Peter Schorsch
In case you missed, POLITICO Magazine has delivered a hagiography of uber-lobbyist (actually, he’s also Uber’s lobbyist) Brian Ballard.
It’s the kind of piece that, after it’s been published, you commission a rogue lumberjack to saw down a California Redwood just so that you have the kind of wood luxurious enough in which to frame it.
“(Brian) Ballard is a veteran Florida lobbyist who’s been in Washington for barely a year — the blink of an eye in an industry in which many of the top practitioners have spent decades inside the Beltway. But Ballard is closer to the president than perhaps any other lobbyist in town. He’s parlayed that relationship into a booming business helping clients get their way with the Trump administration — and his clients and even some of his rivals say his firm has a better grasp of what’s going on in the West Wing than almost anyone else on K Street … Ballard’s relationship with Trump has helped him solve a lucrative puzzle that has frustrated more established players … He’s a Trump-friendly out-of-towner who can connect with the establishment — he is a close ally of Senator Marco Rubio as well as Charlie Crist, the former centrist Republican governor of Florida who is now a Democratic congressman — and make corporate clients comfortable.”
Even the blind quotes from Ballard’s green-with-envy competitors are positive. They each essentially say, “Damn it, he’s gonna make a sh*t-ton of money between now and when Trump eventually leaves office and it’s gonna be very difficult for him to wheelbarrow all of that cash out-of-town.”
As glowing as the POLITICO Mag profile is, there’s a backstory it references that’s probably as interesting as the current Ballard profile.
“Bob Martinez lost reelection in 1990 to Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, and Ballard stuck around Tallahassee as a lobbyist. It wasn’t an easy to time to start out as a Republican lobbyist: Democrats held majorities in both chambers of the Florida Legislature and the governorship. But Republicans won control of the Florida Senate in 1994 and took the House two years later. And in 1998, Ballard’s old pal Jeb Bush was elected governor.
“A few weeks after the election, the Ledger of Lakeland, Florida, reported that Ballard’s firm — called Smith, Ballard, Bradshaw and Logan at the time — had something other Tallahassee lobbying firms ‘only wish they could claim: an undeniably special relationship with Bush that is being cautiously defended.’ Ballard brashly told the paper his firm had no more access to Bush than anyone else. ‘Anyone who thinks that when they are hiring us they have secured some special niche in the administration is wrong and should save their money,’ Ballard said. ‘Don’t hire us. Go somewhere else.’ “
That would be Jim Smith, Brian Ballard, Paul Bradshaw, and Mark Logan.
Three decades ago, Smith, Ballard, and Bradshaw left Bryant, Miller and Olive, the firm established by former Democratic Gov. Ferris Bryant, to capitalize on their proximity to Bush.
Fast-forward nearly 30 years and Ballard is “closer to the president than perhaps any other lobbyist in town” and Bradshaw (and Smith, who left Ballard to join Bradshaw’s firm) is the head of the largest (by client, if not overall revenue) governmental affairs firm in Florida.
Don’t you want to know what Ballard and Bradshaw, future masters of the political universe, were like when they were just starting out?
The current story of Ballard and Bradshaw is essentially the “Breaking Bad” of Florida politics — an incredible saga of how two firms, in their rivalries, drive much of the public policy debate in Florida (if you need just one example of what I’m referring to, read this article about how one recent food fight between two clients of the firm basically shut down a legislative session).
What I want from someone (it would have to be a better storyteller than me) is the “Better Call Saul” — the prequel to “Breaking Bad” — version of this political tale.
Of course, “Breaking Bad” is ultimately about one man, not two, as in this story. Regardless, it’d be intriguing to know how two young lobbyists became the Heisenbergs of state government.
