DPVA: Ed Gillespie needs to disclose his client list.

From the DPVA:

Ed Gillespie says he wants to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate.  First he needs to tell us who he represents today.

RICHMOND – Ed Gillespie, the D-C lobbyist and former RNC chair, recently said he’s thinking about running for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. If he wants to represent Virginia in Congress, then Virginians deserve to know who Ed is representing today: Ed Gillespie needs to disclose his client list.

Ed has made millions of dollars over many years as a D-C lobbyist representing big oil, big business, and even a couple of sketchy foreign governments. Ed also was a partner in “a muscular lobbying shop sold in 2004, reportedly for $40 million,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch recently reported. His clients included Enron, the energy company who's corrupt activities cost thousands of employees their jobs and their life savings. .

From July 2007 through the beginning of 2009, lobbyist Ed walked through Washington’s “revolving door” to work in the Bush White House. He was a key architect of the Bush Administration’s runaway federal spending — and its massive corporate bailouts.

Since leaving the Bush White House in 2009, Ed  has worked as a D-C “shadow lobbyist.” That’s a clever job description that, according to The New York Times, allows lobbyists like Ed Gillespie to move “below the radar” by “taking advantage of legal reporting requirements that are full of loopholes.” Shadow lobbyists like Ed have “become a large but almost invisible part of special interest influence,” The Times recently reported. 

So if Ed Gillespie wants to represent Virginia in the Senate, he needs to come clean:

·      Ed should cancel and disclose his lucrative corporate and interest group contracts.

·      And Ed should reveal who has been paying his top-dollar speaking fees since leaving the Bush White House in 2009.

The last thing the Commonwealth, or our country, needs is a political partisan who spends a few nights each week in Virginia while working Monday-thru-Friday as a D-C “shadow lobbyist.”