Fixing The Broken Lobbying System With Brody Mullins And David Rehr

The US Constitution clearly states that lobbying is legal. However, systemic corruption in Washington has turned it into a playground of billionaires and the powerful. David Ramadan delves into this shadowy world of political power with Brody Mullins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and guest co-host David Rehr, a former high-profile lobbyist. Together, they break down how lobbying tactics have evolved from smoke-filled rooms and relationship-based approaches to uncapped and undisclosed Super PACs. They also present possible solutions to fix this broken billion-dollar machine that currently shapes American policy and puts public participation in reforms into jeopardy.

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Fixing The Broken Lobbying System With Brody Mullins And David Rehr

This episode dives into the shadowy world of political power in Washington, the lobbyists, fixers, and insiders who shape US policy from the sidelines. Who better to walk us through the ecosystem than our guest, Brody Mullins. Brody is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Investigative Reporter with The Wall Street Journal and the author of the new book, The Wolves of K Street. For over two decades, he's chronicled corruption, backroom deals, and how money moves in American politics, often pushing reform through sheer investigative grit.

Joining me as co-host is Dr. David Rehr, Director of the Center for Business Civic Engagement here at the Schar School. He's a former high-profile lobbyist himself and one of the foremost thinkers on lobbying ethics and transparency. Together, we'll break down the evolution of influence in DC, examine where reform fits in today's billion-dollar lobbying industry and ask can policy survive the politics of power. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Thanks.

How Brody Started Covering Lobbying And Corruption

Brody, how did you get your start in covering lobbying and corruption?

First of all, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. I’m one of the strange people who was born and raised in DC and has stayed around. I never really left the one-mile radius of where I was born. I grew up listening to the nightly news and reading The Washington Post, probably trying to get to the sports section, but catching some of the front-page news along the way.

For some reason, at a very young age, in elementary school, I decided I wanted to be a writer. In high school, I took a Journalism course and wanted to be a reporter because DC is a small town and certainly was a small town when I grew up. We knew people who worked in the media, and my mom worked with a woman who was the sister of John Harwood.

John Harwood was a famous political presidential reporter for The Wall Street Journal when I was growing up. I got connected with him when I was in high school, and he set me up for what we called an internship in the Washington Bureau of The Wall Street Journal, which really wasn't an internship. It was like just a volunteer job where I got things from the fax machine and handed faxes out to the reporters, and I got people's mail for them, and I did the clips. No one knows what clips are anymore, but the newspaper would come and you literally clip them, put them on 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper and file them. It was like the first internet, just a file cabinet where I'd file all of the stories for reporters.

I just fell in love with journalism, with The Wall Street Journal. I was dealing with all these giants of political journalism and reading their stories and handing their stories out to them. Also, that was the summer of 1992 when Bill Clinton was running for president. I think whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, that was really just a fascinating campaign because it was the first campaign since 1980 after having Reagan and Bush for such a long time. Clinton was young and he was fun and dynamic and interesting. All these forces connected at once. I fell in love with political journalism. At that point, literally when I was in high school, I wanted to be a reporter in The Washington Bureau of The Wall Street Journal. That was my North Star to get there.

The Immense Power Of Corporate Lobby

I remember that campaign. I was on the Bush-Quayle side at the time, and it was really interesting. A full loop, I met President Clinton at Governor McAuliffe’s House, and it was a fascinating meeting. That was the start in journalism. At what point did you realize what the power of lobbyists is or how powerful they really are, and how does that affect the system?

I don't think there was an exact moment, but when I was in high school and college, I really wanted to be a reporter covering presidential politics. I read all the books, The Making of the President 1960 and all the books about great presidential campaigns. I thought that would be a great career. For some reason along the way, I'm not really sure how, one of my first jobs was with a place called Congress Daily, where I was covering mainly the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee. In those committees, you learn that politics and policy are really the key.

Covering presidential campaigns and even covering the White House sounds glamorous, and at Thanksgiving, you could tell a bunch of great stories at the table. At the end of the day, it's a boring job. You're just sitting around waiting for the president or spokesperson to say something, and then you just write up a story and you're done.

Whereas if you're covering policy in committees or subcommittees, they’re really much more fascinating and challenging stories. There are multiple sides to the story. There are lobbyists, there's money. It's not Republicans against Democrats. It's a mix of urban against rural or what district someone represents, plays out in what policy they support. I found it to be much more of a chess game than checkers. Frankly, I just found that more challenging and exciting.

I started covering the lobbying world. I don't think there was a light switch moment, but over my career, I understood that the power that lobbyists have and that corporations have, and labor units at times, have much more influence over the laws, the legislation policy that are being made. Sometimes, even the lawmakers. In our book, we pick a couple of moments like that. To go back to Bill Clinton for a moment, when Bill Clinton won in 1992, as you remember, Ross Perot was in that race. Clinton won with only 43%. When he comes in the presidency, he's at the height of his power.

He decides he's going to be a big liberal, and he says that national healthcare reform is going to be his number one priority. National healthcare is something that Democrats, for a century, had tried and failed to enact, including back to FDR. Bill Clinton has the presidency, he's in his honeymoon period. Democrats control the House and the Senate. There was a poll that said that something like 70% of Americans were unhappy with the healthcare system.

The year before, Bob Dole and I think 32 or 23 Senate Republicans had a healthcare bill, so there was even support on the other side. This looked like something that could happen. The healthcare industry got involved and they started lobbying against the plan using an incredible grassroots campaign. They had the famous Harry and Louise television ads, which were really the first issue ads out there. They ran this huge campaign. They spent over $100 million against the Clinton Healthcare bill.

What's amazing is in this day and age, we throw around billions. To put that in comparison, $100 million was just about as much money as Bill Clinton spent to get elected as president. The healthcare industry spent that against him. The upshot here is that, as we all know, the healthcare bill died a fabulous death. There was never a vote on the House floor, never vote on the Senate floor.

What's amazing about that is that one, it shows that not just all corporate lobby, but one lobby, just the health insurance industry, was able to defeat the wishes of the President of the United States who controlled the House and the Senate. That shows how much influence an industry lobby can have. Also, as an addendum of that story, because that was also a huge pivot point in our nation's history, or the history of Washington policy.

At that point, Bill Clinton said, “I'm not a liberal Democrat anymore. I'm a Centrist,” and he moved for NAFTA and welfare reform and balancing the budget and deregulating banks. It was a real moment in the Democratic Party where they went from the FDR party and moved more to the center, which is where they have been since then until very recently on trade bills and generally pro-business belief in the party, which now, all of a sudden, is coming under attack. Anyway, I thought that's a good moment when I saw that the power of the corporate lobby.

That position that Bill Clinton took at the time is still a winning formula for Democrats now who take it. We went through an election in Virginia, and the center-left not going to touch the right-to-work position that now Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger put her fifteen points on top in Virginia.

I agree with you. Do other Democrats?

Not the New York and the Mamdani segment of the party. That's going to be their challenge at some point, which direction they're going to go.

That side is saying all those things that Bill Clinton did was wrong. Abandoning the workers on trade is like a real huge pivot point in the Democratic Party's history. Right back to that same fight. Which way are they going to go?

It's incredible. We're talking now, this is, what, 30 years later?

Same fight.

They're all the same fights. They're going and going. It's like the rabbit.

How To Continue Lobbying With Diminishing Free Speech

David Rehr, before I turn the mic to you, I was going to start the episode with this and do the disclosure that I am a lobbyist as well, but in the state of Virginia, I don't lobby federally. David Rehr, you lobbied federally. I was going to say give me a good anecdote to start the episode with, but then I changed my mind. Let's just start with our guest. My co-host, Dr. David Rehr, the microphone is yours.

First off, I'm pro-lobby because I spent my entire lead year lobbying, and I was going to ask Brody. The First Amendment allows Americans to redress their government on grievances. I know we have 350 million people, and I tell my class that everybody has different ideas and opinions. How do we look at lobbying and corporations and labor unions, and I would argue nonprofits and all sorts of different economic self-interest in America, but not diminish their ability to talk to their elected officials. At the same time, not bully the system into pushing policies that are bad for a lot of Americans. What do you think about that?

I think that's the issue of where we might be right now in history. Just to go back to where you started, the First Amendment says that everyone has the right to free speech, reporters, individuals, billionaires, people who run companies, lobbyists, and Americans have the right to petition their government for changes in whatever policy that they oppose or support.

Even before then, the Founding Fathers foresaw a day where there would be lobbying. We call them interest groups. They call them factions. They thought they'd be a pro-worker faction, and they'd be pro-industry faction or business faction. They thought that these two forces would fight each other over every piece of legislation. They thought they would be of equal size and importance and weight, and they would fight to a draw and we'd have compromise legislation.

That system largely worked for most of our 200 years, or almost 250 years. What's changed is that in most of the last century, companies actually had very little influence in Washington and didn't spend a lot of money lobbying Washington and labor unions and the American public did. Therefore, from the New Deal to the Great Society, we had all this growth of the federal government, all new protections for workers and minimum wage, and the five-day work week and labor unions, and all sorts of pro-consumer policies that came up to the 1970s.

In the 1970s, all of a sudden, when we went into an economic decline under President Carter, companies said, “These interest groups on the other side have too much power and influence, and they're making all these rules and regulations that's restraining the free marketplace.” At that point, in the 1970s, companies said, “We're going to start spending money in DC and moving offices to DC and funding think tanks and paying for lobbyists and making PAC contributions.”

The shift that happened there is that from the 1970s to very recently, companies have only gained an influence, and they have way more influence than labor unions because, at the same time, the labor union world has shrunk. The imbalance for most of the last 30, 40 years is that companies have had so much influence at the expense of regular Americans because labor users just haven't had much influence and environmental groups and consumer groups haven't had much influence.

In terms of how to fix things, I'm not sure. I think one key thing that is broken is our disclosure system. Basically, we have two laws for lobbying. One is you can't bribe people and two is you have to disclose what you're doing. Just to put some numbers to it, the last time we had a lobbying reform was 2007, after the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal that you remember because you and I used to talk a lot back then.

That was a scandal that involved a corrupt Republican lobbyist who was bribing members of Congress. The response to that was that Democratic Party took power in the House, and Nancy Pelosi passed a reform bill that basically said that anyone who's a lobbyist who works for a company can't buy anything of value for a member of Congress.

What happened was that the law basically applied to lobbyists, and it gave the word lobbyist into a bad name. Therefore, many lobbyists said, “I'm not a lobbyist, I'm a consultant,” or, “I'm an advisor,” or, “I'm a strategist.” In 2007, if you look at the lobbying disclosure database, there were 15,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. Now, there's 13,000. The number of lobbyists has only gone down and that would indicate that the lobbying business is shrinking. Obviously, the lobbying business is exploding. It's just that the people are trying to influence policy without actually being called a lobbyist. I think that that shows that the disclosure system is broken and needs to be updated.

I think that's great. I would add to that the tentacles of influence have now gone beyond personal relationships to PAC money, television, local constituents, basically trying to organize every sympathetic person to your cause to connect with their member of Congress. I remember at the beer wholesalers, I had one beer wholesaler who's a member who's now retired, but said, “Our kids go to school together in the morning.” I'm like, “Talk to them on the way you dropping your kids off because this is really a valuable vote.” We won, and it was terrific. In fact, I'm teaching my students you have to look for every tool and then utilize that tool on behalf of your membership or company or your labor union or your citizen group.

Under the law a lobbyist the legal definition of a lobbyist is someone who spends 20% or more of their time actively talking to a member of Congress or to a government official on behalf of a client for a piece of legislation. Even back in your day when you were at the beer wholesalers or at NAB, you probably didn't spend a full day every week talking to a member of Congress. That's a lot of time.

I don't know if you register or not, but you probably wouldn't find not registering, even though your whole job is to influence legislation because so much of lobbying these days is not actually talking to the member of Congress. That's the last thing you do. It's getting the constituents and writing the press releases and getting the public opinion and doing the polling or the contributors, all the things that you just talked about. All those things are not considered lobbying and therefore, lots of lobbyists aren't considered lobbyists.

I registered and I was always a little more open and excessive with what I was doing because I figured working in two industries, particularly the beer and alcohol industry, I never wanted to be called on and said, “You said you only met with 10 people, but you met with 12.” Rather, we overstate what we're doing than understate it.

A result of that, another way of looking at this is that whether there are four or 5 million or 6 million people who live in the Washington, DC area, and we don't make anything in DC. We don't make widgets, we don't make cars. All we do is make legislation. That's our company town and it's all about making legislation. Of those 4 million or 5 million people, only 15,000 are saying that they're actually involved in this game. Unless you're a school teacher or a bus driver or work at a restaurant, you're somehow involved in shaping legislation but only 15,000 of us say that we aren't.

By the way, I'm not sure we're really making legislation either. We're failing it now.

As lobbyists, we all tell each other how important we are. I look at people and go, “Really?” They're like, “I helped do this.” I'm like, “Really?” You didn't really, you're just telling your clients that so they continue to bankroll you to a fabulous lifestyle. I was going to say Brody, that when that gift ban or the gift law changed, I then went into the former Chicago White Sox CEO mode of giving away everything that will remind people.

I don't know if I ever told you this story. I would give coffee cups, I would give pencil sets, anything that I could put the beer wholesaler’s logo on that would sit on their desk because I figured if they saw that, they'd think of me. Therefore, I could think of them. I start out with mouse pads. It was like a little industry of me every year thinking about what could we put there. Sometimes we would give staffers and members free beer for their birthdays, anniversaries so they would always think about us.

You didn't customize any beer for them, did you?

It was always customized because we represented multi-different beer companies, so it couldn't be all Budweiser, but maybe there was Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Sam Adams, etc. It was a lot of fun and they loved it.

Writing About The Wolves Of K Street

Let's talk a little bit about the new book. In The Wolves of K Street, you follow the rise of few lobbying firms. Three, I believe. Why those players?

Our book is about topics that many most Americans will find pretty boring. No one, of course, is reading this show. We're talking about corporate power and PAC donations and lobbying and lobbying disclosure. We realized in order to tell the story of how companies gained influence and how they use new lobbying tactics and how lobbying has changed and PACs have grown that we need to have really colorful people. We need to tell the story through great characters and narratives and people had tragic rises and falls. We opened the book with a guy named Evan Morris who was a big-time lobbyist for Genentech who ended up dying. He was found dead on a golf course outside of DC with a bullet hole in his head.

The old rule in journalism is if you're writing a story about corporate power and lobbying, you should start with a dead body on a golf course. We did that. In fact, the night before he died, he was actually at a fundraiser at his house with Terry McAuliffe, speaking of the Clintons and Terry McAuliffe. He was really trying to get into the Clinton fundraising world. He was involved in a big kickback and lobbying corruption scandal.

We tell his story and we tell the story of other lobbyists and lobbying firms over time who tell us how Washington has changed. We start with the dead by on a golf course. The first lobbyist we write about is a guy named Tommy Boggs, who I think everyone remembers that name. He started the firm Patton Boggs. We consider Tommy Boggs as the first lobbyist of the modern era. There were lobbyists before him, but this is the one who we picked, who started Patton Boggs in the late ‘60s and 1970s when Washington was completely different.

Most people think of lobbying as the smoke-filled room, which doesn't exist anymore. Back in Tommy Boggs’ era, there was a smoke-filled room. In fact, the smoke was coming from his cigars, I think, in the smoke-filled room. He grew up in a Household in Washington, DC where both his mom and his dad were members of Congress. His dad was Hale Boggs Jr., who was a House majority leader. In 1972, he was on a fundraising trip in Alaska, and his plane disappeared in a snowstorm. He was never to be found again. After that, the citizens of New Orleans elected his mom, Lindy Boggs, to be a House member.

She served for twelve years. Tommy Boggs, the soon-to-be lobbyist, grew up in a Household where both his parents are members of Congress at a time when Washington was a lot different from it is now. Back then, power in Washington was held by just a few people. The President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, a couple of committee chairs. Basically, a half dozen or a dozen powerful figures who controlled all laws and legislation.

Tommy Boggs grew up in a time when he knew those people because they would come to his house. LBJ would come to his house and his parents went out to dinner with JFK and Sam Rayburn, the long-time Speaker of the House from Texas was actually Tommy Boggs’ babysitter. When his parents were out to dinner, the Speaker of the House would come babysit for him. When he became a lobbyist, he knew all the important people at a time when you only need to know a handful of people. That was the old school relationships, smoke-filled room, favor-trading lobby business that existed back then.

We write about Tommy Boggs back then to show how things used to be. We go to a firm called Black, Manafort and Stone, which is Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Charlie Black. They started changing lobbying a little bit. Yes, they used their relationships to get to President Ronald Reagan and other Republicans in the 1980s but also, they also realized the power of grassroots. They realized that if you're trying to get a trade bill passed, instead of bringing in the CEO of a company or trying to get a one-off deal, you bring in the workers who would benefit or partner with the labor units.

They started to create the new grassroots way of lobbying. Later in the book, we get to Tony Podesta, the powerful Democratic lobbyist who perfected how to use the media and how to use grassroots to get members of Congress. Along the way, we teach people how lobbying is moved from their relationship one-on-one, smoke-filled room lobbying to grassroots, where nowadays, members of Congress are much more willing to listen and to do what their constituents want rather than what some fat cat lobbyist tells them to do with a $5,000 PAC check.

Corporations and the business lobby know that. Corporations spend an enormous amount of time trying to persuade regular Americans to support a trade bill or to oppose some tax cut or whatnot because they know that if they can get the support of a member of Congress's constituents, the member of Congress will follow.

How Lobbying Tactics Have Evolved In Washington

As different as their stories are, what do they collectively reveal about how influence really works in DC now?

I think collectively, they show how companies have gained influence in Washington and then held onto it. As the world has changed, the corporate lobby continually evolves its tactics to try to stay in power. Historically, like I said before, the 1970s companies had very little influence. Around the 1970s, companies started gaining influence. That's when right about Tommy Boggs, like how he wielded power on behalf of companies to defeat FTC regulations and approve various legislation for his companies.

Black, Manafort and Stone evolve and does more grassroots. Along the way, companies are continually gaining and increasing their power by using new tactics that we write about with these lobbyists. What's fascinating though is that most fascinating to me is that our book came out in 2024, and it's all about how powerful companies are and how much influence they have.

We looked around and realized that all of a sudden, companies have less influence than they've had at any time in my lifetime. Every single industry, every single company is now under attack or under threat in Washington. The rise of populace in the Republican party of Donald Trump and of this more lean Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party, so the anti-Bill Clinton wing.

Both parties are now turning their guns on companies, on industries, and on associations. That's been a fascinating change because for my entire lifetime, as David knows, there's this very strong pro-business bipartisan center in DC and that is going away. There are very little center and members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, feel that there's political votes to be gained by attacking companies.

We seem to be back to a position where we were in the 1970s where there's this big fight over whether we're going to have a pro-business environment in DC or go back to more of a progressive era like it existed before the 1970s. That fight is taking place in both political parties as we speak. A lot of those answers will play out in the next presidential primary system. Overall, I see the landscape for companies becoming more and more perilous in DC, which is fascinating.

We're probably going to see that in the 2026 midterm elections quite a bit. It's lining up for that. Dr. Rehr, I’ll turn the microphone back to you.

The Unique Lobbying Technique Of Tony Podesta

Brody, I know Tony Podesta. He was on consultant for us when I was at the NAB. I think in your book, you have the common red shoes. He was known as a lobbyist. You knew it was Tony. He's a very nice man, but he always wore red shoes, which separated him from the thousands of other lobbyists, which he always got a kick out of. We were at a fundraiser and Nancy Pelosi was there, and he just put his arm around my back and he said, “David, I’ll be sure I introduced you to her and she'll like you.” I always remembered that as like a point in history of, “I’ve really become a great lobbyist now.” She was the Speaker of the House at the time. I got a chance to meet her.

Did she like you?

I don't really know. Of course I would tell people yes, but I'm not really sure.

Tony and his ex-wife, Heather Podesto, who was also a lobbyist, would talk about they wore these extravagant outfits, as you say, just to stand out. Lobbyists are pretty buttoned down. Everyone went from one the last place where people wear suits around here in New York, I guess. They would wear these colorful outfits with all sorts of flair only to draw attention so people knew them and remember them. It was pretty effective tactic, I think.

In fact, next class, which is going to be the last class of the course, I talked to the students about the importance of a lobbyist or even your organization to differentiate yourself from the thousands of other people out there, or you get forgotten. I think business, in general, is successful if they can differentiate their products, but particularly true for lobbyists, whether you're a researcher, you're in media, you're a consultant, people have to remember you. If they don't remember you, what you care about doesn't move forward. That's not a trick, but that's a fundamental that people should know.

Predicting The Future Of Reform

We talked a little bit about the future. What do you think about the future of reform? There's some talk about stock trades. People will know that's been in the news, and the speaker having a great portfolio picker for her because she's become really wealthy over her time in Congress. What do you think the future's going to hold for reform?

Unfortunately, there's only reform in Washington when there's a scandal. There needs to be a scandal to have reform. I see a bigger problem, not on the lobbying side, but on the campaign finance side. On the lobbying side, I agree there should be better disclosure. How you get those rules is it gets complicated once you get in the weeds in terms of who is influencing and who's not.

If my parents call up their member of Congress and say, “The sidewalk needs to be fixed,” or they need to register as a lobbyist, that seems too extreme, but there's a way of figuring that out. There should be more disclosure there. The bigger problem to me is on the campaign finance side. We have a completely terrible and un-American, undemocratic campaign finance system right now where individuals and corporations, through their PACs, are limited in what they can give.

They have full disclosure. Companies have boards and oversight and all sorts of rules and regulations on their giving the political parties and candidates can only accept a certain amount from a corporate PACs or from individuals. However, because as Citizens United, you've got this super PAC system where billionaires, not us, only billionaires essentially are allowed to give unlimited amounts of money to Super PACs that can then turn around and spend unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing candidates.

We've got this system that's heavily weighted toward a small group of the wealthiest people in the country, which is exactly the opposite of the system that you're supposed to have. You're supposed to be giving power to the people, not to the wealthy. We've got a system now where the wealthiest Americans have all this influence. I think that system needs to be fixed.

You probably hear this. A lot of people say that Citizens United opened the floodgates for corporate America to send a gusher of cash into elections. That's not true. Publicly held large companies don't want to get involved in the super PAC business. You could explain how this worked when you were working for companies.

Companies want to be with the winner. Yes, they probably generally support the Republicans more than the Democrats on business issues, but they want to be with the winner. Corporate PACs will give 55% or 60% of their money to the party that's in power, whether that's Republicans or Democrats, and they'll give 40% or 45% to the party that's not in power because they're going to be back in power at some point.

Plus, on Capitol Hill, you need Republicans and Democrats to get things done. Corporate PACs want to be with both sides. What they don't want to do is put all their eggs in one basket and lose. As a result, companies don't give to presidential candidates. Corporate PACs don't play in the presidential space. What a super PAC is, is a way to really put your thumb on the scale in a big-time way for one candidate or another for President, House or Senate.

Companies don't want to do that. Therefore, they don't do that. With the exception of the oil and gas industry. Big companies don't give to Super PACs, which means corporations and individuals are giving money through the regulated, disclosed, capped way to the political parties and candidates and Super PACs are being funded by billionaires. Billionaires who, for the most part, don't run publicly traded companies. They run privately held companies and they can do whatever they want.

It seems that we've created an unfair system. I looked at the last presidential campaign and the last presidential campaign, for the first time in history, the Super PAC supporting Donald Trump raised and spent more money supporting Donald Trump than Donald Trump and the RNC. For the first time, the Super PACs had more influence over Donald Trump's campaign than Donald Trump, or at least spent more money. On the Democrats' side with Kamala Harris, that wasn't the case, but it'll certainly be the case next time. We've got this system now where the unregulated, sometimes undisclosed, uncapped Super PACs have more influence over the candidates and the political parties. That just seems like a terrible system to me.

I agree with you. Unfortunately, nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them. That's the problem.

The winners make the rules. I can't imagine that members of Congress like this system. I can't imagine they like the fact that someone who they don't know have never met has more influence over their own campaign than they do. If they win, maybe they're not going to change the system.

The other thing is those individuals on both sides tend to be a lot more ideological. While people are talking about pulling the country together, they see the country in a certain view and they're like, “We can pull the country together as long as it's down my road.”

A lot of our book talks about the rise of corporate PACs and the influence that corporate PACs have over Republicans and Democrats in creating a pro-business agenda and defeating labor unions. A lot of our book is talking about how that's bad. By the end of the book, we come around to Citizens United and say, “Those corporate PACs and that system pull people together.”

The corporate PACs want Republicans and Democrats in office, and they want them to work together to compromise to get things done. That's not what Super PACs want. Super PACs in the system we have now are pulling people apart. It's crazy to say maybe corporate PACs are the answer to fixing our politics but it might be true.

How Lobbying Becomes Unethical

Speaking of corporate PACs and Super PACs, and we're running towards the end of time, and I appreciate your time with us, Brody, let me just ask you a little bit about the ethics part of this. You've seen lobbying from the outside, David and I have seen it from the inside. What any of you here define in today's rules and regulations, ethical versus unethical lobbying? As part of that, what is your thoughts for our students that are thinking about this career path?

Are you asking the difference between ethical and unethical lobbying?

Yes. How do you define ethical and unethical lobbying nowadays? What do you see as ethical and unethical lobbying now?

That's a hard question to answer. I think most people who are working as lobbyists who are registering as a lobbyist and disclosing their activities, those are the rules of the game. I think the unethical lobbying is the people who are doing things behind the scenes under the guise of working for someone else, or furtively or secretly.

The Constitution and our government says lobbying is perfectly fine. It's legal. You just have to disclose what you're doing so the American people can decide. If you're avoiding that disclosure purposely, that undermines the whole system. I can call it unethical. At the same time, most of that lobbying is legal also. You're allowed to have run polls and run issue ads and try to get constituents to support a policy or not. There's nothing wrong about that, but it just seems like there should be better disclosure.

There should be more transparency too. We should do it sooner rather than later. You shouldn't have to wait. I think the FEC, and you may know this better than me, Brody, it takes like a year to make sure all the filings are done for all the contributions even though they say you have to file every month because the technology is bad. When you made your report, it was available the next day and open to the public, both your opponent's campaign and the media, what might have more availability to get the word out on who's really giving you money and what they really believe.

I think that is what they basically do in Virginia. In Virginia, there's no caps. Companies are allowed to give directly to candidates. They just have to disclose it. That seems like a better system than we have right now.

Why Lobbying Is Still A Great Space To Be

Correct. We can give unlimited amount of money by individuals or by companies to anybody running for state elections, not for congressional elections or federal elections in Virginia. You just have to disclose it. Any thoughts for our students that are thinking of becoming lobbyists?

Lobbies are a constitutionally protected career. I think it's a career where in Washington, more and more people are joining. I think it's an exciting place. As with other jobs in DC, the lobbying world really rewards people who are smart and motivated and go-getters. Anyone can become a lobbyist, can represent clients, can be successful and make a lot of money. There's not a whole system of rules and regulations for how you get into lobbying. Just like journalism or working on Capitol Hill or working at a think tank, I think the lobbying world rewards smart young people who are aggressive and want to out-hustle the next guy.

I’ll tell you, they're important for the system. As much as lobbyists get, they get a bad rep. As much as we talked about corruption, influence and all that, they are absolutely subject matter experts in general and carry a lot of institutional knowledge. When I got elected for office in Virginia, I would tell people all the time, “I know three things in life. I know education, I know business, and I know politics.”

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

If you come and talk to me about agriculture, I'm going to need to cast a vote in agriculture. I don't know it. I would depend on the lobbyists from both sides of that issue to not only pitch their position on the issue, but also to educate me on that particular subject matter. They are important and they do a good service. Final thoughts from you Brody and from my co-host Dr. David Rehr, before I close it up.

Let me just jump in and say, as a lobbyist and now as a faculty member, Brody, you were supposed to say, to be a good lobbyist, you should take David’s class. No, I'm just kidding. I don't want to promote myself. It is amazing the nonprofit world and all the different advocacy groups that are out there where if you're involved, you care about healthcare and cancer, and you're involved in a group that's fighting cancer and you win.

You then meet people who benefited their lives, benefited their families benefit because you won and you got a law regulation passed or changed, it is phenomenally rewarding for you as an individual. As I said before, I talk to my class a lot about my experiences, but I remember early on in the lobbying career when Dan Rostenkowski was still the chairman of the Waste and Means Committee many years ago, and they had a healthcare bill that would've hurt small businesses providing healthcare to their workers.

Despite the fact that all of Washington said we would never win, and we got some heavy-handed things thrown at us at the NFIB many years ago, that was one of my personally most rewarding moments because I saved people hundreds of thousands of dollars and made lives better. Now I’ll give it back to you to finish up with a bigger story.

Brody?

The thing I find fascinating again is that history is repeating itself, which it has before. We had this era where with the industrial titans and monopolists of the standard oils and the robber barons and the JP Morgans. We followed that up with the progressive era where the American people elected officials to Congress who reined in big companies and created the antitrust laws and the FTC.

From that period, from the New Deal to Great Society, we had the flip side where consumer groups had all this influence and companies didn't. The 1970s, we switched and had companies have power. It seems like we might be coming to another pivot point where, increasingly, Republicans and Democrats are getting together and saying, “These big companies have too much power and too much influence and need to be reined in.” We see that at some of these antitrust cases with Google and the one on Facebook just lost, but there are others coming. I wonder if we're at a pivot point where consumers are gaining influence at the expense of corporate America. That'll be a fascinating thing to watch in the next 10 or 15 years.

Indeed. Brody, thank you for this deep dive into how influence operates in our nation's capital, and for your fearless work keeping power accountable. David, always a pleasure co-hosting with you. Readers. Brody Mullin's new book, The Wolves of K Street, is out, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the political machine behind public policy. You read this and all of our episodes at Schar.gmu.edu/podcast. We are syndicated on all the major platforms. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay informed and stay engaged.

Important Links

• Brody Mullins on LinkedIn
• The Wolves of K Street
• Center for Business Civic Engagement
• Dr. David Rehr on LinkedIn
• The Making of the President 1960

About Brody Mullins

Brody Mullins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took over Big Government.

The book, published by Simon & Schuster, is the definitive account of the rise of corporate power and lobbying in Washington. In two decades as an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Mullins wrote scores of ground-breaking stories about the intersection of business and politics, exposing scandals that prompted new laws and regulations for powerful government officials, lobbyists and Wall Street traders.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Mullins won the George Polk Award and was twice awarded the Everett Dirksen Award for best coverage of Congress. Washingtonian calls him one of 50 best reporters in politics. He has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Politico and The Atlantic.

Brody graduated from Northwestern University and lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, two daughters and son.

About David Rehr

David Rehr is a professor and director of the Center for Business Civic Engagement (cbce.gmu.edu) in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He teaches Advocacy, Nonprofit Leadership, and Understanding Special Interest Groups.

Rehr has more than 25 years of experience in advocacy, governance, and public policy. He is one of the nation’s top authorities on communicating with the U.S. Congress and is an expert in the nonprofit association sector.

His eBooks, Cutting through Congressional Clutter – Proven Ideas and Tips to Gain Influence and be Heard and How to Lead Better Meetings and Enhance Your Organizational Effectiveness offer proven tips to understanding how Congress works and how to make meetings work better. He is also the author of Creating the Right Association Culture, which examines ideas on how to create an association culture that position’s the enterprise for success. Another eBook, 8 Traits of an Exceptional Association CEO, is gleaned from research, life experiences, and interactions with some of the most successful association leaders in the country. The measurement mandate: How associations measure their Performance researches the state of association performance indicators. His next eBook focuses on branding and positioning your organization, issues, and yourself.

Rehr previously served as president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). There, he was a strong advocate for radio and television broadcasters—meeting with policymakers, testifying before Congress, and bringing innovation to the organization. At NAB, Rehr was a leading advocate for innovation and advancement in the broadcast business, spearheading a multimillion-dollar technology advocacy program for broadcasting, leading the TV industry’s $1.2 billion digital television (DTV) transition marketing campaign, and initiating Radio 2020, an initiative that ensured radio’s value would be recognized well into the future through the Radio Heard Here campaign.

Before joining the NAB, Rehr was president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA). Under his leadership, NBWA’s visibility in the advocacy community soared, and the association was ranked as one of the top 10 most influential lobbying organizations by Fortune magazine. He started his career in advocacy on the staff of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) after working as a professional staff member to the U.S. House of Representatives Small Business Committee and for former member of Congress, Vin Weber of Minnesota.

Rehr has been named to Washington Life magazine’s Power 100 list and has been listed as a Top Association Lobbyist by one of Congress’ “must read” publications, the Hill. He has also been featured in Beachum’s Guide to Key Lobbyists and has been named one of the top 20 most influential people in radio by Radio Ink magazine.

Rehr is the author of The Congressional Communications Report, landmark research on communication methods and preferences of congressional offices, their staff, and those working to influence them, now in its 3rd edition. He is also the principal researcher of “The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act – Five Years Later” (a review of lobbying disclosure laws) and the “2013 Factors of Influence Report” (which measured lobbying firm effectiveness). In January 2013, Rehr released the results of the “Social Election Media,” which looked at the impact of social media on the presidential election. He also authored research on “Congressional Attitudes Toward American Economic Institutions” and was coauthor of “Trends in Business Political Action Committees: 2013-2014 Election Cycle.” Rehr released his first book, From Analog to Digital Television – The Greatest Public Relations Initiative in TV’s History, in 2018, documenting how the historic technology transition took place.

Rehr has presented to leaders all over the world, including senior executives at the Business Roundtable on communicating with the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on “Branding your Association,” and “Think Big and Deliver – Innovation” before Equifax Corporation’s global leadership retreat. He has appeared or has been quoted in major U.S. media outlets, including FOX News, CNBC, Sinclair, Fox Business, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared internationally on Canal Plus (French Television), Canadian Radio Corporation, on one Ankara English television.

Prior to joining the Schar School, Rehr was senior associate dean and professor as the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason. He started his academic career as a professor at The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM).

Rehr founded and serves as CEO of TransparaGov, Inc., a privately held company with a mission to bring transparency and real-time information tools to state and local government leaders to encourage stewardship of resources. He is also president of the TransparaGov Educational Foundation.