Evan Bayh will attend a Washington, D.C. fundraiser with several of the city’s top lobbyists on Wednesday, complicating his efforts to shed the lobbyist label.
Bayh, who jumped into the lobbying sector after his first stint in the U.S. Senate, will raise cash from 11 top lobbyists on Wednesday afternoon, according to an invitation for the event.
Headlining the host committee is Steve Elmendorf, a D.C. lobbyist who represents clients ranging from Facebook to Goldman Sachs. Elmendorf’s firm, Subject Matter, is located in the same downtown office building as the event host, Avenue Solutions.
Other lobbyists listed as hosts for the event are Tracy Spicer and Amy Tejral of Avenue Solutions; Vic Fazio, John Jonas, and former Sen. Kay Hagan (D., N.C.) from Akin Gump; Heather McHugh of Capitol Hill Strategies; Dwight Fettig of Porterfield, Lowenthal, and Fettig; Jeffrey Peck and Jonathan Jones of Peck, Madigan, Jones, and Stewart; and Mike Smith of Cornerstone Government Affairs.
At least two of the hosts lobbied Congress on issues that Bayh was directly involved with during his years in the Senate.
Peck and Jones, for example, were part of a major lobbying effort on behalf of Indiana-based WellPoint Health Networks to make sure that the final Obamacare legislation included the individual mandate, which requires all individuals to buy health insurance.
Their lobbying firm took in $405,000 during the Obamacare debate from WellPoint to push studies showing that Obamacare "will only work if there is an effective individual mandate." Lobbying disclosure forms show that Peck and Jones were lobbying senators specifically on the individual mandate.
Bayh supported the individual mandate, voting against an amendment that would have stripped it from Obamacare.
Financial analysts noted how much WellPoint needed the individual mandate. The company’s stock soared when the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional and would remain.
WellPoint’s soaring stock price also helped Bayh’s bottom line.
His wife, Susan Bayh, was a member of the WellPoint board of directors and from 2008 to 2011 she was given nearly a million dollars in company stock, according to annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Bayh campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the lobbyist fundraiser, which comes as Bayh fights against the lobbyist label.
In a defensive ad released Monday, Bayh opens by saying that his opponent, Republican Rep. Todd Young, is lying by attacking him as a lobbyist.
But it is not just Bayh’s opponent doing the labeling. The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim described Bayh as a "corporate lobbyist" when he decided to run for Senate, pointing out lobbying campaigns he took part in with the firm McGuireWoods and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The D.C. fundraiser is nothing out of the ordinary for Bayh. Bayh was spotted last week attending a fundraiser at the Capitol Hill home of another prominent D.C. lobbyist.
Bayh’s campaign manager, also a registered lobbyist, held a closed-door donor briefing on Monday at the D.C. offices of Airlines of America, which currently pays Elmendorf for lobbying work.
Bayh entered the race less than two months ago and has not yet filed a fundraising report, so the amount of money he has brought in from the lobbying industry remains unclear. Bayh entered the race with nearly $10 million in his war chest.
Bayh maintains a lead over Young, but recent polls show that the race is tightening.