In many a congressman’s heart there is a dream, a dream to one day use the contacts and friendships you’ve created on Capitol Hill and turn them into a million-dollar career as a lobbyist exploiting the system for earmarks and personal wealth. These congressmen fall asleep pondering when they will visit the pearly revolving door and how much better life will be when spin through it. For those with the dream there is nothing worse than ripping it away from them. Fear of facing constituents that want to turn your head into an ornament on Col. Kurtz’ front yard doesn’t faze you. Nor does the fear of an imminent indictment in a wide-ranging public corruption case involving the very people you wish to be. No, for one dreamer (and he’s not the only one), Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), what drove him to forgo reelection was the fear of losing his chance to cash out.

On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that House Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) told Ney that he would not receive a “lucrative career on K Street to pay those tuition bills, along with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees piling up” if he lost his upcoming election. Ney had previously stated that he would not under any circumstances jump from the race. Obviously the dream came first. Now I wonder if you can lobby Congress from a jail cell. Maybe you could if they let you keep a Blackberry. Clients could come during visiting hours and you could offer quid pro quos during conjugal visits.

Apparently, Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (Lieberman-Ct.) wife, Hadassah, wanted the three-term Senator to rake in the big bucks rather than have another go at his current opponent, Democratic voters. Lieberman, unlike Ney and countless other congressmen before him, has a different dream, to be the number one guy in his party — the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.

The problem of congressmen cashing out into the lobbying world is pretty serious one that could use a solution. Ezra Klein, writing at the American Prospect, proposes a raise in congressional salaries to keep members of Congress from trying to keep up with the lobbying Joneses. Nicholas Beaudrot, guest posting at Klein’s blog, has a couple different solutions and one of them I completely agree with, “Congress and the White House ought to find more avenues for ex-Senators and Congressman who do want to stay in public service to continue their work on pet causes, the way Sam Nunn has done since leaving the Senate in the mid-90s.” It would be nice to see more members of Congress take an interest in continuing public service rather than following their own cupidity (often blamed on a wife as Lieberman’s statement suggests) to K Street.

But maybe some members aren’t in it for the public service. They might just be following the dream.

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There’s one interesting interesting analysis this morning on the Lieberman loss in the Washington Post. It focuses on what turned out to be the powerful combination of the netroots and grassroots for the Lamont campaign.

Zephyr (Sunlight’s National Director and the Dean campaign’s Internet brain) and I talked about whether we agreed with this analysis this morning and whether there is more to be learned. (Too bad we didn’t do it on IM or I would just put it here.)  

We agree that the breakthrough for Lamont wasn’t necessarily the use of the Internet but how he used it. Since 2004 candidates have increasingly "used" the internet, but mostly used it as an alien force, not as an aspect of every part of the campaign itself. For a campaign not to use the Internet to amplify everything you do would be like not using the telephone.

The Lamont campaign had a different — and obviously much better — approach. It used the Internet to enable people’s creativity and passions, instead of simply to direct doorknockers and mobilize (though they did that too). They brought to the campaign people with enormous creativity and passion, rather than shunning them. They used techniques like video blogging with people who were really passionate about their candidate. They repeatedly proved that openness in the process of campaigning actually works. This kind of attitude and approach — serve the people who want to work with you, enable them, ala Craig Newmark – is essential for meaningful political participation. And it results in robust involvement of real people in the campaign.

We also can’t overlook the role that political bloggers played in this race, not directly in  reaching voters (Zephyr’s hunch is that number of primary voters actually reading blogs would be less than 10 percent) but in how they shaped the race for the national press, which in turn affected local voters as they got a sense of its importance.

Lessons for all of us.

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It’s been a long time coming this election season, but the first congressional incumbents have finally been defeated at the polls – three of them in one night. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) got nearly all the media attention as he was beaten by newcomer Ned Lamont in Connecticut – though Lieberman vowed to keep fighting and said he would run in the fall as an independent.

On the same night, Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga) lost a runoff in her Georgia primary. And moderate Republican freshman Joe Schwarz (R-Mich) was upended by a more conservative challenger in the Michigan GOP primary.

Prior to yesterday’s votes, the only incumbents to drop reelection bids this year did so on their own, before the voters could decide. The most recent of those was Bob Ney (R-Ohio), a central figure in the Abramoff lobbying scandal, who announced on Monday he would withdraw from his race and not seek another term.

On the surface, the three incumbents who lost yesterday seem to have virtually nothing in common. The Lieberman race was a referendum on his support of President Bush’s handling of the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. Schwarz, on the other hand, was supported by President Bush, but was targeted from the right for being more liberal than his district. McKinney’s race was an odd one. Long an outspoken critic of the president, she was also criticized for occasionally erratic behavior – most especially this spring when she was arrested (though later cleared) on charges that she assaulted a guard at the Capitol who tried to stop her when she skipped past a metal detector.

In short, except for Lieberman’s race, the other contests seemed to be decided on local issues, not some national wave of discontent. But something had to be in the air for three incumbents’ heads to roll in one night.

What I take it to mean is that voters are unusually restive this year, and that unease is increasing as we get closer to the fall elections. Recent polls are picking up strong vibes that the public wants to shake things up in Washington, even at the cost of cutting short a few congressional careers.

Granted, every race is different. But if I were running for Congress this year “More of the Same” is a slogan I would avoid.

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Kudos to the folks at MyDD who painstakingly compiled a list of the names of the last-minute contributors to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (D-Conn) campaign. It took two volunteers five hours to do the work. To do it they had to download 14 PDF files from the FEC, then enter the names by hand into an Excel spreadsheet.

They also compiled state-by-state totals of where the money came from. Only 12% came from inside Connecticut.

This is exactly the kind of information that should be available to anyone without going through all that trouble. But the U.S. Senate exempted itself from the rules that all other federal candidates, PACs and parties have to live by – namely electronic reporting of their campaign contributions.

Unbelievable as it may be in the year 2006, they’re still submitting handwritten reports, which the FEC then converts into PDF file images and posts on the web. But these are only images.  It will be weeks before those contributions are entered into the FEC database, so they can be sorted and analyzed.

Every year, the agency hires inputters – at taxpayer expense – to hand-enter those paper reports into something a computer can read. Of course, the Senate campaigns do compile all this information in their own computers as the contributions come in. It’s just that they don’t share it with anyone.

Like I said, unbelievable.

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Donations to the Connecticut Senate race between incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman and businessman Ned Lamont are coming in from all over the country. Literally.

Even by the end of June – the last contributions available in computerized form from the Federal Election Commission – Lieberman’s beleaguered reelection campaign had drawn donors from 44 states and Puerto Rico. Lamont’s money came from 27 states.

While Connecticut led the list for both candidates, it was a much more important source of funds for Lamont than for the incumbent. Between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006 Lieberman collected 75% of his individual contributions from outside Connecticut, while Lamont drew only 20% of his from outside the state. The totals include only contributions above $200. Smaller amounts are reported only in bulk and not itemized.

These totals do not include money raised during July and early August – the period when the race started to draw much more national attention. While I haven’t tried to total up the hand-written contributions filed by the campaigns in the last few days, it’s clear from glancing at Lieberman’s contributions that his strong reliance on out-of-state contributions is continuing.

I’d also bet that more of Lamont’s money is coming from out-of-state as well, though I haven’t checked his records. Most challengers aren’t well known outside their home states, and that was the case with Lamont before the race started drawing such heavy national attention in recent weeks.

Here are the leading states for both candidates during the 18 months ending at June 30:

Lieberman

1.         Connecticut     $1.4 million
2.         New York         $957,000
3.         California        $749,000
4.         Florida            $416,000
5.         Illinois            $234,000

Lamont

1.         Connecticut      $475,000
2.         New York          $39,000
3.         California         $31,000
4.         Massachusetts  $15,000
5.         Virginia            $5,000

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As the uphill fight by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) to hang on to his Senate seat reaches its final stages, the money is flowing in so fast to his reelection campaign that there’s hardly even time for neat handwriting.

For the past couple of hours I’ve been poring over 165 pages of handwritten reports filed by the campaign with the Federal Election Commission – the 48-hour notice reports that outline the contributions received between July 20 and August 3^rd.

The reports are supposed to cover the period up to August 5^th, but that last batch is not yet available on the FEC’s website. (Believe it or not, Senate candidates file their reports on paper, not computer, and it takes the FEC about 48 hours turnaround time to post images of the raw reports as PDF files.)

Keep in mind this is a very quick survey of those records. But here’s what a couple of hours digging have turned up:

During that 15-day window, the campaign collected $201,000 in PAC contributions from an array of interests. Leading the pack, so to speak, were five pro-Israel PACs which gave a combined $26,000. Six PACs from the securities industry gave $21,000 in all. Next came banking PACs ($19,500) and PACs from the telecommunications industry ($19,000). He also got two $5,000 contributions from the Pequot PAC that represents Connecticut’s casino-owning Pequot Indians.

By far the most money came from individuals, though. And while I haven’t yet added up the numbers from each state, it’s obvious from looking at the reports that the biggest share of it came from well beyond Connecticut’s borders. New York, Florida, Illinois, California and the Washington, DC area all were major sources of funds. I’ll try to quantify the numbers later today.

Because Lieberman’s opponent, businessman Ned Lamont has spent so much of his personal fortune on the race, the “millionaire’s amendment” has kicked in to boost Lieberman’s maximum contribution level to $12,600. Nearly all the contributions listed were far below that level, but two came in for exactly that amount. Both came in on August 1^st, one from investor James Allwin of Greenwich, CT and one from John Streicker, a real estate executive from New York City.

Lieberman also collected a little from his colleagues in the Senate during that 15-day period. He got $5,000 from the leadership PAC of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla), a $2,200 personal contribution from Herb Kohl (D-Wis) and $1,000 from former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini.

Pennsylvania Governor (and former Democratic National Committee chairman) Ed Rendell chipped in $1,000 as did former New York Mayor Ed Koch. Former Treasury Secretary (and Goldman Sachs chief) Robert Rubin gave $6,300 on July 29. In their haste to accept the money, the campaign was unable to identify Rubin’s profession. Instead, they listed “information requested” – FEC jargon for “I don’t know.”

In their rush to sort through all those incoming checks, the campaign also made an error or two. On July 20 they filed duplicate reports for contributions that came in from three PACs and a Washington lobbyist named Robert Hall. I can tell they were duplicates because they were filed in the same order on each page, but in two different handwritings.

Oh well. When the money’s piling in as fast as it is at the Lieberman campaign, mistakes will happen.

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I began this day with an IM conversation with Larry Makinson about trying to get our hands on the most recently campaign contribution reports for the Lieberman-Lamont race. It dawned on us that the records could be pretty interesting. My thought had been to simply to direct our readers to the reports that were on line and let them search around. I guess we should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Our dialogue is instructive. Imagine if two novices were trying to find this information.

Ellen (9:00:14 AM):  Got a blog idea for you this morning!

Larry (9:00:26 AM): You don’t mean Rep. Bob Ney, I presume.

Ellen (9:00:29 AM): Nope. He’s finished. That story is all about the fact that his relationship with Jack Abramoff became transparent to the people in his district. And apparently the folks there didn’t much like the notion that their Congressman seemed to be doing more for casinos and Indian tribes at the best of Washington super sleazy lawyer Jack Abramoff, than for the people he represents. Today’s story is the late money in the Lieberman-Lamont race. We need to look at the so-called 48 hour reports in that race. Are they avail on line?

Larry (9:04:59 AM): To do a story on Lieberman’s money would take a lot more time than we have. Even if the records are online, they’d be in PDF form - we’d have to create a database by hand-inputting them, then coding, etc. That could take several days.

Ellen (9:17:42 AM):  How often do the candidates have to file at this point in the campaign?

Larry (9:18:26 AM): If the candidates are filing a 48-hour report, that is the final stage. Let me check the details on the FEC site. The 48-hour notice looks like the last one until the post-election report, which comes I think 7 days after the election. It (the 48-hour report) covers contributions received between 7/20 and 8/5. (That’s the Connecticut time frame — it’s different for each state).

Ellen (9:25:01 AM): There’s nothing more recent than 8/5 required to be filed? You gotta’ be kidding!

Larry (9:26:58 AM): Here’s what the FEC site says on the 48-hour reports: "48-Hour Notices are required if the campaign committee receives contributions (including in-kind gifts or advances of goods or services; loans from the candidate or other non-bank sources; and guarantees or endorsements of bank loans to the candidate or committee) of $1,000 or more, during the applicable period."

Larry (9:27:42 AM): And the "applicable period" for the Connecticut senate race is the one I gave you earlier. I must say I’m surprised to see that myself. I’d have thought 48-hour reports are last-minute contributions only.

Larry (9:34:51 AM): Aha. The 24-hour and 48-hour reports that really do cover last-minute money are only required to be filed by people doing independent expenditures. The candidate is only required to do the one 48-hour report, which runs only as late (in Connecticut) as August 5.

Larry (10:07:36 AM): THE BAD NEWS: 165 pages of PDFs on line in 14 different reports, all of which say they’re 48-hour reports. They were filed between July 24 and August 3. The FEC says there are no later reports than that.

Ellen (10:08:30 AM): Aaargh. What to do?

Larry (10:08:50 AM): I’ll download them and look through them. Here’s the link

http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00235515. That’s all we can do.

Ellen (10:10:26 AM): OK

Larry (10:23:52 AM): FYI, I just looked at the last of those 14 Lieberman PDFs. They’re not even typewritten - they’re HANDWRITTEN and not exactly neat penmanship either. They must have been writing quickly, with all those checks coming in…I’m printing them all out. As long as the ink in my printer holds out, I should be able to handle this okay from here.  By the way, Lieberman’s contribution limit is now $12,600 per donor - thanks to the millionaire amendment and Lamont’s self-spending. 

 
Stay tuned. Larry’s report in a little while.

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Three top Senate Democrats are cutting their ties with William Oldaker, a longtime Appropriations lobbyist who works as treasurer for their political action committees, according to Roll Call. The Democrats, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), are all aiming to clean up their own houses as they push for broad ethics reforms on Capitol Hill. In the House lawmakers are following suit with Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Denny Rehberg (R-MT), and Clay Shaw (R-FL) all releasing their PAC treasurers who are also lobbyists. Senators Barak Obama (D-IL) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) may seek a ban on this practice.

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