Recently Retired Boehner Ally Opens DC Lobbying Shop
Brian Beutler – January 9, 2013
In his first national interview since retiring at the end of the 112th Congress, Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) — an outspoken ally of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and a critic of the hardline conservatives driving GOP politics — made light of what’s become of serving in Congress.
“I’ll go back and find something productive to do with my life,” he told The Atlantic. “As opposed to the last 18 years.”
Just three days later he figured it out. And his decision reflects one of Washington’s central and most controversial rites of passage.
LaTourette is combining forces with his lobbyist wife to help an Ohio-based law firm stand up a D.C. lobby shop. It will be called McDonald Hopkins Government Strategies.
LaTourette “will head a new subsidiary of McDonald Hopkins LLC, a business advisory and advocacy law firm with a more than 80-year history and offices in Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Miami and West Palm Beach,” reads a McDonald Hopkins press release celebrating its influential new influence peddler:
Before Steve and Jennifer LaTourette were married, she served in his Capitol Hill office as chief of staff. She left in 2003 and became a lobbyist for Van Scoyoc Associates, where she advanced the interests of Ohio-based clients, according to disclosure forms.
“Theoretically he’s banned from lobbying,” says Kathy Kiely, a managing editor at the Sunlight Foundation. “But what this shows you — and you see it all the time — former members go to what are essentially lobbying shops, or go to organizations that have lobbyists, even though they’re not doing the reaching out to their former colleagues, everyone knows who they’re working for, everyone who knows them.”
“These firms are ballyhooing the fact that they have these ex-members on staff,” Kiely adds. “They’re not hired for their beauty. They’re hired because they’re people who are well-connected.”
Spouses benefit from the lax rules too.
“Tom Daschle, when he was Democratic leader of the senate, his wife was a lobbyist — so that’s not unusual [either],” said Kiely. “Nor is it unusual for members to go directly to what are essentially lobbying shops. Tom Daschle is not technically a lobbyist, even though he works for what we call a rainmaker firm.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/recently-retired-boehner-ally-opens-dc-lobbying-shop
That says all we need to know about Steve LaTourette.