Packwood Gets Back In The Game

IT'S A LONG WAY FROM THE RAREFIED air of Capitol Hill to a windowless basement office on the edge of Georgetown. "I'm watching the overhead," says Bob Packwood. "A lot of fellas start out with woodwork and paneled walls and pretty soon they can't afford it." Yes, this is the same Bob Packwood who resigned from the U.S. Senate a year ago after former staff members lodged sexual-misconduct charges against him. The modest office is the Oregon Republican's headquarters as he launches his new career--lobbying. There are snapshots from his glory days on the Senate squash court with Sen. John Chafee, and a stack of books autographed by friends. The slim volume on top, a tome on public policy, came from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Packwood calls his new venture Sunrise Research. "It's better than sunset," he says, hopefully.

Lobbying is a natural way for once powerful people to cash in on their connections. So natural, in fact, that Congress passed a law in 1989 requiring outgoing legislators to wait at least a year before registering as lobbyists. This month Packwood, who was chairman of the influential Finance Committee, held off for 11 days after the deadline before filing. Now he will be seeking favors from many of the same senators who, though they drummed him out of office, are still his friends. "The public hates this stuff, that a guy who ran the Finance Committee is now lobbying the Finance Committee," says Mandy Grunwald, a consultant who worked for anti-Packwood women's groups during his last days in the Senate. Openly associating with him is considered so politically incorrect that Packwood won't reveal his fledgling client list.

Packwood does have considerably more leverage than the average legislator turned lobbyist. He plans to specialize in estate-tax law, which he helped write. One of his oldest friends is the reclusive Sen. Bill Roth, the new Finance chair. "I'd hire Packwood," says one Washington lawyer. "You only need one contact on the Finance Committee if you want a tax provision. You go to him, and it's a rifle shot." And as a former senator (with a pension of about $89,000 a year), Packwood has access to the best places for buttonholing lawmakers: the Senate steam room, the cloakroom, the gym.

Most lobbyists are required to list their clients with the government. But a loophole allows "lobbying coalitions" to remain anonymous. So Packwood has created a coalition of unnamed organizations called American Business Is Local Enterprise, or ABLE. Its target--though you could hardly tell from the title--is estate-tax relief.

History is on Packwood's side. After Ways and Means chairman Wilbur Mills was found cavorting with a stripper in the Tidal Basin in 1975, he built a career as a tax lobbyist. "I'll see anybody you send to me," Moynihan told Mills. Now a spokesman for Moynihan says there will be "absolutely no" comment on Packwood's venture. But what matters for Packwood is not what his old colleagues say in public--it's what they'll do for his clients in private.