The Post-Dispatch’s Chuck Raasch that lobbyist Andy Blunt took a bunch of his cable television clients from Missouri on a trip to Washington, D.C., in April to chat with members of Missouri’s congressional delegation.
This excursion was notable only because Andy Blunt is running the re-election campaign of his father, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. And Andy Blunt has always his Missouri lobbying business from his father’s Washington’s interests.
The Blunts try to downplay it, but everyone who follows Missouri politics knows lobbying is the Blunt family business. So we wondered if anyone would be upset with Raasch’s story.
Sure enough, a spokesman for Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, Roy Blunt’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the November election, . “Now that Andy Blunt has been caught lobbying the Senate, Missourians deserve to hear from Sen. Blunt about this blatant conflict of interest and what he intends to do to clean it up,†said Chris Hayden, communications director for the Kander campaign.
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Well, actually they weren’t “lobbying the Senate,†but only some staffers for Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. But they might not have gotten that far without Andy Blunt’s influence, which is what they pay him for.
The cable TV executives were looking for help they couldn’t get in Jefferson City. The Federal Communications Commission is that might threaten the $20 billion a year that the cable industry collects from renting set-top boxes. The FCC contends that cable customers should be able to save money by streaming cable content the same way they stream Netflix.
So yes, Andy Blunt and his clients were lobbying federal office-holders on federal agency rule-making. Technically that doesn’t make him a federal lobbyist — you have to spend 20 percent of your time lobbying Congress or the executive branch to qualify.
No one should be surprised at this. Roy Blunt spent his first 14 years in Congress in the House, where he rose through the GOP leadership ranks by helping his mentor, former Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, run the so-called Washington lobbying firms were pressured to hire Republicans for top jobs in return for access to key office-holders. At least 35 members of his staff shuttled between his office and K Street lobbying firms.
Roy Blunt’s second wife is a top lobbyist for Kraft Foods. His three children by his first marriage are all lobbyists — Andy, Matt (the former governor of Missouri) and Amy Blunt Mosby. Largely because he married into the lobbying business, Roy Blunt’s estimated net worth increased from about to
So, no surprises here. Andy Blunt took his clients to Washington. That’s where the money is.