The next head of the Democratic National Committee, hand-picked by President-elect Joe Biden, is a revolving-door former lobbyist for technology giants, the military-industrial complex, tobacco companies, major banks, Walmart, and more. What’s more, he’s proud of his lobbying work and has fought back against forces in the Democratic Party who would crack down on the revolving door.
Jaime Harrison, whose 2020 Senate run was notable for its breathtaking and record-setting cash haul, was until 2016 a lobbyist at the disgraced and since-disbanded Podesta Group. Now, Harrison will be the chairman of the Democratic Party, responsible for raising cash to protect Democrats’ razor-thin margins in the House and Senate. Harrison’s job will be, in effect, aligning Biden’s governance with the interests of his old clients and recent donors, including Google, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.
Harrison defends his record as a revolving-door lobbyist and, in the past, has blasted as “elitist” those who would exclude corporate lobbyists from top party positions.
When Harrison ran for DNC chairman in 2016, he suggested that 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost because the party was too harsh toward steelworkers and lobbyists.
“Part of the rejection we saw in this election was this elitism within the Democratic Party about people who do certain jobs,” he told Vox.
The populist attack on lobbyists was misguided, Harrison argued in the shadow of President Trump’s 2016 victory.
“If someone is a lobbyist, [people assume] they’re making a gajillion dollars with wine and cheese parties,” Harrison said. “That’s not the case. Universities have lobbyists in these days where tuition is going up and public dollars are rare. I represented the University of South Carolina for several years.”
Harrison also bragged in that Vox interview, “Lobbying is a profession I did for a number of years and represented the Port of Charleston, where a third of the jobs are tied to that. I’m very proud of the work we did to get the port dredged.”
Dredging ports and helping colleges were not most of his lobbying work at the Podesta Group, according to federal lobbying filings.
Harrison and his Podesta Group colleagues lobbied Congress and the Obama administration in an effort to keep the spigot of federal money flowing to for-profit colleges, records show. The Career Education Corporation, now called Perdoceo Education Corporation, owned for-profit Sanford-Brown College. It paid the Podesta Group $380,000 in 2010 to lobby on proposed rules that would cut off federal subsidies to for-profit colleges that produced poor results for students.
Harrison also lobbied for Google, advocating for net neutrality regulations that the Obama administration promulgated, to the delight of Google. The Trump administration overturned these regulations.
When Lockheed Martin won billions in Pentagon contracts for the F-35, a fighter jet widely panned as a boondoggle, Harrison was one of its lobbyists fighting to keep that funding coming.
Boeing was another heavy-hitting defense client of Harrison’s. Harrison also lobbied on Boeing’s behalf for the continuation and expansion of the Export-Import Bank, which dedicates 40% of its financing to subsidize Boeing exports. Harrison in 2016, while chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, supported Clinton in the Democratic primary. Clinton said she wanted to “put Ex-Im on steroids.”
Harrison also lobbied to protect collection agencies’ right to make robocalls. The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals successfully fought off federal regulations restricting robocalling by collection agencies. Harrison was a registered lobbyist in this fight.
After BP dumped 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, it hired Harrison and his Podesta Group colleagues to lobby the federal government on the issue.
After Congress and the Obama administration bailed out General Motors, and while the taxpayers owned part of the company, GM paid $750,000 to the Podesta Group for lobbying. Harrison was one of those taxpayer-funded corporate lobbyists.
The Alliance for Clean Coal Electricity, a joint lobbying venture of electricity and coal giants, paid the Podesta Group more than $1 million over 2.5 years to lobby for federal subsidies.
When Pilots of America was pressing Congress to keep out foreign competition, Harrison was one of its lobbyists.
Harrison’s other lobbying clients included US Airways, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, the American Health Care Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, Herbalife, General Dynamics, and tobacco companies.
The Podesta Group was dissolved during the Trump administration amid revelations about undisclosed Russian lobbying.
Harrison became a celebrity in 2020 in his long-shot run against Sen. Lindsey Graham, which he lost by more than 10 points. The bright spot was that Harrison raised a record-setting $131 million. It’s clear Harrison knows where the big money is, which makes him the perfect man to run Biden’s DNC.
