Millions for Axelrod in sale of firm
David Axelrod: lobbyist extraordinaire.
As he prepared to take a job in the White House at the end of last year, David Axelrod sold the political consulting firm that helped elect President Barack Obama for $2 million to a group of consultants who helped steer Obama’s campaign.
Now, I’m not someone who believes success should be punished, so more power to Axelrod for being successful. However, I do take issue with hypocrisy (all his and his buddies’ nagging about ‘the rich’) and, well, with secret deals between friends, intertwining businesses with politics, and enriching all involved:
According to a disclosure form released Friday evening by the White House, the firm, AKP&D Message & Media, paid him $897,000 last year, when it had basically turned itself into an arm of the Obama campaign, which paid the company $2.5 million…
The firm became the source of some controversy during the presidential campaign, when The Washington Post reported that in 2006, Michelle Obama urged the University of Chicago’s hospital, where she served as an executive, to hire ASK to drum up community support for a controversial urban health initiative…
Entitled “The Secret Side of David Axelrod,” the story asserted that the firm was a master of “Astroturf organizing” — a practice the good government groups with which Obama worked closely in the Illinois Legislature and U.S. Senate have lambasted as a way to skirt lobbying laws.
Additionally, New York State lobbying records obtained by POLITICO show that Madison Square Garden paid ASK $1.16 million to lobby in 2004 — the biggest lobbying contract of the year in the state.
Didn’t Obama run as a ‘reformer’? A man who hated lobbyists and everything they represent?
Read it all at Politico.
