Swell...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/207573/not-so-keene/james-justin-wilson
July 22, 2003 11:00 A.M.
Not So Keene
The ACU chairman sells out.
David Keene is a man of many hats. He’s best known to conservatives as head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which describes itself as the oldest conservative advocacy group in the nation. He’s also a columnist for The Hill newspaper. Finally, he’s a managing associate of the Carmen Group, a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm.
Recently he’s also been the target of a tough letter signed by 33 House Republicans, including Sue Myrick, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “The individual actions of Mr. Keene have placed in doubt the ACU’s commitment to” conservative principles, they wrote.
They were objecting to Keene’s endorsement of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a liberal Republican, over his conservative primary challenger, Rep. Pat Toomey. Keene called Specter a “standup guy” despite his “anemic” 47 percent rating from the ACU. Toomey received a “spectacular” 97 percent, which was still not good enough to garner Keene’s endorsement.
Specter just made that impossible case even harder for Keene to make when he announced his opposition to a bill that would offer $13 million dollars to Washington, D.C.’s public schools and another $13 million towards vouchers. Evidently Specter isn’t willing to stand up for the District’s struggling students (even though California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, among others, is).
The problem appears to stem from Keene’s work as a lobbyist. As Ramesh Ponnuru recently pointed out, Keene has business before Senate panels chaired by Specter.
This is not the first time Keene’s commitment to conservatism has been called into question. Since 1998, Keene has lobbied on behalf of Citizens for State Power (CSP), a coalition of interests opposed to federal energy deregulation. In the late 1990s, Keene and fellow ACU board members Craig Shirley and Grover Norquist lobbied against federal energy deregulation. With the help of Shirley’s public-relations firm, Citizens for State Power produced a number of anti-deregulation ads that claimed federal involvement violated the traditionally conservative notion of states’ rights.
With billions at stake, lobbyists of every persuasion wanted a piece of the pot. While Keene and Citizens for State Power were lobbying Republicans with their concern for states rights, the Electric Utility Shareholder’s Alliance (EUSA) used populist rhetoric to lobby Democrats against federal involvement. So much money changed hands during the debate that it led one lobbyist to remark in CQ Weekly that it was a “two-Lexus issue,” referring to the number of cars lobbyists could each afford for their efforts.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/207573/not-so-keene/james-justin-wilson
