Alan Solomont, who heads Obama's New England fundraising, said tonight is about including everybody, raising money, generating excitement, and expressing the ``enthusiasm that people in our area, young and old feel, toward Barack's candidacy.'' ``Barack Obama is about challenging the status quo,'' Solomont said.
One of the best-known Democratic donors on his list of 130 top fundraisers, Alan Solomont, was registered as a federal lobbyist as recently as the last filing period for such registrations, at the end of 2006. Solomont, who helped raise more than $35 million for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, founded a nursing home and assisted-living company. During the administration of Bill Clinton, some Republicans claimed that he had used his clout as a fundraiser to argue against tougher regulations of nursing homes.
He also gets a better place at the table. One of the reasons the nursing home industry is hugely profitable is because its leaders, Solomont included, have fought off attempts at regulation and reform. When Solomont was raising money for Governor Dukakis, he was also helping craft the Dukakis policy on long-term care for the elderly.
Soloment isn't exactly surrounding himself with the most ethical people ever.
But though he had been vice chairman of the UMass board in the early 1990s and was one of two finalists for the UMass presidency, Solomont was passed over in favor of Jack Wilson, who impressed trustees during a stint as interim president. Solomont's partisan affiliations may have worked against him. In addition, although Solomont enjoys a solid business reputation, some speculated that after dealing with the controversy over William Bulger's brother, fugitive mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, the UMass board of trustees was leery of Solomont because of legal problems in which his brothers were embroiled. One brother, Jay Solomont, was in an Israeli prison on a charge of misappropriation of funds (a source close to the family says Jay was recently paroled); another, David Solomont, was accused of embezzling $1 million from a start-up firm (the case was recently dismissed after a settlement was reached).
I'm not a purist and I know that this is what you have to do to garner the huge sums of money to run for office. It's just useful to be skeptical here, and to recognize that lobbying and lobbyists aren't bad, per se, but that they are a fact of life. They cannot and should not be eliminated, but it's possible to change the way they do business structurally by forcing transparency on their political activities. It's also wise to recognize that people who have profited immensely from the status quo do not necessarily believe that changing the status quo means what we think it means. There are lots of ways to make change happen.
Update [2007-4-20 16:10:17 by Matt Stoller]:: I should add, though he hasn't released specifics, that I like the way Obama is talking about his energy plan.
"It will take a grass-roots effort to make America greener and end the tyranny of oil," Obama said. Earth Day this Sunday, he said, "should mark the beginning of a nationwide effort to harness our technology, our ingenuity and our will to achieve energy independence in our time."
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