The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com (subscription required) has a blurb today about the lobbying issue entitled "The Daschle Family Business." It notes that Daschle "abruptly dropped plans to run for president" because of his wife's lobbying (Dean would have had a field day with that one):
The Minority Leader has long had to deal with questions about work that his wife, Linda, does as a lobbyist for the Washington law firm of Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell. While Mrs. Daschle has always insisted that she doesn't lobby the Senate, Republicans say that "Linda the Lobbyist" will still be a campaign issue. "I don't think there is any comparison," Dick Wadhams, Mr. Thune's campaign strategist, told Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. "John Thune is not an elected official, Tom Daschle is. That is a big, huge difference."Why should South Dakota voters care? Because they will soon be bombarded with ads claiming that one candidate or the other has lost touch with the folks back home and fallen in with Washington city slickers. Between the two, Mr. Daschle appears to have the bigger problem. A member of Congress since 1978, he abruptly dropped plans to run for president last year in part because of questions about his wife's lobbying. Even the liberal Washington Monthly magazine concluded: "The landmines in Linda Daschle's professional portfolio will make Hillary Clinton's pork futures and law-firm billings look like mousetraps."
That article, entitled "Tom Daschle's Hillary Problem," detailed Mrs. Daschle's work with one client in particular -- American Airlines, which has had six fatal crashes since 1994 and incurred large fines for safety violations at the same time it lobbied "to water down safety and security regulations that might have helped foil the World Trade Center attacks." After 9/11, Mrs. Daschle's lobbying --- and her husband's vote -- also helped enact the airline bailout law that resulted in American Airlines "escaping most legal liability for the hijackings and getting $583 million in cash grants -- taxpayer money it will never have to repay," wrote author Stephanie Mencimer.
These and similar issues are likely to surface in South Dakota for the first time because Mr. Daschle hasn't had a strong opponent since his initial election to the Senate in 1986. He can be expected to respond vigorously. The latest FEC reports indicate he has $4 million in cash on hand.
Again, why did the Daschle campaign make a big deal out of lobbying?
UPDATE: A reader also notes this piece entitled "Lobbying is a Daschle Family Affair" by Jeff Gannon. I guess this explains the Daschle campaign's sensitivity to matters relating to the "Daschle family." Now one really wonders why they brought this up.
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