In New Hampshire, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig’s Mayday PAC has endorsed Scott Brown’s Republican primary challenger and recently sent out a mailer calling Scott Brown a “Washington lobbyist,” prompting an angry response from the Brown campaign — calling it a “flat-out lie.”
“This is a flat-out lie. Scott Brown is not nor has he ever been a lobbyist. Ever,” campaign manager Colin Reed wrote, calling on Lessig to “immediately cease and desist with the mailer in question.”
Lessig posted the letter on his blog conceding the point that Brown is not, by definition, a lobbyist; however, Lessig also seems to think he, not the law gets to define who and what a lobbyist is, or isn’t.
So yes, according to the Senate, Scott Brown isn’t a “lobbyist.” But I submit to anyone else in the world, a former Senator joining a “law and lobbying firm” to help with Wall St’s “business and governmental affairs” is to make him a lobbyist. Because to anyone else in the world, when you sell your influence to affect “business and governmental affairs,” you are a lobbyist.