"Bobby" Jindal's reported expenditures in his campaign finance report for the period covering 14 April 2007 through 12 July 2007 are incredibly vague for a candidate who is waging what he calls a "war against corruption." Only the most general categories are used to describe each expenditure, a clear attempt to conceal the operations of his campaign. But within all this opaque darkness is a slight glimmer that casts a glow on at least one of special interests deeply embedded within Jindal's inscrutable machine: the oil and energy lobbies.
Witness the following expenditures to a certain Stephen Waguespack of 1306 Massachusetts Ave. SE, Washington, DC, 20003:
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
16 April 2007
Salary
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
30 April 2007
Salary
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
15 May 2007
Salary
Stephen Waguespack
$130.79
17 May 2007
Office Supplies
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
31 May 2007
Salary
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
15 June 2007
Salary
Stephen Waguespack
$3,004.12
30 June 2007
Salary
Although Stephen Waguespack is the only salaried employee of the Jindal campaign who does not reside in Louisiana, he receives a salary of $72,098.48 per annum, the highest of any of Jindal's staffers excepting Jindal's campaign manager, Tim Teepel. His job description must be elaborate, and the services he provides must be viewed as crucial to the campaign. But what role can he possibly play when he is a registered lobbyist with The Alpine Group, a "consulting firm dedicated to providing our clients with individualized lobbying assistance on tax, trade, agricultural, environmental, energy and several other issues," and a law student at the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University? Or is he remunerated at the annual rate of $72, 098.48 as a result of his current status as lobbyist for the industries with whom he engaged quite regularly while serving as a staff member for former House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX)?
These questions must be asked by the informed voter, for Congress under the Republicans' control was beset with ethical problems as a result of a phenomenon called "The Revolving Door," the most egregious example of which is former US Representative Bob Livingston, the man who held Jindal's seat before David Vitter. "The Revolving Door" works as follows: a former Member of Congress or member of the staff undertakes the position of lobbyist; they use the influence and knowledge they had gained while serving in their previous position to pressure former colleagues when legislation is written, to gain special access to legislators and staff, to organize fundraising events and to encourage contributions for specific candidates from the many people and special interests with whom they engaged while serving in Congress. Public Citizen's definitive report on this problem documents how former Members of Congress used their previous position to raise money for candidates. Much of what they write can also apply to staff, for staff, especially the staff members of a former Committee Chair, establish what can become lucrative contacts as a result of the legislation they craft. Indeed, one lobbyist who represented Freddie Mac in 2002 organized over 45 fundraisers for Republican incumbents, and he used his influence as a lobbyist connected to Members of Congress in order to orchestrate these events. Knowing that Waguespack served as the former Chair of the House Energy Committee and now works as a lobbyist in the industry that regularly lobbied him, one can assume he is raising funds for Jindal from special interests in the oil and energy industries: Waguespack already possesses the rolodex, and now is the time for all the energy interests to return all the favors Congressional Republicans provided in the 2005 Energy Bill. No wonder why Waguespack is earning an annual salary of $72, 098.48: he has probably raised over a million dollars from the oil and energy industries for "Bobby" Jindal with all the connections he established while serving as a staff member for the former Energy Committee Chair.
Waguespack's role as a fundraiser for Jindal in the industry he with whom was intimately engaged while working as a member of Joe Barton's staff and now represents as a lobbyist with The Alpine Group becomes even more problematic when we consider the recent Democratic ethics bill, S. 1, passed in the US House on 31 July 2007. Jindal voted for this legislation, even though Waguespack's role in his campaign for Louisiana Governor is in direct contradiction with the bill's language as it pertains to candidates for federal office. Here is how The Seattle Times paraphrases one of the bill's provisions:
The bill would for the first time require lawmakers to disclose small campaign contributions that are "bundled" into large packages by lobbyists, and it would require lobbyists to detail their own campaign contributions, as well as payments to presidential libraries, inaugural committees and charities controlled by lawmakers.
Legislators in the federal government, in other words, cannot ask lobbyists to raise money on behalf of a corporation or various special interest groups from individual donors who can be convinced to contribute en masse when told that a corporation or a particular special interest that has already reached its campaign contribution limit endorses a particular candidate. Moreover, lobbyists are now debarred from coordinating the distribution of money from a corporation or special interest group amongst a group of individual donors or affiliated companies in order to funnel revenue from a single source that has already reached its contribution limit into a campaign's coffers. Because this occurs every election cycle, Congress chose to pass legislation in order to address this loophole in the campaign finance legislation Congress passed at the federal level in 2002. While the limits for contributions for major offices in Louisiana differ from those for federal offices, limits do nonetheless exist: individuals and legal entities, which include corporations, cannot contribute more than $5,000. If Waguespack was hired in order to "bundle" donations that exceed contribution limits amongst a series of individual donors who will not appear affiliated on Jindal's campaign finance reports, he essentially exploited a loophole in our state's legislation in order to legally break the law. I fail to see how this dovetails with Jindal's "war against corruption," as it allows a special interest to have an unfair influence on our gubernatorial election. Moreover, Jindal just voted to ban this practice on the federal level. Why not also practice it with his campaign for Governor of Louisiana?
Perhaps Jindal is unwilling to implement the ethics reforms for which he voted on a federal level in his campaign for Governor as a result of his cozy relationship with the oil and energy lobbies, both of which have vested interests in our state's mineral and energy resources. I imagine the oil and gas industries will do absolutely anything within their power to derail Foster Campbell's gubernatorial bid, as Campbell has proposed levying a tax on foreign companies who process their oil in our state in order to eliminate the state income tax while investing in our state's neglected infrastructure. How else does an industry prevent a candidate from winning an election than by investing heavily in his opponent, even if it involves the unethical exploitation of a loophole in campaign finance laws by one of the salaried employees of Jindal's campaign? I also imagine they want a Governor who will not pass laws that will protect Louisiana's fragile coastal environment from an industry that continues to place it at risk. Just think of all the recent press surrounding the grassroots effort state Rep. Sydnie Mae Durand (D-Parks) led and continues to lead with her bill that would ban further drilling in and around Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Also consider a bill sponsored by state Rep. Clara Baudoin (D-Carencro) that would prohibit the insertion of waste into Louisiana's coastal salt domes. Such legislation would create major roadblocks for an industry that has received little to no resistance in Louisiana until Hurricanes Rita and Katrina exposed how all the canals the oil and gas industries dredged along our coastline have exacerbated the rate at which Louisiana is losing its land mass. The oil and gas industries know Louisianans are finally asserting their right to a clean and stabile environment, and they want to ensure that the next Governor will not bend to the voices of ordinary Louisiana citizens but only to the concerns of the oil and gas industries.
Who better to represent oil and gas than "Bobby" Jindal, who received a rating of 6 out of 100 from the League of Conservation Voters and an abysmal rating of -4 out of 100 from a group named Republicans for Environmental Protection? Who better to represent these concerns than the man who recklessly and cynically proposed a bill that would open the nation's entire coastline to drilling for oil, gas and other minerals during the 109th Congress, thereby putting his state's claim to the revenue generated by the offshore oil and gas drilling that already occurs off of its shores at risk of not passing the House and the Senate? If Jindal was willing to gamble with his state's right to offshore oil and gas revenue by doing the industry's bidding on a national level, which he did, as his bill was never considered in the Senate for those exact reasons, just imagine what he will do for the oil and gas industries if elected Governor of a state with abundant but still finite amounts of natural energy resources. And does anyone expect a candidate with deep financial ties to the energy lobby to regulate and monitor a power company such as CLECO, who has allegedly defrauded the City of Alexandria of millions of dollars, especially as Waguespack, his main fundraiser, served as staff for a Chair of a House Committee that crafted an energy bill that repealed utility regulations instituted during the Depression Era?
Maybe we should not be surpised with Jindal's decision to hire and pay a lobbyist who has deep and potentially unethical ties to the industries he represents for unspecified services to be performed for his gubernatorial campaign. For not only has Jindal showed again and again that he too is unethical; he has also revealed that he is easily bought and bossed by anyone who will contribute to his campaign coffers. And Waguespack will deliver the contributions, bundled or otherwise, from the oil and energy industries. The "Revolving Door," it seems, is now connected to a new threshold: traditionally a conduit between the US Congress and the ethically challenged world of lobbyists known as K-Street in Washington, DC, it now provides an easy avenue to Baton Rouge. Do we really want Washington, DC, lobbyists determining the outcome of our state's elections? Do we want DC lobbyists and all the corrupt DC politics on which they thrive to gain a foothold in Baton Rouge? And do we want a Governor who will espouse ethics while unethically exploiting loopholes in our state's campaign finance laws? Stephen Waguespack and the oil and gas industries certainly do, and they will lobby us to death with all the money Waguespack has bundled.
