Jack Abramoff in Massachusetts??

Dear Hecate,

Check this out from the State House News Service......FINNERAN'S COMING-OUT PARTY AT PARKER HOUSE: State lobbying rules restricted former House Speaker Thomas Finneran's lobbying of his former colleagues for one year after his departure from the Legislature. In his now year-old role as president of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, Finneran has served as a spokesman for the industry, but hasn't been able to wield the skills and legacy he developed during a 26-year State House career in a full-fledged effort to influence state officials. That changes Wednesday, when Finneran throws his coming-out bash at the Omni Parker House, an event entitled "A Prescription for Growth and Maintaining Our Edge," with big names from the industry lining the marquee. Scheduled speakers include Cavan M. Redmond, executive vice president of BioPharma Business Unit at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals; Jack Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts; Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D., director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance; Frank Douglas, Ph.D. M.D., executive director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation; Kollol Pal, principal at PureTech Ventures LLC; Abi Barrow, head of tech transfer at UMass; and Michael Astrue, interim president and CEO of EPIX Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. Finneran, whose trial for federal perjury charges is in a holding pattern, will host the event and emcee. The former Democratic leader from Mattapan is expected to address biotech interests in the economic stimulus package under consideration in a legislative conference committee. (Wednesday, 11:30 am - 2:30 pm, Omni Parker House Hotel, 60 School Street, Boston)

Is Tom Finneran our Jack Abramoff?

Hecate says

No. There is no equivilant to Jack in Massachusetts, in part because of your strict campaign reform laws, in part because you don't have any big profit centers stupid enough to think they need to pay huge amount of money to crush potential competition. (That's what the casino operators thought they were paying Abramoff to do.)

Being a very smart man, Tom Finneran is going to be very careful to carry out any lobbying activities on behalf of his association/client legally. By holding a briefing session at the Parker House, no doubt to be followed by perfectly legal un- bundled contributions to attending elected officials, he is only following the recent 10 year trend that he started himself in the middle 90s.

It used to be that every elected official in Massachusetts held a couple of fundraisers a year at at Anthoney's Pier 4 or Jimmy's Harborside and every lobbyists was expected to bring clients (and their checks) to key elected officals fundraiser to stand in long lines for a 30 second handshake and chance to nibble on pretty dreadful finger food. This meant lobbyists had to get over to the waterfront a couple of times a week and one lobbyist was famous for carving his initals into the base of the standard giant cheese ball at Anthony's to see how many days and weeks it stayed. Smart lobbyists counseled their clients to stick to the fresh vegtables and shrimp, hoping they could not be so readily recycled.

Tom Finneran preferred his contributors -- lobbying firms, trade associations and individual lobbyists -- to organize and host small fundraisers -- usually breakfasts-- at private offices. This allowed for longer and more specific discussions of pending issues of interest to a smaller group of clients all interested in the same issues. Again all perfectly legal.

That's the trend today. Individual lobbyists, corportations, business groups, trade associations, law firms, non-profit institutions and special interest groups routinely organize small fundraisers for individual elected officals in private venues where their clients are able to have longer conversations about their issue and much better food. For the same amount of money.

The Massachusetts Money and Politics Project documented the changing trends in fundraising and spending through 2002 and some of those reports are available by emailing George Pillsbury at mailto:gpillsbury@nonprofitvote.org