How Tammy Baldwin profits from the DC lobbyist ‘revolving door’ she often slams

[Geee]

Washington Examiner

To Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who is running for reelection in the swing state of Wisconsin in 2024, the “revolving door” between government and K Street is “spinning out of control as billionaires and special interests rig the system.”

Baldwin, the Badger State’s junior senator since 2013, says the constant flow of taxpayer-backed staffers to private industry, and vice-versa, poses conflicts of interest and results in working families getting left behind. The revolving door, she previously argued in an op-ed with Hillary Clinton in HuffPost, prompts the public to “start worrying that the foxes are guarding the hen house.”

 

But the Wisconsin Democrat’s criticism of the revolving door could place her in a tough spot this election cycle. Baldwin has accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations from lobbyists at influential firms who earned their stripes as aides in her Capitol Hill office over the last two decades, according to a Washington Examiner review of Federal Election Commission filings.

The donations underscore how ambitious employees in Baldwin’s office have decided against heeding her calls to slow the revolving door. A total of 24 of her employees have reportedly come from or gone into lobbying, including on behalf of companies in Wisconsin. Moreover, the cash is an apparent irony that Republicans are aiming to exploit this election cycle amid the GOP rallying around Eric Hovde, a businessman largely self-funding his Senate campaign.