Todd Boulanger --a longtime Jack Abramoff protege [1] whose Abramoff-related lobbying business and personal connections have been examined closely by Fired Up! [2]-- is now at the center of his own firestorm involving a contract to lobby Congress for the State of Texas.
Texas's public outcry against the sweetheart deal between the state and Boulanger began last week, with the Houston Chronicle reporting on the nature of the contracts. The Associated Press quickly followed suit [4], writing...
A lobbyist hired to represent Texas' interests in the nation's capital once worked closely with confessed influence peddler Jack Abramoff, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.
Todd Boulanger and his firm, Cassidy & Associates, were hired by the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations under a $330,000 contract. The firm was hired in a competitive bidding process in January 2005 and then rehired in November....
"It's cronyism at its worst," said Texas House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam of Waco. "All these guys are connected to one another."
As Dunnam suggests, evidence indicates that it was indeed connections, rather than merit, that were responsible for the award of the state's contract to Boulanger and his firm.
When the state approved hiring a lobbying firm with close ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004, it rejected competing bids that met more of its selection criteria and cost less, according to documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.
What the winning firm, Cassidy & Associates, did have was access, all the way to presidential aide Karl Rove, according to memos and e-mails obtained through a Texas open records request.
And despite the lower marks the firm received when state officials reviewed the bids, staff members from state agencies tapped to choose a lobbyist eventually awarded the firm a $15,000-a-month contract to lobby Congress.
There is, of course, every reason to believe that Tom DeLay is responsible for making sure that his buddy Abramoff's shop and his boy Boulanger got the Texas lobbying contract. After all, it was DeLay who used the machinery of Texas state government as his very own marionette in jury-rigging the mid-decade Congressional redistricting [6]. And it was DeLay who was buying up influence with in-staters by contributing (illegally) corporate funds to legislative candidates, an act for which he is now under indictment.
DeLay clearly had the necessary influence to move the contract to his cronies. But more than that, it was apparently an open secret that the Texas Office of State-Federal Relations --which ultimately hired Boulanger-- operated as "an arm of DeLay." Via Charles Kuffner comes a 2003 story from the Houston Chronicle [7] which makes clear the chain of command...
Their charges against the Office of State-Federal Relations followed criticism by Democrats earlier this year of the Washington office's hiring of Drew Maloney, a former top aide to Majority Speaker Tom DeLay, as a consultant.
Maloney's $15,000 monthly fee was questioned because numerous other state programs and services faced budget cuts in the face of a $9.9 billion revenue shortfall.
"Y'all have not been able to get the congressional delegation to do a damn thing about the problems here in Texas, like retirement issues, like highway funding, like everything else," said state Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, during a Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing Thursday.
[...]
Ed Perez, OSFR executive director in Washington, D.C., was forced to hire Maloney at the direction of DeLay, according to a Washington source.
"It basically makes (OSFR) an arm of DeLay," the source said.
DeLay was using Texas's state treasury as a piggy bank from which he could reward loyalty among DC lobbyists, and perpetuate the now-infamous K Street Project [8]. And Boulanger benefitted by virtue of his connections to DeLay --he had given generously to GOP candidates at DeLay's behest, and is married to a former DeLay press secretary.
[9]
And --as has been previously mentioned at Fired Up Missouri-- there is reason to believe that Boulanger may have replicated this same scheme in other states, with the help of other powerful Congressional leaders to whom he shares ties. Specifically, Boulanger's team at Cassidy & Associates holds a similar contract [10] to lobby on behalf of the state of Missouri's Highways and Transportation Commission.
Speculation has surfaced that Missouri's Roy Blunt, who now employs the former DeLay staffer to whom Boulanger is married, may have used his power to influence the Commission's hiring of a DC lobbyist (or to convince them that a DC lobbyist was needed at all).
Even if the Missouri contract has not yet come under real media scrutiny, the obvious self-dealing and the seamy nexus between the Lone Star State and Jack Abramoff has become a bit more than the Texas press can handle. Witness today's editorial from the Austin American Statesman [11], which reads in part:
At the direction of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the GOP made lobbying a partisan activity. Under the plan, known as the K Street project, lobbying firms had to hire Republican loyalists, including some congressional staff members, to gain access to the GOP leadership. It was a perfect loop.
Perry gained access to that loop by hiring firms closely connected to DeLay and paying them more than $1 million. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick also signed off on the lobbying contracts, presented by the governor's staff.
One contract went to Drew Maloney, who had served as DeLay's chief of staff. Another, for $330,000, went to lobbyist Todd Boulanger and his firm, Cassidy & Associates, last year in a questionable process. Boulanger is identified as a close associate of Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in a wide-ranging lobbying scandal.
The prospects for a quick recovery and saving of face for Texas and Boulanger look even more grim, as this afternoon national outlets, such as Forbes magazine [12], are running the sordid story.
The lesson from the story does not end with one state, one lobbyist, one disgraced lawmaker, or one purloined contract. On the contrary, the Boulanger-Texas story reminds us that this sort of thing --once thought or hoped aberational-- is the rule rather than the exception.
It also reminds us that the pay-for-play paradigm is not some cancerous tumor that has grown on Washington that can be quickly excised with some dog-and-pony show "reform" and after which the Republican machine will continue its march to glory. It is instead the deliberate means by which the GOP has built its majority, grown its power, and taken its place atop the structures of national government today. In short, these ethical problems, exemplified by the Boulanger fiasco, are not what ails the Republican party. They are the Republican party.
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Todd Boulanger (second from left) poses for a photo with former Tom DeLay spokesman Jonathan Grella (center) and Capital Club members. (Jim Hirni [13] is partially obscured over Grella's left shoulder).