AT&T Leads the PACs in Team Ryan Fundraising

The AT&T federal PAC donated $65,000 to Team Ryan Feb. 11, following a $5,000 donation Dec. 2. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson directly donated $1,000 to Team Ryan in March. AT&T Assistant Vice President-Federal Relations Kevin McGrann donated $500 in May. McGrann led the political operations for ex-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and joined AT&T when Boehner resigned.

“Speaker Ryan is grateful for the support he has received through Team Ryan,” Team Ryan Executive Director Kevin Seifert told us. “It's encouraging that so many support his agenda and are committed to advancing and protecting the House Republican majority.”

The $70,000 from AT&T’s PAC is only a small fraction of the many millions of dollars that Team Ryan, a joint fundraising committee authorized by and composed of Ryan for Congress, Prosperity Action and the National Republican Congressional Committee, raised since Ryan bulked up the operation after the start of his speakership in November. But industry PACs for Charter Communications, NCTA, NAB and Verizon didn’t give more than $15,000 to any single fundraising committee in this 2016 cycle. The highest from Comcast’s PAC were $45,000 offerings to the Republican and Democratic National Committees. Following AT&T, the biggest Team Ryan telecom/media donor PACs were iHeartMedia with a $20,000 donation in March and 21st Century Fox with a January donation of $15,000. The PACs for Amazon, CenturyLink, Cox Enterprises, CTA, Google, Microsoft, NAB, Verizon and Viacom kept their Team Ryan donations to $5,000. AT&T and other big spenders have more latitude in making PAC donations to joint fundraising committees like Team Ryan since the 2014 Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC.

“This is becoming a big avenue, these joint fundraising committees,” said Public Citizen Government Affairs Lobbyist Craig Holman. “AT&T is playing the game very wisely, and they always have.” Holman cited AT&T’s donations to Republicans in 1972 as a key way to ward off antitrust review then. He noted a lack of such high donations to Senate GOP counterparts this year and said that could mean AT&T sees the possibility of the Senate switching to Democratic control in the election, while Ryan retains speakership power. Such contributions are a “fundamental way of gaining access and influence to policymakers,” with a clear expectation from AT&T that Ryan will remain speaker and that such donations occur “for essentially a pay-to-play system,” he said. AT&T declined comment on its PAC donations and Holman's remarks.

The only entity that gave a higher amount of money to Team Ryan on a PAC level is Koch Industries, which gave $75,000 across two donations. Several individual donors gave higher amounts, with many offering $244,200 each, including several Koch family members. The Center for Responsive Politics noted the outpouring of donations to Team Ryan, chronicling in a January blog post the GOP mega-donors eyeing the fund.

Looking to 2017

Ryan isn't known for his telecom policy focus, but his speakership began with hiring as chief of staff David Hoppe, who has lobbied for AT&T, NAB, USTelecom and Verizon (see 1511060043). Ryan’s signature effort this year is "A Better Way," a set of GOP ideas poised to become 2017 priorities under a new administration. Its provisions on the economy slam much about the current FCC, including Communications Act Title II reclassification of broadband, what Republicans see as lack of agency transparency and outdated statutes overall. House GOP leadership under Ryan also broke from regular order this year when it immediately and unsuccessfully took a partisan, wireless industry-opposed Lifeline overhaul bill to the floor under suspension of the rules less than half a week after its introduction (see 1606200049).

“Ryan is at work setting his policy agenda,” said Holman, calling this “the ideal time for wealthy special interests” to make a play for influencing its contours. Such a financial offering from AT&T would likely be “very, very difficult for Speaker Ryan to ignore,” Holman said. He noted the many big-ticket telecom policy items before Congress now, from net neutrality to cybersecurity to rural connectivity concerns.

These Team Ryan contribution levels are “significantly higher” than before, said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Communications Director Jordan Libowitz. The AT&T PAC donation “might not be something specific” in its target “so much as getting on [Ryan’s] radar,” Libowitz said. He emphasized the 2016 election year and how Team Ryan’s influence will allow a lot of cash to go toward competitive House races. Keep watching for whether such larger donations to joint fundraising committees are isolated or become part of a new bigger pattern of Washington spending, Libowitz recommended, saying he wouldn't be surprised to see a pattern developing.

Team Ryan secured far more money from AT&T’s PAC than the two previous House speakers did in their fundraising efforts. AT&T is widely considered a heavyweight lobbying spender, doling out millions per quarter, but its PAC has never donated this much money to the speakership.

Donations to leadership PACs face limits that don't apply to joint fundraising committees like Team Ryan. The Boehner for Speaker joint fundraising committee received a $5,000 donation from AT&T’s PAC in the 2016 cycle, $20,000 in 2014 and $15,000 in 2012. In both the 2014 and 2012 cycles, the PAC donated $5,000 to Boehner’s Freedom Project leadership PAC, and in the 2010 cycle, the PAC donated $10,000 to Freedom Project in two transactions, a time that aligned with Boehner’s rise as speaker. In the 2008 cycle, AT&T’s PAC gave the PAC to the Future leadership PAC of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., $5,000, and in the 2006 cycle, $2,500. No donations followed once she lost her speakership, in the 2010, 2012, 2014 and present 2016 cycle.

Lids 'Blown Off'

Other players in the telecom, tech and media industries also supported Team Ryan with their pocketbooks over the past year, often with individual donations.

Apple CEO Tim Cook donated $5,400 on June 30, the same week that several other Apple executives donated thousands of dollars each. Facebook Vice President-Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan donated $10,000 in June, the same month that Google Senior Vice President Kent Walker donated many thousands. Stephen Luczo, CEO of data storage company Seagate Technology, gave Team Ryan $100,000 in April. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen donated $10,400 this year. Officials from such companies as Comcast, Viacom and Verizon made donations, too. Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas President Bruce Mehlman, whose lobbying clients this year include Dish Network, Frontier Communications, the Information Technology Industry Council, ICANN, the Tennis Channel, Twitter and the now Verizon-owned Yahoo and who is concurrently executive director of the Technology CEO Council and co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, gave $10,000 to Team Ryan in February.

“I support Team Ryan because I want him to succeed in making our party more optimistic, inclusive, substantive, serious and future-focused, even more critical given the schism within the GOP,” Mehlman, a former assistant secretary-technology policy for the Commerce Department under President George W. Bush, told us.

Public Citizen’s Holman warned of dangerous implications of the uptick in such donations, which he expects will emerge as a pattern for big companies. “Hopefully we’ll be able to return to some level of sanity later on,” he said, considering possible changes to the Supreme Court under the next administration. “The lids have been blown off when it comes to contribution limits. … It’s breathtaking.” Under the latest revamped rules, from the McCutcheon Supreme Court decision to contribution modifications included in 2014 appropriations law, the money surely “will skyrocket,” he predicted.