Obama's Line on Lobbyists Is Misleading

By Trudy Lieberman , Columbia Journalism Review. Posted February 26, 2008.

Saturday night at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Virginia, Barack Obama did it again. He said he hadn't taken money from lobbyists. The election, he said, was boiling down to "a choice between debating John McCain about lobbying reform with a nominee who's taken more money from lobbyists than he has, [presumably Hillary Clinton] or doing it with a campaign that hasn't taken a dime of their money because we've been funded by you the American people." That he does not take money from lobbyists or from political action committees (PACs) is a point Obama often makes on the campaign trail, and his no-dirty-money rhetoric has positioned him as the candidate brave enough to shun business as usual in Washington. In November in Iowa, he said corporate lobbyists "have not funded my campaign." And in December he said in a New Hampshire Public Radio program, "I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over, that they had not funded my campaigns ... " His message of financial purity is catching on. For just one recent example, a student writing in The Daily Evergreen, the student newspaper at Washington State University, told his readers last week that Obama has been careful not to compromise himself, "rejecting campaign support from Political Action Committees and lobbyists."

The word "lobbyist" seems to have a particular meaning in Obama's campaign vocabulary. His stump speeches imply that he is not taking money from people who want things from the government and push for them. The reality is that he has.

To explain: Opensecrets.org, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, is the most authoritative source on campaign finances. Basing its reports on data from the Federal Election Commission, the Center shows that Obama indeed doesn't take much money from a sector the Center calls "lobbyists." Through the end of December, Clinton received more than $800,000 and McCain around $400,000 from this group, which the Center says includes people who work for lobbying firms at the local, state, and federal level and their relatives who are not otherwise employed, as well as those who are officially registered as Washington lobbyists. Obama received contributions of about just $86,000 from this group. Obama's Web site says he doesn't take money from Washington lobbyists or political action committees, and the Center says that if his campaign finds that the money came from registered Washington lobbyists, it does get returned.

How meaningful is this? "It's a politically smart position for him to take. It sounds profound," says Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics. "But in fact neither PACs nor lobbyists give a lot to presidential campaigns. He's not leaving a whole lot of money on the table by eschewing PACs and lobbyists." PAC money represents only about one percent of all the money in a presidential race because, Ritsch says, so many people donate that their contributions dwarf PAC money.

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