Media Puts Spotlight On Hutchison’s Failed Promises Of Change

Evidently the 2008 elections are just too boring for the MainStream media, because they are skipping ahead to the 2010 elections and putting the spotlight on the broken promises of The Aging Prom Queen, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

The Statesman outlines a litany of Hutchison’s broken promises:

Contributions from lobbyists who represent foreign countries. Hutchison’s campaign said in a March 1993 news release that Congress should eliminate lobbying activities for foreign governments and prohibit lobbyists who represent foreign countries from contributing to federal candidates. Foreign nationals are barred from donating to federal campaigns in the United States, and the Hutchison campaign warned in 1993 that foreign governments could use their lobbyists to make indirect contributions. The campaign also said that all lobbying by foreign countries should be conducted through the U.S. State Department.

But Hutchison has taken at least $25,000 in campaign contributions over the years from U.S.-based lobbyists who represent foreign countries, either from individual lobbyists or from the political committees of firms that foreign countries hire, according to records at the U.S. Justice Department.

That money is a sliver of the more than $25 million she has raised over the years as a federal candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and the lobbyists providing it usually have domestic clients as well. Still, they are the kinds of contributions that candidate Hutchison criticized.

Term limits.Hutchison’s campaign said in 1993 that Congress should limit House members to four two-year terms and senators to two six-year terms. Hutchison said in 1994, “I’ve always said that I would serve no more than two full terms,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

The concept of term limits was popular in the 1990s and helped Republicans win control of Congress, but it has lost momentum in the years since, and term limit legislation has never made it out of the House.

Hutchison, meanwhile, ran for and won her third full term in 2006. Her Senate office said she still supports a two-term limit for senators, “but unless all states sign on to such a limitation, Texans would be unfairly disadvantaged because of seniority privileges in the Senate.”

Campaign contribution limits. Hutchison said in 1993 that political action committees should be allowed to donate $1,000 per election. Since a primary and a general election count as separate contests, such a ceiling would actually limit PACs to giving each candidate $2,000 per cycle.

Today, donations from PACs are limited to $5,000 per election, or a total of $10,000 per cycle. In the two years leading up to her 2006 re-election, 25 PACs gave Hutchison $10,000.

Hutchison also has formed her own PAC, which members of Congress often do to distribute money to their colleagues. In the current election cycle, her PAC has given other candidates more than 40 checks for $5,000 apiece.

Congressional staffers-turned-lobbyists. In her first campaign, Hutchison’s camp said she wanted to “close the revolving door of the Congress and the executive branch whose members and staff become lobbyists.”

But some of Hutchison’s staffers have used that door. In September 2005, Dick Ribbentrop became her chief of staff. Until the end of April 2004, Ribbentrop was a registered lobbyist for the New York Stock Exchange. It’s unclear what he did between those jobs. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Ribbentrop left Hutchison’s office in April 2007. By the second half of that year, he was lobbying for UBS Americas Inc., an investment bank.

Lindsey Dickinson left Hutchison’s payroll as legislative counsel on June 12, 2007, according to Senate records. By the end of June, she was lobbying for telecommunications giant Comcast Corp. Mary Schneider left her job as Hutchison’s deputy regional director in July 2003. That October, she registered as a lobbyist for the Harris County Hospital District.

It’s always a pleasure to see the media throw hot grease on the Teflon Senator, but one must wonder why they aren’t paying more attention to elections that will actually matter this year.

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