GOP dismisses anti-‘K Street’ effort

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is trying to drive Republicans’ ties to lobbyists and the “K Street Project” to victory in this year’s congressional elections, but Republican lawmakers say he’s taken a wrong turn.

“We don’t have a K Street Project,” said Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican and Mr. Reid’s top target. “I have never called anybody or talked to anyone to try to get anybody a position on K Street with one exception, and that is if someone from my office is applying for a job and an employer calls me.”

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, who created the K Street Project in the 1980s as a database of political donations and hirings among lobbying firms and trade associations, said Democrats are confusing the issue and mixing two entirely different things.

Democrats say the project is a scheme to force lobbyists to contribute to and hire Republicans in exchange for access to lawmakers, and Mr. Reid of Nevada said Mr. Santorum was “as responsible as anyone in the world” for it.

He and Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), wrote a letter calling for Senate hearings on the matter.

“K Street” is the term politicians use to refer to lobbyists, because of the number of high-profile lobbying firms based there. It has become a dirty word in Washington in recent months as corruption charges and accusations have been lobbed at members of Congress — so many that some candidates in the House leadership election have said they will end the project.

But Mr. Norquist says it will keep running and said his effort — which is viewable online at www.kstreetproject.com — tracks employment and political donations of the top lobbying firms, trade associations and industries.

“My argument to K Street is you should hire people who agree with you on principle. You should not hire for access,” Mr. Norquist said, adding that his project does not include threats to limit access. “There’s no muscle necessary behind that. I’m saying: ‘Play to your self-interest.’”

Mr. Santorum says he doesn’t have anything to do with Mr. Norquist’s database.

Instead, he hosts weekly meetings with lobbyists during which they spend a few minutes each time talking about a Republican National Committee-compiled job-bank list. Last week, Mr. Santorum said he would end that practice.

Those at the meetings said there aren’t any threats about access or what would happen if jobs weren’t filled by Republicans.

“None of the people in the room has the muscle to say something like that,” said Cleta Mitchell, a campaign-finance lawyer who attends the meetings and said most of them are spent talking about communicating the Republican message, and in recent years the main topic has been judicial nominations.

She said Democrats are probably more guilty than Republicans on lobbying and access.

“What they do at their [meetings] is probably what they think we do at ours, but we don’t.”

But Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said Mr. Santorum’s defense was hollow.

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