Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Deborah Ross of Raleigh, North Carolina, wants to hobble the hinges on the “revolving door” from Congress to lobbying by barring former politicians from taking lobbyist jobs until they’ve been out of office for 10 years.
Ross’ support for making former federal lawmakers wait 10 years to lobby – instead of the two-year ban under current law – is part of an ethics plan her campaign unveiled Monday. Public opinion polls show a tightening race between Ross – who was a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina for five years before she was elected to the legislature – and incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Burr in North Carolina.
Ross says her plan to “clean up politics” includes:
▪ A 10-year “cooling off period” between leaving office and lobbying. The last Democrat to serve as a senator from North Carolina, Kay Hagan, is now a consultant at a D.C. lobbying firm but will not be able to register as a lobbyist until next year.
▪ New federal laws to effectively undo the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which allows companies and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising to support or oppose candidates.
▪ Banning businesses from writing off city- and county-level lobbying expenses on their tax forms, Such write-offs already are banned for federal lobbying.
▪ A ban on direct campaign donations from business executives and lobbyists who work on federal government contracts and from political action committees that work on behalf of federal contractors.
“Evidence shows that increased political contributions correspond with more success in landing government contracts,” Ross says on her campaign website.
Also on Monday, Ross’ campaign criticized Burr – a two-term senator from Winston-Salem – for his opposition four years ago to a bipartisan bill that would keep politicians and their staffs from profiting from insider trading by virtue of having access to nonpublic information that could affect stock prices and markets. Burr was one of three senators to vote against the bill, which is now law.