(Akiit.com) Lobbying clout increases with Democratic majority…

Introductions, appropriations, earmarks, hearings, testimonies, markups-these are all terms with which any experienced lobbyist in Washington, D.C., is familiar. But successful federal lobbying-the practice of seeking to influence the behavior of elected officials-isn’t based on familiarity with or involvement in the process. As with most other fields, lobbying success rests largely on networking: creating, building, maintaining, and even borrowing a network of influential individuals and leaders. In other words, it’s all about who you know.

For African Americans on Capitol Hill, the networking community recently expanded. The 2006 elections brought about a Democratic majority in the Congress, and openings in Congressional committee and subcommittee leadership seats were filled by ranking African Americans. Several black leaders now hold powerful positions: Congressional Black Caucus founder and former CBC chair Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), just to name a few.

In response to these open ears, a crop of hungry and talented black lobbyists have sprung up, ranging from consultants and in-house lobbyists to entrepreneurs. Stephanie Jones, executive director of the National Urban League Institute and a lobbyist on the organization’s behalf, says firms often employ lawyers who lobby on behalf of various clients, or who represent them on the hill. Other lobbyists, such as Jones, work from within organizations, sometimes as government relations employees.

This emerging crop is succeeding at placing their clients’ issues in front of the right people. Take political commentator and lobbyist Paul Brathwaite. He works for the Podesta Group, a government relations and public affairs firm in Washington, D.C., with one of the highest lobbying revenues in 2006, according to the Washington Post. Brathwaite joined Podesta in January 2007 after serving the CBC as executive director. Despite his short time with the firm, Brathwaite repeatedly has been named a rising star by Washington insiders.

For Brathwaite, working as a lobbyist differs little from the six years he spent with the CBC because his motivations are the same: “There are millions of Americans who believe that people in Washington, D.C., are working on their behalf to make their lives better, and anything I can do to make that statement always be true is what I’m going to keep trying to do,” he says.

Scandal, impropriety, and greed have marred lobbying, but Braithwaite is not the only successful African American lobbyist who considers his or her own moral and social values. Zina Pierre, who six years ago started a lobbying firm called Washington Linkage Group, says that much of what she does is driven by her faith. “I am an elder in my church and a minister,” she says. Pierre is also a mayoral candidate for the city of Annapolis, Maryland. “I’m not just going to take on any client; it has to serve my community.”

Pierre has been able to do just that, serving not only major clients such as the African American communities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, but several black mega-churches as well as black mayors and legislators.

Another rising star in lobbying, Joyce Brayboy of the Glover Park Group, has also found opportunities in the lobbying field that allow her to protect her community’s interests. “One of the benefits of being at a firm is that you can select the type of clients you personally feel have a good cause or that you feel passionate about,” she says. But Brayboy doesn’t see herself as unique in this regard. “Our firm is an all-democratic, progressive firm. I don’t think we would bring on any client that we felt strongly was hurting African Americans.”

Brathwaite, Pierre, and Brayboy all credit their success to that original, basic concept of networking, whether with contacts at the CBC or at the White House. Pierre, for instance, worked in the Clinton administration for eight years. In her last post, she worked closely with cities, municipalities, state legislators, and mayors. They remembered the quality of her work, says Pierre and, not having time to learn how to run a business, she began her company, “through relationships, word of mouth, [and] me calling and telling folks what I was trying to do.”

While Brayboy credits more opportunities for African Americans to the Democratic majority, some feel that the door has not been opened widely enough. “African Americans still lag behind, even though we’re making improvements,” says Robert Drummer, immediate past president of the Washington Government Relations Group, a member-based volunteer organization founded to enrich the careers and leadership abilities of African American government relations professionals.

Drummer, a government relations professional and the founder of Drummer and Associates, L.L.C., is also a board member of the American League of Lobbyists. He points to statistics that put the number of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., as high as 30,000. He says, “Only 300 or so are African American, so there is plenty of room to grow!”

With a “significant voting bloc like the CBC,” says Brayboy, not having black lobbyists at a firm, she insists, could mean you are “blown out of the water.” Still, Drummer points to a hollowness in the talk of diversity circulating in the District. He too recognizes Brayboy, Brathwaite, and what he calls a handful of other notable black lobbyists, but he says “a handful is not enough.” He wants progressive programs such as those in which companies commit to spending a percentage of their budget with women- or minority-owned law firms.

But Drummer says the African American community itself has to do more work too, especially if we want “our students to have the option” of what he says could be “a lucrative career.”

Take note, says Drummer emphatically, of what “a lot of the white lobbyists, male or female,” do to start out in this career. “When they’re in junior high school,” he says, they start as pages and interns. “They’re either coming to Washington in the summer or they’re back in their home districts or states, volunteering for their congressman.”

To illustrate the difference, Drummer looks no further than himself. My first job on the Hill, I was 26 years old right out of law school. Well, my contemporaries were 22, 23, and 24 years old and they’d been in the system,” Drummer recalls, “for six, seven, or eight years.”

College students should be involved now in political campaigns, says Drummer, and they need to interact much more with local or Congressional representatives. Don’t underestimate the value of getting to Washington, D.C., as soon as possible, to immediately join the mix. “Many of us who are now in the government relations profession,” says Drummer, “either have had prior experiences as congressional hill staffers or working in previous administrations. You can learn at the state level and transfer that same knowledge [to] the federal level, but what you can’t transfer as easily is the relationships.”

Written By Reza Corinne Clifton

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 4:32 pm and is filed under African-American News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.