The Hill: FEC reports more lobbyist bundlers
The Hill
FEC reports more lobbyist bundlers
By Kevin Bogardus
May 26, 2009
At least four more lobbyist bundlers have been reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), according to new filings with the agency.
A report by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) disclosed that four lobbyists collected $209,700 in campaign contributions for the political committee during the month of April.
The top lobbyist bundler for the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee is Ted Burnes, a lobbyist for the American College of Radiology. He is also director of RADPAC, the group’s political action committee. Burnes raised $88,500 for the DSCC.
Next is Matt Gelman. Gelman is a well-known Democrat and a lobbyist for software giant Microsoft. He gathered $60,800 in political contributions for the DSCC.
Finishing out the list of bundlers are Robert Glennon, a senior tax lobbyist at Mayer Brown, who raised $30,000 for the DSCC, and Bernie McKay, who lobbies for Intuit. McKay was credited for Intuit founder Scott Cook’s $30,400 contribution to the committee.
The DSCC filing and a report by LA PAC, a leadership committee affiliated with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and earlier reported on by The Hill, are the only two to disclose lobbyist bundlers so far, as confirmed by the FEC. This is the first time that political committees have disclosed bundlers under a new rule that was part of the ethics law passed by Congress in 2007.
Such a short list of bundlers led ethics watchdogs to charge the agency with gutting the lobbyist bundler measure during the rulemaking process. They said changes made by the FEC have led to less disclosure of bundlers by campaigns.
President Obama championed the measure while in the Senate alongside his colleague, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). Obama also often touted his support of ethics reforms on the campaign trail last year.
The filing by the DSCC was not reported by The Hill last Friday because the FEC had not entered it into its electronic database and it did not turn up in searches by agency officials. The report was hand-delivered to the agency last week.
“The search performed on the FEC website for [lobbyist bundler] reports filed on May 20 picked up only the reports that were filed electronically. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hand-delivered its report to the Secretary of the Senate, which scanned the report into its system and sent it to the FEC in a PDF format,” said Julia Queen, an FEC spokeswoman.
Expect to see more lobbyists disclosed by campaign committees in the future. Political committees will next disclose their bundlers, if any, in their monthly filings, due on June 20. Candidates, however, will have to release their bundlers’ names for the first time in their quarterly filings on July 15.
