Actually, there’s no evidence for Santorum’s involvement....
Consider the sources, but look at Santorum’s own responses.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/05/us-campaign-santorum-idUSTRE8032A020120105
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/99323/santorum-corruption-k-street-project
Santorum has made his post-Senate career doing the sort of quasi-lobbying that helped sink Newt Gingrich’s campaign in Iowa. But in fact, while still in office, he was a central actor in an even more sordid venture: The K Street Project. Started in 1989 by GOP strategist Grover Norquist and brought to prominence by former House majority leader Tom DeLay in 1995, the K Street Project was a highly organized effort to funnel Republican Congressional staffers into jobs at lobbying firms, trade organizations, and corporations, while attempting to block Democrats from those same posts. From 2001 until 2006, Santorum was the Project’s point man for the Senate, while House Majority Whip Roy Blunt manned the House side.
In 2006, the K Street Project was effectively forced to shut down amid public outcry; the following year, an ethics reform law made such outfits illegal. But in its heyday, it helped create an unprecedented revolving door between the White House, Congress and K Street, blurring distinctions between Republican policy and corporate welfare. As Elizabeth Drew put it in a 2005 New York Review of Books piece, “Democratic lobbyists have been pushed out of their jobs as a result; business associations who hire Democrats for prominent positions have been subject to retribution. They are told that they won’t be able to see the people on Capitol Hill they want to see.” Nicholas Confessore, in a groundbreaking 2003 Washington Monthly expose of the Project, detailed the goal bluntly: “First, move the party to K Street. Then move the government there, too.”
At the center of all this was Santorum. According to Confessore, Santorum conducted weekly breakfasts with lobbyists, and occasionally Congressmen and White House staff, during which he attempted to match Republican Hill staffers with K Street job openings. As Confessore put it, “Every week, the lobbyists present pass around a list of the jobs available and discuss whom to support. Santorum’s responsibility is to make sure each one is filled by a loyal Republican—a Senator’s chief of staff, for instance, or a top White House aide, or another lobbyist whose reliability has been demonstrated.” The group refused to meet with Democrats, and threatened sanctions against lobbies that did.
Revolving door tactics, until then de facto lobbying policy, were formalized and transformed into a “pay to play” system by the K Street Project. In 2003, after the top post at The Motion Picture Association of America went to a Democrat instead of a Republican, House Republicans reneged on an impending tax break, hitting the movie industry with a $1.5 billion bill. After the Democrat was chosen, Roll Call reported that “Santorum has begun discussing what the consequences are for the movie industry.” (Santorum, though he often denies his involvement in the K Street Project, more or less confirmed his involvement in the MPAA flap.) Later that year, the Washington Post revealed that the House Financial Services Committee pressured a consortium of mutual funds to oust a top lobbyist who was a Democrat in exchange for relaxing a pending investigation. After the smoke cleared, she was replaced by a Republican.
Whether the K Street Project was truly successful is up for debate. Confessore and Drew’s reports portray intimidated and marginalized Democratic lobbyists. According to a 2003 Washington Post story, a Republican National Committee official boasted that 33 of 36 top lobbying jobs had recently gone to Republicans. Former lobbyist Patrick Griffin, now an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University, told me that the project embodied the brazen crudeness of “DeLayism,” but also suggested that most lobbying firms and corporations were not “stupid” enough to purge Democratic staff and risk alienating much of the Hill.
Norquist asked lobbyists for help completing the profiles during a private meeting in June 2002, according to a report that year from the Post. Santorum, who was serving as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, hosted the gathering, the article said.
The previous year, Santorum had started holding twice-monthly conferences with handpicked lobbyists and GOP officials to review job openings in the lobbying world. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quoted the former senator referring to those discussions as the “K Street meetings.”
Former GOP congressman and lobbyist Rod Chandler explained to Washington Monthly how the gatherings worked. “The underlying theme was [to] place Republicans in key positions on K Street,” he said. “Everybody taking part was a Republican and understood that that was the purpose of what we were doing.”
Santorum acknowledged his involvement with the routine lobbyist meetings, and even admitted to holding conferences with Senate Republicans to discuss the appointment of Democrat Dan Glickman as head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
“Yeah we had a meeting, and yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street,” he told Roll Call in 2004. “I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it’s important for leadership to pay attention.”
Santorum also used the term “K Street Project” at one point to describe his job-placement discussions. “The K Street Project is purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town,” he told the Post-Gazette in 2005. “From my perspective, it’s a good government thing.”
The former senator later said he had thought of the term as a generic reference that could include his outreach efforts, suggesting he believed Norquist’s initiative was separate from his own.
The Senate ethics committee issued a letter in 2002 warning lawmakers not to use the lobbyist dossiers to block people from government access or jobs based on party affiliation, which would violate Senate rules.
Santorum ended his routine lobbyist meetings in early 2006, as the Abramoff scandal sparked public contempt for coziness between lobbyists and politicians, and after Democrats targeted the Pennsylvania senator for a takedown in the upcoming election — they succeeded.
Santorum defended his lobbyist meetings during an interview with the Post-Gazette, saying they involved “no pressure to put Republicans in those roles, period — no pressure.” He added, “I absolutely abhor that.”
As for Norquist, he readily admitted to working on the K Street Project, and even tried to trademark the name. The conservative activist described his program as an effort aimed at “companies and trade associations who are blithely unaware that they are being represented by former aides who passed the laws that are now bankrupting them,” the Post reported.
Norquist told the Post-Gazette in 2006 that he attended one of Santorum’s meetings to explain the K Street Project to lobbyists, but he said the former senator never helped in creating the dossiers.
Santorum’s campaign did not respond to questions for this column.
THE PINOCCHIO TEST We can’t prove definitively whether or not Santorum collaborated on the K Street Project. He did and he did not, depending on how you define the initiative.
No one has established that the surging GOP candidate threatened to limit government access for Democrats, but we know that he took steps to improve the odds of a strong Republican presence in the lobbying game.
Still, Santorum’s remarks about Norquist don’t match the facts. Norquist himself acknowledged that he attended at least one meeting with the former senator to discuss the K Street Program. Santorum earns two Pinocchios for denying his connection with the lobbyist initiative and one of its primary leaders.
If there was real evidence you’d be citing that instead of suppositions.