The Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics have released an extremely timely and thorough expose,
“Curious Clusters“, involving “hidden” Congressional campaign contribution bundling by health care special interests. Here’s their 1-2-3 on the investigation:

The investigation identified outside lobbyists that donated to the same members of Congress as their clients, and strongly suggests that special interest giving is enhanced by the K Street contributors they hire…

There is no indication that the extra giving by lobbyists was part of a planned effort by the healthcare firms to solidify their support among key members of Congress. But whether coordinated or not, the newly-found clusters of lobbyist giving clearly illustrate the intensity of the full-court press that the industry is currently waging on Capitol Hill.

In all, 61 members of Congress—39 in the Senate, 22 in the House, 38 Democrats and 23 Republicans—got money from 10 or more outside lobbyists whose healthcare or health insurance industry clients also contributed to their campaigns.

Sen. Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman who recently voted down two public-option amendments, was the third largest recipient after Republicans Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitch McConnell. (click the chart to enlarge). Of the 61 members, only two New Mexican names turn up: Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Martin Heinrich, both Democrats.

According to the research, Udall accepted $2,250 from two health-related organizations—Roche Holdings and UnitedHealth—which was then “enhanced”  ten-fold by $22,700 in donations from 21 lobbyists. Heinrich accepted $2,250 from Amgen, which was then amplified by $9,850 from 11 lobbyists.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, one of the original “gang of six” assigned to hash out a health reform bill and one of the eight Senate Finance members to vote for both public option amendments, was not one of the 61 Congressmen. Nor was Rep. Ben R. Lujan or Rep. Harry Teague.

The Solano Question (Should the media register as lobbyists?) was on the table during The Line, a panel segment of KNME’s the Line. Where did my boys Jim Scarantino and Marco Gonzales come down? You guessed it.

Their 60 seconds worth of sheriff-crit got Solano’s holster all in a bunch.

SFR has a pretty decent relationship with Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano. Not only do we whole-heartedly approve of his blogging, but we greatly appreciate his open-cell phone policy and his willingness to engage in our quasi-journalistic follies (like SFR’s zombie issue).

That said, we are feeling a little grumbly about his recent blog post “Has the legislature become beholden to the media?” in which he suggest that press corps oughta register as lobbyists. In the sheriff’s words:

Now its often been said don’t mess with the person who buys their ink by the barrel but this year more than any the media was relentless and had no problem taking sides on the issues and pushing their agenda using all forms of traditional and non traditional media outlets. Politicians have to pay attention to the media at least some of the time, especially during elections when if the news media gets the scent of blood they can devour a candidate. However, during this legislative session the press seems to have wielded a exceptional amount of influence. You can read the blogs and news stories after the previously mentioned bills were passed and you will see a more than sufficient amount of celebrating….

…Often times legislators are accused of being beholden to lobbyists when they listen to them or vote in their favor. So what about now that the media has won so many fights in one session. Would anyone in the media dare to write an editorial exclaiming that the media has had undue influence and the legislature has become beholden to the media lobby? I will not hold my breath.

The issues he’s talking about: sunshine and ethics. Now, Solano doesn’t single out any particular media organization, but two publications were behind the live-blogging phenom: the New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe Reporter. Two other bloggers were behind the (non-legislator) live web-casting: MG Bralley and Ched MacQuigg, who really oughta be the model for how easy and how good a video feed can be when the legislature next broaches the issue.

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Well, this is lame.

Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s office has replaced what used to be a fully searchable, hyperlinked directory of registered New Mexico lobbyists with a few massive, not-at-all searchable PDF files. Here’s the state’s much less user-friendly lobbyist information page.

This shows severe tone-deafness, given the current discussion over government openness at the state level. It’s also out of step with the times, given Obama’s push for online openness.

True, the presentation of the state lobbyist directory doesn’t matter directly to 99.98 percent of New Mexico’s population. But the other .02 percent is comprised of the lobbyists themselves, the interests they represent, the politicians who take their cash and the reporters (and other investigators) who try to keep them all honest. So it does matter how this information is presented. A half-assed, 192-page PDF file doesn’t hack it, especially when the old directory was far more useful.

At the Secretary of State’s office last week, I couldn’t help but scan down the visitor’s list. I only recognized one name: Lehland Lehrman, never-quite-off-the-ground 2008 Democratic Senate candidate and 9-11 Truth Activist. Until a few months ago, Lehrman was also editor of the Sun News, taking Barack Obama to task for the foreign experts he was consulting.

There aren’t any major races coming up, so why was Lehrman at the SOS’s office? Was he filing a complaint, a public information request, applying for a job?

We e-mailed him, and it turns out he registered a lobbyist on behalf of Mother Media (his Web site/organizations). His legislative agenda after the jump.

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