Gettingthingsdone
Energy deputy is proud of ‘understanding government and how it works’
WASHINGTON — Dan Brouillette — in the language of President Donald Trump — is a “swamp creature.”
A sober-looking 55-year-old with a graying beard, Brouillette spent more than a decade as a staffer on Capitol Hill, learning how to make deals and get legislation moving. Then he took the connections he made and moved onto corporate lobbying, first for the automaker Ford Motor Co. and then with the Texas-based insurance giant USAA.
It would not be a notable story in Washington, where movements between public service and the private sector have long been the norm. Except now he is back in government again — as Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s deputy — at a time Trump is promising to “drain the swamp” and rid the capital of the lobbyists and “deep state” bureaucrats who have long made Washington go.
“It is what is. I’m not embarrassed by my history,” Brouillette said in an interview. “There’s also value in understanding government and how it works. To take the absolutist view that in order to serve you have to have never served, to me is a bit far.”
In an era when politics has become its own form of celebrity, Brouillete is among a rare class of Washington
operatives who contentedly stay behind the scenes, quietly pulling the levers of power. While the bosses stand before the cameras in perpetual campaign, he is one of the nameless, faceless men and women who work out the details and compromises that keep government from freezing up entirely.
“Dan would say, ‘No, I work the back room. I keep the trains running for you guys, that’s my role,’ ” said Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman for whom Brouillette worked on and off for almost two decades. “There are some people not looking for the spotlight.”
In a town of big talkers and even bigger egos, Brouillette has developed a reputation as the guy who could get things done. Along the way, he got to know the right people — powerful elected officials like former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour as well as wealthy businessmen like Bill Ford, grandson of the auto maker’s founder, Henry Ford, and former CEO of the company
When Brouillette arrived in Texas in 2006 to take over lobbying operations for USAA, he gravitated toward Perry, who was in the midst of a three-term run as Texas governor, helping to raise tens of thousands of dollars for Perry’s campaigns.
“If you’re going to be in that position in San Antonio, you’re going to be close to the governor,” said Austin Barbour, a veteran political consultant in Austin who served as executive director to Perry’s Super PAC during his presidential run. Art of the deal
Like many in Washington, Brouillette began his political career as a Capitol Hill intern, running errands and grabbing coffee for members of Congress. But where other interns might have been freshly minted college grads, Brouillette was in his late 20s, an Army veteran whose wife was assigned a nursing position in the intensive care unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
He grew up in the Louisiana bayous, the sort of place where “there’s probably more alligators than people,” Brouillette joked. He worked odd jobs, welded oil pipelines and, like his father and grandfather before him, joined the military, eventually driving tanks in Germany for the Army at the end of the Cold War.
When he arrived in Washington, he was unsure what he would do. An acquaintance suggested applying for a job on Capitol Hill.
“I told him I don’t know anything about politics,” Brouillette recounted. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about that, just go tell them you’ll work for free. You’ll meet some people, and everything will be fine.’ ”
Brouillette landed with his hometown congressman, Tauzin, and so began his political education. In the late 1980s, Tauzin was a politician on the way up, rising through the Democratic Party. And when Democrats lost control of the House in 1995, Tauzin switched sides, eventually becoming chairman the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“The thing I learned from Billy was the importance of doing a deal,” Brouilette said. “He taught me make sure you figure out what the winds are early in the process, figure out what you want and figure out what others want and bring everything to the table and work 110 percent to get to yes.”
As Tauzin’s star rose, so did Brouillette’s. He spent eight years as Tauzin’s legislative director before moving to the George W. Bush administration as an assistant secretary of energy. After two years there, Brouillette returned to the Hill to become staff director for Tauzin on Energy and Commerce.
It was the early 2000s, a pivotal time for energy policy. From drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to tax credits for renewable energy, Democrats and Republicans were at odds, recalled Tauzin, now a consultant in Washington.
“There was a failure to get an energy bill done, so I brought (Brouillette) in and he turned it around in a heartbeat,” Tauzin said. “He took it on like he was drilling a bunch of young recruits and worked everyone to death until we got the job done.”
The legislation cleared the House, but fell two short of the 60-votes needed to bring the bill to a vote in the Senate. But it cemented Brouillette’s reputation as a deal maker.
Brouillette “was young, but he was a Tauzin guy,” said Scott Segal, a veteran energy lobbyist. “He was one of the staffers to see if you wanted to be impactful on energy legislation in those years.” Healthy paydays
Then he was gone, off the public payroll and working as a lobbyist. When Brouillette, the father of nine, left Capitol Hill in 2004, he was earning approximately $150,000 a year. By the time he left USAA, he was earning more than $800,000 a year — enough to buy a more than 1-acre estate in the wealthy San Antonio enclave of Shavano Park.
During those years in San Antonio, he built USAA’s public relations and lobbying operation virtually from scratch. That brought him into the orbit of Perry, a military veteran who fiercely championed Texas companies and constantly tried to recruit new ones by touting the state’s low tax burden. Perry declined to be interviewed for this story.
The pair first met in the mid2000s, while Brouillette was still at Ford and the automobile giant was considering building a factory in Texas. The plant never got built, but over a series of meetings in Texas, the two got to know each other. When Brouillette took the job with USAA in 2006, Perry was among the first to greet him with the state’s signature, “Gladyou-got-here-as-fast-as-youcould sort of welcome,” Brouillette said.
As the top lobbyist for a large insurance company, Brouillette moved within the moneyed classes that fund political campaigns.
With a more than $100,000 donation from USAA to the Republican Governors Association, Brouillette was on the guest list for a 2012 ski weekend at the Deer Valley ski resort in Utah. The event attracted a who’s who from politics and business, featuring mountain guides, shopping excursions and dinners with Republican governors and senior staff — including then-Gov. Perry’s budget director. Perry presidential campaign
When Perry ran for president in 2012, Brouillette was recruited to help, working with wealthy San Antonians like Lowry Mays, the founder of Clear Channel Communications, and Red McCombs, the former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Vikings. He arranged for Perry to speak at USAA’s headquarters on the outskirts of San Antonio and helped him raise $77,000 in contributions from USAA employees — not to mention his own $5,000 donation.
“What I saw was the work he did on the ground in Texas. We (at USAA) were beneficiaries of the policies he passed in Texas, and I could speak credibly about that,” Brouillette said. “The employees absolutely loved him.”
Brouillette built strong connections with other powerful politicians. When Jindal, then the governor, was looking in 2013 to fill a spot on the Louisiana State Mineral and Energy Board, which manages the state’s oil and gas holdings, he turned to Brouillette, a friend from the George W. Bush administration.
Two years later when Jindal ran for president, Brouillette helped him, too. USAA donated $100,000 to the American Future Project, an independent political and fund-raising committee supporting Jindal’s campaign. Quid pro quo
In January, Trump caught many political observers off guard when he named Perry as secretary of energy. Perry, out of the governor’s office for two years, was best known to most of the country as the guy who forgot which federal agency he wanted to shut down during a presidential debate before cha-chaing off to the TV show “Dancing with the Stars.”
If he was going to get up to speed on a department that not only managed energy policy, but also the nuclear weapons stockpile, cybersecurity and intelligence operations, he needed a guide. Perry called Brouillette, who agreed to a series of prep sessions ahead of Perry’s confirmation hearing in the Senate.
“Everyone thinks (the Department of Energy) is just oil and electricity,” Brouillette said. “It’s only those of us who have worked on the Hill and overseen this place who understand this place.”
The confirmation hearing was a big success. When it came time to choose Perry’s deputy, there was no shortage of applicants. A deputy secretary is near the top of Washington’s food chain, a position that confers influence and can lead to Cabinet posts or the presidency of a major university.
The decision was obvious to everyone around Perry. Not only was Brouillette a proven Washington hand, he had the business background that Trump sought. Tauzin, a hunting buddy of Perry’s, recalled contacting the former governor to congratulate him on his selection.
“I told him Dan is so well positioned to make Rick’s career a big success,” Tauzin recounted. “Rick said he already knew that.”
“Everyone thinks (the Department of Energy) is just oil and electricity. It’s only those of us who have worked on the Hill and overseen this place who understand this place.” Dan Brouillette