Missouri Senate Race Entangled in Questions of Telecom Industry Influence

“I don’t see it violating any laws yet,” said Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman. “I am trying to make it illegal.”

Blunt, a member of GOP leadership and on the Commerce Committee, initially was expected to cruise to an easy re-election. His Democratic opponent Jason Kander, the Missouri secretary of state, is now within a point of Blunt, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average. The race is widely seen as a tossup.

Kander has attacked Blunt all year for his family lobbying connections, including Andy Blunt's dual role. In July, the Kander campaign focused on an April trip of media executives to Washington, apparently led by Andy and which included a meeting with staffers for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on the FCC set-top box proceeding. “You are lobbying the Senate,” a Kander spokesman said in a July statement. “Now that Andy Blunt has been caught lobbying the Senate, Missourians deserve to hear from Senator Blunt about this blatant conflict of interest and what he intends to do to clean it up.” The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee unveiled a political advertisement targeting Blunt’s lobbyist family connections last month. The Blunt campaign defended a bright line of separation between the state-level lobbying of Andy and the federal focus of Blunt as a Commerce member. Roy Blunt is very active on telecom and media policy, defending the joint sales agreements of broadcasters, criticizing net neutrality and often weighing in on FCC matters. The state telecom association is just one of many of Andy Blunt’s lobbying clients, according to a Missouri Ethics Commission report dated Wednesday. Andy isn't a registered federal lobbyist.

The McCaskill office meeting is “at least a modest conflict,” said Cowen and Co. analyst Paul Gallant. “But I do think the Missouri focus of his son’s work makes this less of an issue than if his son’s entire job was lobbying Congress. With limited exceptions, state-level trade associations lobby local officials, not federal.”

Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood hasn't encountered Andy Blunt’s work specifically. “But to the extent that this state association played a role in lobbying the Senate to maintain cable’s unlawful monopoly over set-top boxes, that certainly sounds like a conflict of interest -- especially in light of his father’s seat on the Senate committee charged with oversight of the FCC and the communications laws in play here,” Wood said.

One telecom industry lobbyist allied with Blunt defended the dual role of Blunt’s son, saying the attack seems potent but there’s little real substance to it. Andy has limited his practice to state lobbying and made a habit of not talking to his father about his clients and those interests, the telecom lobbyist said. The Missouri Cable Telecom Association is state-focused, with a fly-in to Washington to visit with the Missouri congressional delegation once every year or so, the Blunt ally said, citing the April meeting that Andy participated in and noting Andy didn’t talk to his father’s office or staff. Much of the federal lobbying will be left to national association lobbyists, this lobbyist argued. Although telecom has some overlap between federal and state policy, there's a state role with lobbyists focusing on state-level stakeholders, he said. Blunt, as a veteran lawmaker who has spent decades on Capitol Hill engaged on telecom policy, also knows all the major players in the policy sphere with direct relationships, the lobbyist said, saying the senator's son as campaign manager provides no magical source of access that didn’t exist already. But much of the general population misunderstands advocacy work, which has lent strength to Kander’s charges, the lobbyist said.

“In the telecom context, there's no firewall between state and federal policy,” countered New America Open Technology Institute policy counsel Josh Stager. “If anything, there's a lot of interaction between levels of government.” He cited the debate on municipal broadband, for example, where in states limiting municipal networks there’s “a perfect storm of federalism, where lobbying at the statehouse necessarily implicates federal policy.” The set-top issue is “just clearly a federal issue,” Stager said. “Last summer, cable lobbyists were all over the Hill trying to kill the FCC's proposal to end the set-top box monopoly. It sounds like Andy Blunt was one of them.”

“This poses some serious conflicts of interest,” warned Public Citizen’s Holman, who wants to outlaw some of the behavior at play in the next Congress. “This is a family of politicians and lobbyists all together.” He cited several concerns with Andy’s role, foremost being “the undue influence” of Andy and his clients with the senator. Telecom policy at state and federal levels is “very much interrelated” and Andy “is very aware of that,” Holman said, mentioning Andy's April visit to Washington. Given his role with Blunt, “Andy can sell that to his clients” and become “a much more valuable lobbyist,” Holman said. Andy also likely can help orchestrate fundraising including from telecom and media industry sources and direct the cable and TV spending, Holman said. “There are real concerns.”

The senator, who told us this summer his telecom policy interests likely don’t sway voters or affect fundraising, benefited from many thousands of dollars of donations from telecom and media industry political action committees and individual officials during this bid (see 1608190047 and 1608170032). Neither the Blunt nor Kander campaigns commented this week. Brad Woodhouse, who heads the American Democracy Legal Fund, requested a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into Blunt’s connections. His Oct. 13 letter focused on the lobbying of Blunt’s wife and alleged “numerous violations” of Senate rules. Ethics Committee spokespeople didn’t comment.