Jack Abramoff Takes to Redemption Trail

Before he went to prison on fraud, corruption, and conspiracy charges, super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff never dreamed he’d be the guest speaker at an event sponsored by Public Citizen.

The organization, which was founded by Ralph Nader, considers itself to be “the people’s voice in the nation’s capital” and “a countervailing force to corporate power.”

Abramoff spent his career opposing Nader’s fight against corporate America. So it’s “quite interesting that I wound up here,” Abramoff said today at Public Citizen.

He still says he’s a conservative, but Abramoff said he decided to spend his post-prison life giving an insider’s view of the lobbying business and pushing for meaningful reforms. Last November, he released a book, Capitol Punishment, and now he’s blogging for United Republic, an organization fighting special-interest influence over politics and government.

“I’m not against lobbying,” Abramoff said. “The problem with lobbying is when the money gets involved.”

Lots of money was involved when it came to Abramoff, his associates, his clients, and members of Congress.

“I was involved basically in a system of bribery—legalized bribery for the most part,” he said.

It’s that other part that sent Abramoff to prison for three-and-a-half years and resulted in the convictions of 19 other lobbyists and public officials on corruption charges—a scandal that helped Democrats win control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

“I wasn’t a great innovator,” Abramoff said.

He just engaged in practices that other lobbyists engaged in—buying lawmakers and their staffs expensive dinners and taking them to sporting events—but Abramoff raised these practices to a new level, such as flying key allies to Scotland to play golf at the legendary St. Andrews course.

Abramoff even owned his own restaurant in Washington, so members of Congress and their staff “could basically come in and feast away.”

These practices were part of how you won friends and influenced people if you were a lobbyist. Part of the game was psychology: You want to get members of Congress and their staff “away from their center of power” and bring them “to your center of power, if you can create one,” he said.

Congress tightened up ethics rules, particularly when it comes to accepting perks, in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. But Abramoff contends much more needs to be done to combat corruption in the lobbying business.

Lobbyists shouldn’t be allowed to give any money to political candidates or organizations engaged in political activity, he said. They shouldn’t be allowed to bundle other people’s money for political contributions either, he said. Abramoff said the source of his power was his ability to get money for politicians from clients and others.

Congress also should ban former members of Congress, and their staffs, from lobbying Congress when they leave Capitol Hill, he said. The revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street worked well for Abramoff—he hired Hill staffers to get access to congressional offices. Sometimes just offering a key staff person a job in the future would do the trick, because these aides would start doing things to benefit Abramoff and his clients even before leaving the Hill.

“Some of them frankly were more effective than my staff,” Abramoff said.

Finally, Abramoff said he now believes that members of Congress should be subject to term limits. The ethics of too many members start slipping after too many years in Washington, he said. He opposed term limits as a lobbyist, for good reason:

“Once you buy a congressional office, you don’t have to repurchase that office a few years down the line.”

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.