws get made and why they probably shouldn’t. If you have a question about the dirty business of doing business in Washington, ask me.

This week: How lobbyists stay employed, why hookers are more expensive than getting everyone drunk and screwing, and target-rich environments.My gay Hill staffer friends have been bitching to me about ENDA and the stink right now over it. For all intents and purposes, T or no T in GLBT, ENDA is not going to be signed by the president and everyone knows this. Even if it makes it out of the House and into the Senate, there aren’t enough Senators who will support it either. So my question is, do other interest groups make their representatives jump through hoops even though they know it will have no eventual pay off, and what the fuck for?

See, your premise that the purpose of lobbying is to pass or defeat legislation is itself flawed. The number one rule for lobbyists is to stay employed! If you’re a one-issue organization (like, say, on gay rights) and you get all your rights, what the hell are you going to do for a job? Plus, it’s not like you can just say to your boss or your funders, “Oh, well, see, the President isn’t going to sign it anyway, so we’re just packing it in until 2009.” Part of the deal with lobbying is that you have to show progress toward your legislative goal, not just achieve those goals. The more progress you can show without actually achieving anything, the more money you can make.

That said, in this environment, the GLBT lobbyists have to show progress now, and they also want to show their constituents that they didn’t all get out and vote for a bunch of idiots who don’t actually care about their issues (although, most Congress Members really don’t). So ginning up floor showdowns and press coverage and vote-counting and passing a piece of legislation through the House that will never make it through the Senate is a great way to keep their own PACs funded and to stay employed.

And, yes, everyone does it. A lot. It’s a time-tested tradition, and what the gay rights community is doing on ENDA is straight out of the playbook.

So, when clients hire you to lobby on their behalf, do you have to go to them, or do they come to you? Which is more common, generally? What do they think they are buying when they hire you or any other lobbyist, and how do they know if they’ve gotten their money’s worth?

A good contract lobbyist is basically just a good salesperson, so while it’s fine for clients to come to you, you definitely pound the pavement a lot looking for new people to whom you can sell your services. I’d say that it’s far more common for a lobbyist to pitch her/himself to clients than to take requests for representation, though that definitely happens when someone is either very well known or very issue-specific.

As for what a client is buying, that depends on the client. Some clients just want to keep a certain lobbyist for working for the competition; others want someone to do intelligence-gathering and memo-writing and take the occasion meeting, though usually that’s for a group with their own lobbying shop; and still others (mostly companies without their own lobbying resources) want a contract lobbyist to do everything from lobbying on their behalf to writing briefing papers for the client himself and everything in between. They know they’ve gotten their money’s worth if there’s a tangible result (legislation passed/killed/delayed or earmark obtained) or if you’re a good enough salesperson to convince the client that you’re worth the money.

When planning a lobbying event, such as a fishing rodeo, do the lobbyists provide and pay for the hookers or do they simply inform them of the event and rely on the women (presumably) to show up and make their own arrangements with the politicos who attend?

Well, frankly, if you know anything about event planning, you’ll know most event planners are women, and the vast majority of women, I think it’s fair to say, would be fairly skeeved about hiring actually hookers for an event. While money might make up for that, most political event planners don’t make that much, so I’m guessing there’s not a lot of that going on.

Plus, with the exception of Brent Wilkes, why would you have to pay for a hooker to get a Congress Member laid? Washington D.C. is what’s known as a “target-rich environment,” and there’s usually someone at the end of the night in a bar who will fuck a Congress Member, even the old ones. I mean, you might not be able to hook someone like Duke up with the real hotties, maybe — though I’ll be you could with enough liquor and a limo — but there are plenty of divorceés, Samantha-types, wide-eyed ingénues with power-fetishes and just-plain-drunk women with no sense around that look damn good, know what they want and don’t expect that much of a dude they let pick them up in a bar. It’s far cheaper (and legal, and expense-able) to just get everyone drunk than to pay for a professional.