The Politico's Kenneth Vogel takes a look at a part of Fred Thompson's resume that could work against the new conservative darling: his twenty or so years as a Washington lobbyist.
Over about two decades of lobbying (during which he also acted and practiced law), Thompson made nearly $1.3 million and represented clients including a British reinsurance company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims, Canadian-owned cable companies, and deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to government documents and media accounts from his first run for the Senate in 1994.You have to like this if we get an Edwards-Thompson matchup: how can Republicans go after Edwards as a "trial lawywer" when their guy's a lobbyist? (Not that they won't try, of course).
During that special election to fill the Tennessee seat vacated by Al Gore's ascendance to the vice presidency, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Thompson's opponent, had blasted him as "a Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist.""Corrupt, self-dealing influence pedders." It has a nice ring to it.
But Republican Thompson crushed Cooper, 61 to 39 percent. That, however, was in a watershed Republican year, and it was before the Jack Abramoff scandal tarred lobbyists in the public's mind as corrupt, self-dealing influence peddlers.
Labels: 2008, Fred Thompson, Presidential election