PMA Lobbyist, Relatives Gave Lawmakers $1.5 Million Since 2000

A defense lobbyist and his family made $1.5 million in political contributions from 2000 through 2008 as the lobbyist’s now-embattled firm helped clients win billions of dollars in federal contracts. A sizable chunk of those campaign dollars went to the House members who control Pentagon spending.

Paul Magliocchetti, founder of the PMA Group, and nine of his relatives — two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s parents, sister and brother-in-law — poured contributions into the coffers of candidates, political action committees and national and state party committees, according to a CQ review of public documents.

During this time, PMA grew from a start-up to the 11th-richest lobbying outfit in the country.

The top beneficiaries were a select group of Democratic members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, other allies of the top Pentagon appropriator in the House, Rep. John P. Murtha , D-Pa., and the company’s own political action committee, which in turn made contributions to many of the same lawmakers.

Magliochetti’s lobbying practice is now reportedly at the center of an FBI probe following the search of its suburban Virginia office late last year. The firm is slated to close at the end of the month, its staff and clients are moving to other lobbying shops and Magliocchetti himself has called it quits.

Magliocchetti is a former Appropriations Committee aide who worked closely with Murtha and played up that relationship to help build his business.

In assembling his team, Magliocchetti hired former top aides to Reps. Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana and James P. Moran of Virginia as well as some former Defense Department officials.

In federal election terms, the $1.5 million in contributions is a sizeable sum for one family over a nine-year time span. All but one of the family members were recorded as working for PMA in campaign finance reports, and most also were listed as having other employers.

Still, the family’s largess represents a small portion of the $107 million in lobbying fees that PMA charged in 2000 and through 2008.

There was never much reason for PMA customers to complain: In 2007 alone, they got some $100 billion in government contracts, an amount that is about 20 percent of all federal contracts that year.

PMA clients also got nearly $300 million in earmarks in a single spending bill — the one written by the House Defense Appropriations panel for fiscal 2008. PMA may not have secured all of those earmarks, however, because some of the firm’s clients also have in-house lobbyists or retain services from additional lobbying companies.

Patterns of Giving

The extended Magliocchetti family gave more money to PMA’s own political committee — $191,500 — than to any other entity from 2000 through 2008.

Among lawmakers, Visclosky received the most from Magliocchetti and his relatives: $138,500 to his congressional campaign committee and his leadership political action committee, which is called Calumet PAC. The family gave more than $75,000 each to the campaign committees of Murtha, Moran and former Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican (2003-09) in 2000 through 2008.

Dicks’ two political committees received $48,200 in the same period.

Murtha’s Democratic allies who were not members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee also were recipients of the family’s campaign donations. They include Mike Doyle and Tim Holden of Pennsylvania, Michael E. Capuano of Massachusetts, Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey and Loretta Sanchez of California.

The family additionally gave $49,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and $37,363 to the campaign of Sen. Bill Nelson , D-Fla.

Visclosky, who chairs the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee in addition to sitting on the defense panel, got $25,000 in campaign money from Magliocchetti and his relatives right after his subcommittee approved its spending bill in 2005. The subcommittee acted on May 18 and the checks were recorded by Visclosky’s treasurer on May 20.

Magliocchetti and each of his nine family members have given to Visclosky at one time or another.

On a single day in March 2004, members of the group gave Murtha $24,000, according to CQ MoneyLine data.

A spokesman for Visclosky did not respond to inquiries about the congressman’s relationships with The PMA Group and the Magliocchetti family. A spokesman for Murtha said he would not be commenting.

“Members shouldn’t be able to give no-bid contracts to the clients of lobbyists that contribute that kind of money to their campaign coffers,” said Rep. Jeff Flake , an Arizona Republican who this week was rebuffed for a third time in an effort to get the House to launch an ethics probe into the campaign contributions and PMA. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

Dicks said he and others have opposed Flake’s ethics resolutions because “there’s no allegations yet of wrongdoing.”

But, Dicks said, “Members are very concerned about this, and I’m concerned about it.”

In-Laws and Close Relatives

The $1.5 million in campaign donations came from Magliocchetti, his two children, his daughter-in-law, his then-wife, his current wife, and his former wife’s parents, sister and brother in law, according to reviews of public records.

• Magliocchetti himself has donated $355,000 since the beginning of 2000 through 2008.

• His 33-year-old son, Mark Magliocchetti, has given $279,000 and Mark’s wife, Leslie, has given $210,000 during the same period, bringing the couple’s total to almost $500,000.

Leslie has been listed in campaign finance reports as an employee of PMA, a board member of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and manager at a business called The Black Rooster with no other identifying details. Nonprofit filings with the IRS show that Leslie Magliocchetti worked at the women’s council.

• Jennifer Magliocchetti, Paul’s daughter, donated the $72,000 from the beginning 2005 through 2008, federal campaign finance records show. The 31-year-old is an assistant ticket director for the Class A Tampa Yankees baseball team. She did not reply to an e-mailed request for an interview or a telephone message.

• Nancy Magliocchetti, Paul Magliocchetti’s ex-wife, gave $107,000 from the beginning of 2000 and through 2004.

• Her parents, Edwin and LeWanna Kreger, who have since died, made $83,000 in campaign contributions from the beginning of 2000 through 2005. Edwin Kreger was listed as a PMA employee when two of his donations were reported.

• Nancy Magliocchetti’s sister and brother-in-law, Joseph and Sandy Welch, together were credited with $216,375 in donations from the beginning of 2000 through 2006. Both were listed as PMA employees on some of their contributions.

Joseph Welch was a police sergeant in Fairfax County, Va. Aside from being recorded as a PMA worker and homemaker, Sandy Welch was listed as a schoolteacher on some campaign finance reports. She hung up the phone on Monday when a caller identified himself as a reporter.

The names of Nancy Magliocchetti, her parents, her sister and her brother-in-law do not appear in federal campaign finance records after her divorce from Paul Magliocchetti.

• Paul Magliocchetti’s current wife, Rebecca DeRosa, is listed in federal records as contributing $221,000 to campaigns beginning in 2000 through 2008.

She previously was married to Terrence DeRosa, who was the head of a division of a company that used PMA for its lobbying. That company, DRS Technologies, paid PMA $4.8 million in lobbying fees from 1998 through 2008, including $560,000 in each of the last two years.

Campaign finance records list Rebecca DeRosa as an accountant at DRS Technologies and as holding several jobs at PMA, including comptroller.

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for PMA, said Paul Magliocchetti, Mark Magliocchetti and DeRosa were not available for interviews.

DRS Technologies referred telephone calls to an executive who was on vacation, and Terrence DeRosa, who now works for another company, did not respond to a telephone message.

Questioning the Totals

Federal campaign records include many inconsistencies, declaring a Magliocchetti family member as an employee of Magliocchetti for some donations and an employee of Magliocchetti’s clients for others.

Within three days in 2008, for example, DeRosa was recorded in one report as a PMA employee and in another as a DRS employee. Mark Magliocchetti is sometimes listed as an executive for FiberGate, a fiber-optic communications company, where an employee who would only give his first name said Mark Magliocchetti once worked as a sales representative “years ago.”

In an instance reported by other news outlets, a man listed as an employee of both PMA and one of its clients appeared to work instead at a golf course on Amelia Island, Fla.

Dorton, the PMA spokesman, said errors in campaign finance reports represent routine mistakes of the treasurers for the campaign’s of various members of Congress and for political action committees.

“Mistakes by campaigns on FEC reports happen all the time,” Dorton said. “That looks like what happened here.”

To others, what’s noteworthy is what the donations reveal about Capitol Hill lobbying.

“A key way to win political friends and influence lawmakers is to throw a lot of cash around and he certainly did it well,” said Steve Ellis of the group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Making campaign contributions and amassing power was certainly part of the family business for Paul Magliocchetti.”

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