Lawmaker’s Leap To Lobbyist Reeks
In April this year, state Rep. Todd Mielke admitted he didn’t have all the answers to the state’s health care problems. So he brought in lobbyists from insurance companies and they helped write the law that would gut the health care reforms of 1993.
He must have learned plenty from those experts. Last week he started a high-paid power job with Johnson & Johnson, a Fortune 500 health-care products firm.
Now, Johnson & Johnson had no part in the reversal of the health care reform, they’ve never donated to Mielke’s campaign, and Mielke applied for the job long after the session had ended. Still, the hop from legislator to lobbyist over the course of a weekend is troubling, if not unethical.
Although it’s probably not a case of quid pro quo, Mielke clearly knew about the job because of his position in the state Legislature. By his own admission, he’s no expert in the health-care arena; his only jobs have been in politics and his family’s excavation business. Obviously, the reason he was attractive to Johnson & Johnson was because of his contacts throughout state government.
That’s precisely the problem.
Mielke’s meteoric rise in the House made him chairman of the House Republican Caucus at 30. Because of a relatively easy campaign last year, Mielke was able to devote much of his time to recruiting and supporting the new class of freshmen - 30 Republicans - who were elected during the Republican landslide of 1994. Many of them owe their jobs to him.
Mielke takes these considerable debts with him to his new job, as well as his intimate knowledge of senior lawmakers, their staffs and the system in general. That’s what makes him so valuable to a company like Johnson & Johnson, not his encyclopedic knowledge of Band-Aids and cold medicines.
And that’s what’s sleazy about Mielke’s job change. Public outrage over the influence of special interest lobbyists led to a one-year cooling-off period for members of Congress looking to make the lucrative leap. Washington state law doesn’t go that far. Instead, it restricts lawmakers and state employees from taking jobs for two years that involved contracts they authorized and from taking jobs that were clearly a reward.
That’s not good enough, and legislators would be smart to follow Congress’ lead toward restoring public confidence in their institutions.
Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane, says he’s comfortable with the way things are. “It basically comes down to the individual person and whether they are ethical.”
Sorry, senator, but that’s too big a risk to take in politics these days.
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