Politics Update on Dino Rossi’s Lobbying Foundation
Mary Lane, the executive director of Dino Rossi’s new foundation, just called to tell me that the new group isn’t going to lobby legislators. They’re going to file w the PDC as a “grassroots lobbying” group, which means they can’t lobby legislators. They can only lobby the public…or “raise awareness.”
They will also have non-profit 501(c)(4) status, which means unlike 501(c)(3) nonprofits, they can take political positions and endorse candidates. They can’t, however, do independent ads targeted at the general public on behalf of candidates.
Lane says they aren’t going to take positions on candidates anyway. She says they’ll be doing mailings and ads directed at the public to advocate on state budget and fiscal issues. According to the PDC, if the group takes a position on any bill pending before the legislature it will have to disclose who’s supporting them financially. If they’re not dealing w specific legislation, but simply “raising awareness” on “issues” … it’s my understanding that they don’t have to disclose their donors.
I asked Lane if the new group was relying on Rossi’s recent donor list. She said “No, not really. Right now, we’re just relying on people Dino knows who are interested in fiscal responsibility issues.”
Lane also says the group will be non-partisan.
Oh, as to the bizarre photo of the U.S. Capitol, she just laughed and kept saying the group wasn’t officially up and running yet. Oh, and if you go to their site now…they’ve fixed it.
She also asked me if Charles Mudede still worked at The Stranger.
I said that he did. She then recounted a story that she clearly holds dear. She said she had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Mudede once at a bar on Pike Street during the 2004 election season, and when Charles found out she was Rossi’s communications director, he told her he thought she must be kidding. “You don’t really believe in that stuff?” she remembers a bewildered Mudede asking. He then told her that he was a Marxist. At this point, Lane was just as flabbergasted by Mudede as he was by her. He then tried to explain why being a Marxist was a wise decision in today’s corporate superstructure. Lane told him they’d have to agree to disagree. Good luck w that.
I love how being a corporate hack (good or bad) is now "grassroots". My other question was whether Lane spat up her drink when the words "Marxist" came from Mudede's mouth... that would be a picture for the Stranger archives I figure