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House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)

Dishonorable Mention

• Tried to slip a favor for big donor Altria into the Homeland Security bill. On Nov. 13, 2002, the same day Blunt was named House majority whip and just hours before House members were to vote on a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security, Blunt instructed his staff to insert language favored by Altria into the bill, which would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes. House Speaker Hastert removed the provision upon it being exposed.

The maneuver was all the more egregious because Blunt had a personal relationship at the time with Abigail Perlman, an Altria lobbyist, whom he has since married. Adding to the taint of Blunt’s action was the fact that Altria executives made a raft of generous donations to him in the weeks leading up to the attempted insertion. From Oct. 18 to 28, 2002, Blunt’s leadership PAC received 37 contributions totaling $30,900 from employees of Altria and its Philip Morris, Kraft Foods, and Miller Brewing units. Thirty-one of the contributions were received on Oct. 25, a day on which the PAC also received the then-maximum $1,000 each from three Altria lobbyists: Lindsay Hooper, Walter Steward and Franklin Polk. [Public Citizen report, 1/13/06]

• Blunt provided access to admitted felon and former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his colleagues, and went to bat for an Abramoff client. In May 2003, Abramoff lobbyist Todd Boulanger drafted a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton warning that “we hold you accountable” to prevent “reservation shopping” by the Jena Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana. The Louisiana Coushatta tribe, an Abramoff client, was fighting the Interior Department’s recognition of the Jena because they would provide competition for the Coushattas’ casinos. A toned-down version of Boulanger’s letter bearing the signatures of Blunt, then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was delivered to Norton in June of that year. Blunt signed two other letters to Norton opposing the Jena Choctaw’s efforts to open a casino.

Abramoff’s bond with Blunt and his staff was evidently strong. In March 2004, after Abramoff was fired by the law firm Greenberg Traurig for his questionable conduct, he was hired by Cassidy & Associates, a major lobbying firm. The person who recruited Abramoff to Cassidy was Gregg Hartley, Blunt’s former chief of staff turned Cassidy vice chairman and COO. [Public Citizen report, 1/13/06]

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