The Hillary Loophole

...House wives While Billy Carter’s hiring by Libya couldn’t possibly be construed as an equal rights issue, Rose Marie Lipinski’s hiring can...

...A former SEC chairman and managing partner at Latham ’Watkins who represented a Japanese trading giant, Roderick Hills wasn’t happy about rearranging his professional life...

...Instead of railing against the candidate’s wife for peddling influence, many people seemed to object to the premise of the question: a veiled advocacy, some charged, for the barefoot-and-teapouring school of femininity...

...Lent’s connections when hiring her...

...There’s the embattled chairman of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, Wendy Gramm, whose husband Phil has actively pushed her interests in the Senate...

...One of the hot issues before his committee is legislation affecting the Baby Bells, which are fighting newspapers and the cable industry over control of online data services...

...Had the payments to the wives not been brought to light, the cost to society may have far greater than the loss of income and professional traction to each woman...

...The Sallie Mae account is handled by a lawyer a You’d think Chicago representative William Lipinski would have enough to worry about, with his district’s spiraling crime rate, crummy schools, and constituents’ proclivity for burning crosses on front lawns...

...But is this to be a new line of ethical inquiry: ‘What does your wife do for a living...

...Some of the great moments in spousal influencepeddling don’t require a Rhadamanthine sensibility to arouse indignation-like when Antoinette Hatfield accepted a $55,000 fee from Greek businessman Basil Tsakos for “interior decorating advice” while her Oregon-senator husband was urging federal funding for Tsakos’ $12 billion oil pipeline, or when Betty Wright, wife of House Speaker Jim Wright, received an $18,000 salary from a Texas investor who had sought favors from her husband...

...The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), one of the chief beneficiaries of the project, has been appropriately grateful for his largesse: Shortly after the rail line received several hundred million dollars in federal startup funds, CTA awarded a one-year, $44,000 lobbying contract to Lipinski’s wife...

...The problem is that politics hasn’t...

...Married . . . with influence Better yet, consider former San Francisco mayor and California gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein, whose husband is affluent money manager Richard Blum...

...Indeed, it’s as a softer form of currency that access really works...

...For most of 1990 and 1991, the job was fillled by one Chris Downey, wife of Rostenkowski’s Ways and Means colleague, Tom Dovmey...

...And if you think Phil Gramm can read with wide-open mind the pile of GAO reports criticizing his wife’s Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, well, you probably aren’t still married...

...In a climate where even mentioning the uxorial advantage comes off as piggish, demanding strictures on wives’ abilities to influence-peddle will surely harrow a few politically correct politicians...

...Trade Representative (USTR) and her husband’s career came under scrutiny...

...But one might also note that another member of NYNEX’s lobbying team is former representative (and telecommunications subcommittee member) Tom Tauke...

...Nevertheless, even those actions have been gingerly defended along feminist lines...

...Is there a better way to protect public interest, one that doesn’t condemn spouses to the kitchen...

...A decade ago, hard as it might be to believe now, eyebrows arched when lobbyists seeking access to Washington powerati hired Ellen Proxmire’s party-planning Washington, Inc...

...I understand the opportunities for power-couple corruption,” Ellen Goodman said with distaste after Betty Wright was busted...

...The harmony of interest is not so neat in the case of New York representative Norman Lent, ranking minority member of the Energy and Commerce committee...

...Scholars of the bank fiasco should be forgiven for missing this low-profile auditor...

...Maybe calling Chris Downey an auditor was an innocent mistake...

...Four years ago, she graduated from law school...

...Salary,” responds her disclosure report helpfully...

...But oddly enough, the auditor didn”t find much...

...Harkin, Ms...

...And on and on...

...Making that information public didn’t deal a fatal blow to Feinstein’s political career, nor should it have...

...That’s exactly the kind of information we don’t have on many political wives...

...One could argue that NYNEX was indifferent to Ms...

...Rose Marie Lipinski has, by all accounts, an IQ well into the three digits...

...The Hillary Loophole Political spouses have a right to work, They don’t have a rkht to influence-peddle by Katherine Boo 0ver the last few years, the House Sergeant at Arms’ quarters may have edged out Brock Aclams’ office as the tawdriest place on the Hill...

...And it’s also awarded its spouses generous exemptions on the financial disclosure forms members are required to file...

...In some cases the approval is official...

...Plus, explains the new Sergeant at Arms, Werner Brandt, she wasn’t really an auditor...

...What liberal wants to impinge upon a woman’s right to work...

...With opportunities like those, the tiny office’s fulltime auditor should have had a dream job-an expos6 a day...

...Of course, access isn’t just a fiction people create to drum up business or accumulate power...

...But if true equality for women is the goal, an equal deference to the public interest doesn’t seem an unreasonable thing to ask...

...Of course, conflict of interest is a notoriously slippery concept...

...Research assistance was provided by Greg Bologna...

...And Mary Whalen was a lawyer long before she was a spouse...

...Blum’s business clearly has benefited from the union and the networking opportunities,” concluded the Los Angeles Times censoriously-and accuratelyafter a review of Blum’s myriad business partnerships in 1990...

...Clearly, some political spouses have benefited, knowingly or not, from their connubial connections, and the public has paid a price...

...thoughts about the United Auto Workers haven’t evolved over years spent with his wife, a GM execuBut to deny the impact ofbeing lobbied by your wife’s firm is to deny a fundamental political truth: connections matter...

...It isn’t...

...Although that’s not saying much...

...But to congressional spouses and their defenders, even pointing out potential conflicts or profiteering is likely to be perceived as sexist...

...Or maybe it’s not all that odd...

...A working-woman issue...

...For instance, congressmen must disclose where a wife gets her money, but not what she does nor how much she earns for doing it...

...By the time of Carla Hills’ confirmation, Roderick Hills had agreed to terminate all business relationships that might pose a conflict of interest, promised to keep the USTR apprised of his planned business activities, and agreed not 1.0 take on any new clients without the approval of the Office of Government Ethics...

...Before Rose Marie Lipinski began lobbying her husband’s committee on behalf of CTA, the Lipinskis queried the only institutional watchdog on these matters, the House ethics committee, and received its okay...

...Yet there’s a legitimate issue involved here, one that will increase in importance as the Nancy Reagan gaze yields to the Hillary Clinton galewind...

...Rather, public awareness of her vested interest surely made Feinstein a lot more careful, and perhaps more equitable, as she voted on those issues...

...Indeed, a woman’s right to pursue her own career regardless of her husband’s is unarguable...

...But when they met with the staff of the House Education Committee, which is chaired by William D. Ford, they faced another disadvantage: Sallie Mae was represented by Ford’s wife’s firm, Williams and Jensen...

...To the younger and more enlightened-many of whom are, or are married to, women who work-it’s something else...

...There’s Ruth Harkin, whose law firm Akin Gump boasts a slew of farmbelt clients, from Pillsbury to RJR Nabisco to Miller Brewing, who are deeply concerned with the actions of the agricultural appropriations subcommittee, which Tom Harkin chairs...

...Access still helps, it’s still worth plenty, and-as a look at the work of America’s political wives suggests-influence-peddling isn’t a gender-linked phenomenon...

...I don’t think anybody ever saw her do anything,” laughs Natalia Delgado, a lawyer for Genner & Bloch and former CTA board member...

...But those papers and cable operators aren’t likely to get much help from Lent, whose wife lobbies for one of the biggest babies, NYNEX...

...And that’s also why lobbyist Tom Boggs-the Patton, Boggs, and Blow partner and consummate sonofis one of the most powerful people in Washington...

...And maybe overseeing the polishing of a staff really is worth 35 grand...

...Given the temptations, indeed it should...

...they simply wait, delphically, to be asked...

...She never reported to the board on anything...

...In the wake of the media’s timid suggestion that Hillary Clinton’s career may have been boosted by her husband’s political position, public reaction has taken an unexpected turn...

...Clients value access to powerful people, and being able to demonstrate that you have it increases the total take of the firm, and thus the worth, and perhaps the salary, of the connected...

...But when Pat Schroeder merely considered running for president, Legal Times raked the career of her husband, a partner at Kaplan Russin & Vecchi, over the coals...

...Still, what’s most interesting about the Blum case isn’t the conclusions the media drew...

...Today, a congressional spouse is more likely to be a lawyer, lobbyist, or political consultant than to sell crudites to Georgetown hostesses...

...In 1991, shortly after Ms...

...One might also argue that Ms...

...Our willingness to tolerate such questionable arrangements may stem from a strange confluence of old- and new-school thought on working women...

...Lent can’t be blamed for possessing those connections if she doesn’t actively use them...

...But it’s not the one she had in mind...

...Her professional experience immediately before coming to the House was operating a Capiitol Hill pizza parlor...

...While federal criminal law prohibits executive branch employees from taking actions that benefit their own or their spouses’ financial interests, Congress has exempted itself from that law...

...There’s Barbara Morris Lent, who lobbies her husband’s House committee on behalf of NYNEX...

...In addition to overdrafting $104,000 worth of his own checks, Sergeant at Arms Jack Russ, a prot6gC of Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski, had an aide arrested by tlhe Capitol Hill police as a bachelor-party prank, allegedly ran a private business out of the House stationery room, possibly commanded his police force to wiretap members, and still found time to spread the rumor that Speaker Tom Foley was a closet case...

...Hire me because my husband/mother/daughter chairs a key committee...

...As her husband and 330 other member,s bounced checks, she took home about $35,000 a year as auditor until she was promoted to assistant to the Sergeant at Arms, at $40,0001...

...But Washington politicians, faced with the alternative -allowing the spouse to represent interests whose fates were controlled by his wife-and freed from fear of being called sexist, could see pretty clearly which claim weighed more heavily on national interest...

...Downey, Ms...

...Boggs never lobbied his mother’s Merchant Marine Committee, while Hillary Clinton refuses a cut of her firm’s earnings from state business...

...Was that unfair to Feinstein and Blum...

...Sure there is-and Congress had a hand in coming up with it in 1989, when Carla Hills was appointed U.S...

...why not provide some harmless pastime for politics’ gracious ladies...

...Is she really doing it...

...Men don’t get this scrutiny,” charged Ruth Harkin recently, “because it is assumed they deserve their success, but somehow a wife doesn’t.’’ Harkin’s right: There is a double standard here...

...to up their odds...

...When Billy Carter was hired as a lobbyist by the Libyan government way back when, he became an instant symbol of incipient corruption...

...Lent actively lobbies her husband’s colleagues, she’s seldorn seen on the Senate side, where her name is not quite so effective a calling card...

...Today, after the divorce, her business is primarily “grassroots...

...it’s apparently still rather cheap to buy off a wife...

...Not much of anything, investigators concluded...

...Lipinski, Ms...

...How much did Chris Downey make...

...I’m not into the Hill anymore,” Kostmayer explains gamely, insisting her new practice is doing splendidly...

...What did she do for her salary...

...It might -sorry, Ms...

...As Bill Clinton snapped at Jerry Brown, such a line of inquiry doesn’t “respect the fact that women can have their own world and do their own jobs...

...And they don’t get asked very often...

...On March 1, as the bank scandal broke, Downey departed her job...

...Yet Energy and Commerce staffers observe that while Ms...

...What did she do for the money...

...Thus we have a need to look closely at what Hillary Clinton’s firm earns in state business or how Ruth Harkin’s firm works with agriculture subcommittees or why Chris Downey was hired for that mysterious job-and the impact any of it might have on public policy...

...Lent-even hamstring a few lobbying or government careers...

...Washington is a sophisticated place, fully capable of distinguishing the arriviste from the arrived...

...When The New York Times’ credible account of Hillary Clinton’s intervention in the Arkansas S&L deal was published, on the other hand, she became a symbol of unfair press persecution...

...But a primary obsession of this Public Works and Transportation Committee member over the years has been securing federal funding for a rail line through southwest Chicago to Midway Airport...

...But when CTA officials were asked what other virtues justified the creation of a new lobbying post in her honor, they came up with a rather limp rationale: She was a longtime resident of Chicago...

...Lipinski was hired, the CTA received an additional $13.4 million in federal discretionary funds for the Midway airport project...

...Women’s lives have changed, thank God...

...In both cases, the committee left the determination of potential conflict of interest to the members and spouses themselves...

...It requires a fairly chilly definition of marriage to believe Norman Lent’s feelings towards the Baby Bells aren’t affected by his wife’s interests, or that John Dingell’s tive and heiress to the Fisher Bodies fortune...

...When Tom Harkin announced his presidential candidacy and then stumped for months, Legal Times, National Journal, Congressional Quarterly, and the major newspapers usually deputized to keep an eye on influencepeddling shenanigans didn’t think to investigate Ruth’s work for agricultural clients at Akin Gump-a firm notorious, thanks to partner Robert Strauss, for elegant insider-trading...

...Yet the breadth we give to wives-of’s careers isn’t just a fuzzy matter of public acceptance...

...At Akin Gump or Williams and Jensen or Little Rock’s Rose law firm, partners have subtle ways of letting their social wiring show, for good reason...

...There’s lawyer Mary Whalen, wife of House education committee chair William Ford, whose firm lobbies on behalf of one of higher education’s most powerful corporate interests...

...Had she forsaken the opportunity to represent the insolvent institution while it sought state approval of a new fundraising scheme, she might have lost a few thousand dollars’ worth of billable hours...

...Money politics being what they are, the legal aid folks were already woefully outclassed...

...It’s tricky business,” says Congresswatch’s Michael Waldman, explaining why his good-government group, like Common Cause, doesn’t monitor spousal conflicl s. No good liberal wants to impinge upon a woman’s right to work...

...It would have been far less fair to the public not to know that a generous city redevelopment contract was going to a partner of the mayor’s husband...

...In February, as debate over the Higher Education Reauthorization Act raged, legal aid lawyers representing students went head to head with the Student Loan Mortgage Association (Sallie Mae) over whether students should be liable for school loans when trade schools’ promises turn out to be fraudulent...

...nial staff...

...She wasn’t regularly listed in the staffing reports Congress is required by law to publish...

...Sallie ,Mae, which packages and resells millions of those loans, believes students should still pay...

...It’s what the media brought to light: no megascandals, simply the fact that Blum worked for hotel and insurance interests vying for multimillion-dollar contracts with the city of San Francisco...

...At the time, Pamela Kostmayer publicly complained (as political wives often do) that her political scruples were actually hurting her business...

...In the case of Hillary Clinton and the S&L, the lopsidedness of the career/public-interest equation is particularly clear...

...That’s not to say that such influence is wielded vulgarly: “It’s tricky business,” says Congresswatch’s Michael Waldman, explaining why his good-government group doesn’t monitor spousal conflicts...

...Although the investigations have occasionally veered toward zealotry, the premise is perfectly sound: Public interest requires that potential conflicts of interest be explored...

...What Goodman seemed to elide was that in both the Wright and Hatfield cases, the object was apparently to encourage a politician to act out of private interest...

...He came out clean...

...And possibly she was the most qualified person in all of Washington to do it, just as Hillary Clinton was the worthiest lawyer in Little Rock to represent a failing S&L as it asked a securities commissioner appointed by her husband for a reprieve...

...But in our sympathy for the difficulties women face in the working world, we’ve allowed relevant questions about wives’ careers to be silenced by social mores and public disclosure loopholes John Zaccaro would have cherished...

...While putting a precise price on wifely access is as futile as quantifying grace, an imperfect way to gauge it is to look at a woman who lost it...

...That’s why a defense contractor recently slipped Armand D’ Amato $120,000 to lobby his brother, the senator, according to a federal indictment...

...The same could probably be said of the careers of Hillary Clinton, Ruth Harkin, Chris Downey, Barbara Lent, and other political wives...

...Between 1977 and 1987 (the latest date available), the House ethics committee gave careful consideration to dozens of questions concerning donations of doughnuts and trinkets to congression sl staffers, but only two questions involving the propriety of spousal careers...

...few doors away from his wife’s office...

...But wife-of status may be an advani.age even when all the credentials are in order...

...Forget the two and a half years of GAO warnings that the House bank had gone haywire...

...Instead of printing soul-searching columns about Blum’s right to his own career, the San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles papers have marshalled reporting teams to comb his records for conflicts for a decade...

...To the dinosaurs, wives’ jobs simply might not seem all that important...

...Meanwhile, don’t look to the House and Senate ethics committees to initiate investigations of potential conflicts...

...Those small sacrifices help distinguish politics’ savvy accessholders from the unembarrassed, and slightly embarrassing, Barbara Lents, but they don’t close all doors...

...Not officially...

...In fact, most people blessed with access carefully carve out a window of deniability...

...Instead, the funding scheme was approved, the thrift failed, and the federal government was forced to intervene, leaving taxpayers with a far bigger bill...

...In 1987, when Pamela Kostmayer was married to a popular Pennsylvania representative, her PR firm, Kostmayer Communications, boasted an institutional client list that included Allied Signal, Monsanto, and Levi Straws...

...More and more wives of politicians are pursuing their independence through jobs in government or its lobbying and consulting appendages, where their career choices may have an effect on public interest...

...As ethics commitlee members surely rationalized in the case of the Lipinskis, the extra income paid to the wife was likely to have no effect on the husband’s voting: Lipinski hais never been averse to pork (although his wife’s contract might inspire him to work a little harder for the project...

...A conflict of interest on Ford’s part...

...Her chief duty was presiding over the refurbishment of The Macethe House’s four-foot silver and ivory ceremoKatherine Boo is an editor of The Washington Monthly...

...That’s a principle easily grasped when the subject is Billy Carter or Armand D’ Amato...

...Apparently not: Our definition of propriety has “evolved” along with wives-of’s occupations...

...But maybe there was something else involved, something some people are suddenly reluctant to name...

...Minor scandal...

...Clinton, Ms...