Not Lobbying - is it the New Lobbying?

Published by Huffington Post
6 January 2010

Brien Bonneville and Larry Mitchell have officially deserted the lobbying profession. Lobbyists have become too despised and stigmatized, are banned from certain government jobs and subject to all sorts of onerous disclosure requirements. Bonneville and Mitchell needed out.

So they rented space in their former K-Street lobbyshop, KSCW, and founded a new "non-lobbying entity" called K Street Research.

It's the newest trend in lobbying: "not lobbying."

Mitchell and Bonneville are so eager to ditch the "Scarlet L," in fact, that they'd rather be called, of all things, journalists. "Part of it is old-fashioned journalism, shoe leather," said Mitchell, describing how the firm will gather information about government doings for its clients.

"We're almost like a small newspaper," said Bonneville.

A very, very small newspaper, maybe, that only circulates to a few corporate clients -- each of whom gets a different edition.

And it's a secret newspaper at that. Mitchell said they've already got several clients, but he declined to identify them. That's his prerogative as a non-lobbyist, unencumbered by disclosure requirements. "We actually have some privacy," he said. "We don't have to tell you."

Bonneville describes himself as an admirer of Gerald Cassidy, the pioneering superlobbyist who made a fortune after inventing the first modern "earmarked appropriation." Bonneville said that after reading Robert Kaiser's Cassidy book "So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government," he knew he wanted to leave his mark.

Full article can be read here.
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