The King of K St.: Tommy Boggs faces a new challenge

He’s still playing the part to perfection. Last year, Washingtonian magazine named him D.C.’s most influential hired gun.

His firm, Patton Boggs LLP, billed more than $42 million in lobbying fees in 2007, according to the nonprofit group Center for Responsive Politics. In the last decade, his firm has billed nearly $280 million for its services — tops in D.C., according to the center.

By all rights, the King of K Street should be strutting his stuff. When asked for an interview, though, he demurred.

“He really doesn’t do media anymore,” his spokeswoman said.

Can it be that the man whose name is synonymous with power has grown modest in his middle age?

Maybe, but some political analysts offer other reasons why Boggs, 67, may have gone to ground.

“They’re scared of the netroots. In any meeting of senior Democratic staff, someone says, ‘What does MoveOn.org say about this?’ ” said Michael Franc, who worked for then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and who now studies lobbying for the Heritage Foundation. “In the modern sense, you don’t even have to be in Washington, and you can be more powerful than all these lobbyists. I’m sure Tommy Boggs was saying, ‘Who the hell is this guy in the Daily Kos?’ ”

Lobbyists, including Boggs, have taken a lower profile since the Jack Abramoff scandal began unspooling four years ago. Junkets, gifts, financial cutouts, quid pro quos by the score — lobbyists were shoved out of the front pews of respectability.

This year, 12,000 lobbyists are registered for business. That’s an eight-year low, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Boggs was born into one of Louisiana’s ruling families. His father, Hale, was House majority leader and one of the last great Southern foghorn politicos.

As a boy, Boggs was regularly bounced on the knees of men whose names now adorn Capitol monuments: Rayburn (known as “Mr. Sam” to young Tommy), Kennedy, LBJ.

His first job was running the elevator at the House of Representatives.

For two fleeting years, Boggs tried his hand on the government side, serving in Lyndon Johnson’s administration. He made it as far as posts at the Joint Economic Committee and the National Defense Executive Reserve.

In 1966 he became a partner at a law firm that would later take his name. Lobbying was considered vulgar at the time, and most top-shelf D.C. lawyers shied away from it.

Boggs swallowed his principles with the profits, and now the House elevators seem to run for him.

He’s successful because, since boyhood, he’s never forgotten a friend.

“He understands politicians,” said fellow super-lobbyist David Hoppe, a former aide to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. “He understands what drives them; he’s sympathetic to what they go through in their lives.”

How does he keep it up after all these years? Part of it is ancestral charm. Friends describe a deep, rich voice that retains the bayou twang of his father despite Boggs’ upbringing in Washington. He also has a warm, guffawing chuckle, not to mention a reservoir of bawdy tales of D.C.’s aristocracy.

“He’s got some great stories about LBJ,” said friend and American University political scientist James Thurber. “Get him going on that, man.”

But his signature skill, friends and political pros say, is that he knows when to shut up. Joseph C. Goulden’s 2005 book, “The Money Lawyers,” describes Boggs sitting in his office with some associates, gumming a fat cigar and listening to then-Senate Majority Leader Lott on the phone. Boggs’ associates were quiet, too.

“From experience they realize that Boggs’ Buddha-deep silence is a signal that he is seeking a solution for a problem — ‘Tommy running his traps,’ ” a Boggs intimate told Goulden.

Boggs has always said his key asset is information. He has spent his life in the Capitol, and he knows the place, nooks and knots.

“The knowledge of who likes whom, who has interest now that’s hot ... that kind of information is valuable,” Boggs told The New York Times in a 1989 interview. “And we tend to be a pretty good repository for that kind of information.”

The problem is that in the 21st century, it’s harder to have an absolute monopoly on information.

“The story of American society after the Internet is the story of the decreasing relevance of middlemen and institutions: People want to do for themselves,” said journalist Matt Bai, whose book, “The Argument,” was one of the first to spot the growing influence of netroots groups on Boggs’ Democratic party.

Indeed, the netroots groups are impatient with compromise and make no secret of their scorn for professional lobbyists.

“There’s this fetish for bipartisanship. And sometimes bipartisanship is stupid,” said Matt Stoller, a writer for the Web site OpenLeft.org. “It’s often just corruption: Conservative Democrats and Republicans get together and agree to bribe each other. That’s bipartisanship.”

Political analysts point to the 2006 debate over so-called “net neutrality.” A Republican-sponsored bill that would allow communications companies to charge different rates for different Internet users had the support of big companies with deep pockets.

But the blogosphere went ballistic. The bill was defeated, and now the Democrats are considering legislation that would require communications companies to offer flat rates for all Internet users.

Boggs was on the losing side of the issue, representing big telecommunications companies.

Bai said it would be “a gross simplification” to suggest that big-time lobbyists like Boggs are on their way out. They simply have too much “cash and cachet.”

“But there is this other force. MoveOn.org can get in to see any Democratic senator or congressman,” Bai said. “Ten years ago, people could deliver petitions to the Hill — but it took them months to put it together. Now, an Internet appeal can go out, and you can shut down some senator’s switchboard or crash a server within an hour.”

That hasn’t been lost on Boggs or other super-lobbyists. Colleagues, rivals and friends say that he and others are already reaching out to Web groups to get some of their own Internet juju.

“Most people who are good at their job try to learn from other people who are successful,” said Hoppe, the super-lobbyist and former Lott aide.

He points to companies such as Verillion that are already making a mint by helping big companies monitor their Web image and crafting high-tech responses to their Internet foes.

AU’s Thurber said Boggs is already ahead of the Internet/grassroots curve.

“He’s adapted to the new environment of lobbying, which is not just personal contact. You have to build coalitions — grassroots, top roots, Astroturf,” Thurber said of Boggs. “He understands that, and he either hires them or contracts them.”

bmyers@dcexaminer.com