Warren's Senate record (with lobbyists) doesn't exactly match her campaign rhetoric: Politico

[highplainsdem]

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/20/elizabeth-warren-senate-lobbyists-record-051514

‘It’s not like she hates lobbyists’: Warren’s Senate record doesn’t match her campaign rhetoric


Elizabeth Warren has proposed outlawing foreign governments from hiring lobbyists if elected. She’s pledged to tax “excessive lobbying” at rates as high as 75 percent. And in a speech in New York last month, she described lobbying as an “industry whose sole purpose is to undermine democracy and tilt every decision in favor of those who can pay.”

Even in a Democratic presidential field in which most candidates have sworn off contributions from lobbyists, Warren’s hostility to K Street stands out.

But while Warren’s campaign rhetoric has made the influence industry nervous, many lobbyists who’ve worked with the Massachusetts senator’s office say she’s far from antagonistic when it comes to doing business with K Street.

Six lobbyists who interacted with her office said they’d never had trouble getting meetings. Several of them said that while they’d be reluctant to bring corporate clients to meet with Warren’s leading progressive rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), they’d have no qualms about having them sit down with Warren.

-snip-

While Warren is far from a reliable vote for corporate America’s priorities, she’s refrained from being as antagonistic as she could be, according to lobbyists who’ve worked with her office.

Lobbyists for one Massachusetts-based company met with Warren’s staff in 2015 when they feared she might put a hold on a bill the company wanted to pass, according to one of the lobbyists, who described the meeting on condition of anonymity. Warren voted against the bill but didn’t put a hold on it, allowing it to pass.

Warren’s office dismissed the notion that she’s even a little bit accommodating toward K Street.

-snip-