Dinner at French Laundry spotlights Capitol insiders
Twenty-two years ago, on the day after Gray Davis was elected governor of California, I hopped aboard a Southwest Airlines plane bound for Los Angeles.
I was heading south for Davis’ press conference and I was not alone. Several journalists and other Capitol figures were on the plane, including a lobbyist for public employee unions.
His union clients had helped Davis weather a very rough patch in his 1998 campaign for governor, when he faced two multimillionaire rivals in the Democratic primary and needed all the money he could get.
The lobbyist was rubbing his hands gleefully, expecting that his tight relationship with Davis would bring him a cornucopia of new clients and their fees.
I cite this instance because of the flap over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attendance at a birthday party this month for lobbyist Jason Kinney, a veteran political consultant who founded a lobbying firm, Axiom Advisors, shortly after Newsom was elected in 2018.
Kinney’s 50th birthday was celebrated with a lavish dinner party at French Laundry, and Newsom and his wife, Jennifer, attended even though it was the sort of gathering that Newsom had often discouraged to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the Newsoms’ attendance, its bad optics forced the governor to apologize, saying on Monday, “I shouldn’t have been there, I should have turned back around. And so when that happens, you gotta pay the price, but you also gotta own the mistake and you don’t ever make it again.”
The French Laundry incident, which reverberated loudly as an example of political hypocrisy, also put the spotlight on Kinney — a former speechwriter for
Gray Davis, incidentally — and his instantaneously lucrative lobbying practice.
As Politico pointed out, “Axiom reaped $10.9 million worth of lobbying work in 2019-20, the first legislative session during which Newsom was governor.”
The firm has nine lobbyists and more than 80 clients, most of whom are corporate entities or coalitions who in Capitol politics would be jousting with interests, such as unions and environmental groups, associated with Newsom’s Democratic Party.
“Some of Axiom’s clients highlight Kinney’s overlapping roles. Kidney dialysis firms DaVita and Fresenius paid Axiom $475,000 this session,” Politico reported. “During the same period, Kinney earned $90,000 from the California Democratic Party, which spent money to pass a labor-backed initiative regulating kidney dialysis. DaVita and Fresenius were the measure’s principal opponents.
“The single most remunerative client for Axiom in the last two years has been Marathon Petroleum, giving Kinney’s firm $525,000 worth of business. Marathon is a member of a powerful oil industry organization that battled proposals to ban hydraulic fracturing; Newsom called on the Legislature earlier this year to send him a fracking ban.”
Political decisions can have immense consequences and when conflicts arise, it’s prudent to have someone on retainer with a seat at the table in the back room. The lobbyist whom I chatted with 22 years ago still has a lobbying firm and dozens of clients who pay him more than $4 million a year. In real-world politics, one must pay to play with lobbying fees and campaign contributions. Rightly or wrongly, it is what it is.