Whatever happened to Toby Moffett? - ex-reform Congressman now a lobbyist - Interview

Eighteen years ago he came to Washington to change the system. Now he's part of it.

A smooth, smartly dressed lobbyist is making a passionate pitch to Rep. William Hughes (D-N.J.) for a special break for his corporate client. The lobbyist is sincere, unusually comfortable in this setting. His dark eyes crinkle and brilliant teeth flash. The guy could be a politician or a TV news anchor.

His client, the upstart pharmaceutical firm U.S. Bioscience Inc., is worried because the 17-year patent on one of its drugs is about to expire, ending the company's monopoly. Hughes's subcommittee has power to extend the patent. The lobbyist had no trouble getting Hughes's sympathetic ear - they go way back.

To hard-line consumer advocate Ralph Nader, this scenario perfectly illustrates what's wrong with the "system" in Washington: downtown operators pulling strings behind closed doors to enrich certain "corporate predators" at the expense of the average working family - in this case by inflating prescription drug prices.

Reminded of Nader's comments later, the lobbyist bristles. "The very, very last person in America who knows anything about what families go through when they sit around the dinner table and talk about making ends meet is Ralph Nader," says Anthony "Toby" Moffett.

Wait a minute.

Toby Moffett?

Isn't Moffett that angry young man Nader helped send to Congress 18 years ago, one of the 75 young Democrats elected to the U.S. House of Representatives the year President Nixon resigned in disgrace? One of the "Watergate babies" who came to Washington vowing to reform the system? The limelight-loving lawmaker who battled the special interests and held no truck for compromise?

Well, times change, and so do people.

Today Moffett is back in town with five children, an elegant rented house in stately Cleveland Park, a summer home on the Connecticut shore. And more than $100,000 in debt from two failed political campaigns - his most recent, a stab at returning to the House in 1990. Moffett now receives a healthy six-figure salary from Hill and Knowlton Public Affairs Worldwide as an executive of a lobbying division called the Wexler Group.

"If you asked 100 people to predict in 1980 what Toby Moffett would be doing in 1992, not one of them would say he'd be a lobbyist," says Steve Hull, an aide to former Rep. Bill Ratchford (D-Conn.).

"No one can deny he was passionate in what he believed in and worked really hard for those causes," says Hull. "He had a higher profile than most, more passionate, less forgiving of others who had other viewpoints. Which makes the contrast [with his current profession) even more vivid."

Moffett certainly isn't the only former member of Congress to spin through the revolving door, and lobbying for big-name clients, in Washington at least, is a workaday profession. "I don't see this as a big mortal sin, frankly," says the Rev. Robert Drinan, who served in Congress with Moffett during the early 1970s.

But Hill and Knowlton isn't just any PR and lobbying shop; the huge Manhattan-based firm has become notorious for accepting some of the world's most unsavory clients. The People's Republic of China, post-Tiananmen Square massacre. Haiti's brutal Duvalier dictatorship. Exxon after the Valdez oil tanker spill. The scandal-plagued Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). And most recently, a $10 million campaign financed by a Kuwaiti exile group to promote the Persian Gulf war. As a new book about the firm, Susan Trento's The Power House, notes, "One New York H&K executive said his father was too embarrassed to tell his golfing buddies where his son worked."

It's tempting to conclude that Toby Moffett has sold out. But sit down with Moffett at his large, shabbily genteel Wexler Group office and he paints a more complex portrait of a content 48-year-old family man who's happily addicted to inside politics, has bills to pay and still has freedom to indulge his liberal yet pragmatic principles.

Either way, Moffett has become a player in the same entrenched network of revolving-door, special interest lobbyists whom many candidates ran against in 1992 and Bill Clinton vowed to take on.

Invasion of the Longhairs

When people look back to 1974, the year Moffett began his journey in national politics, the language they use to describe the country's political spirits is eerily familiar.

"He came to Congress amid all the bitterness, suspicion and resentment the American electorate held toward institutions here," says lobbyist Peter Slone, another former Ratchford aide who worked with Moffett and his staff. "He came in with a legislative mandate to shake the place up a little, and he was perfect for the role."

Hailing from Connecticut's northwestern sixth district, a sprawling contrast of rusting industrial cities and postcard New England villages, Moffett had a resume that trumpeted commitment and integrity: working with Boston street gangs for the U.S. Office of Education; aide to Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.); and the first director of youth programs at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare until 1970, when he quit to protest Nixon's bombing of Cambodia. Returning home, he linked up with Nader, who's from the same corner of the state, and founded the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a grassroots lobbying organization that's still going strong.

In 1974 Moffett registered as a Democrat, ran on a pro-consumer platform and set up in the Capitol before his 30th birthday. Like many of his classmates Moffett was aggressive, anti-establishment and media-savvy. And ambitious.

On the old Capitol Hill, neophyte lawmakers couldn't pursue pet causes without the blessing of senior members, who in turn used their hold on junior members to maintain power. Moffett's revolutionary army went after the seniority system, which had locked the power to block action - such as a House resolution to cut off funds for the Vietnam war - in the hands of a few grizzled committee chairs. When the dust settled, three elders had been dethroned.

The Watergate babies were among the first to get things done by building issue-based coalitions in Congress, and Moffett, "fresh from the triumphs of grassroots Naderism, was a natural at this," says Henry Reuss, who served in the House from 1954 to 1983. Adds a veteran lobbyist, "Moffett knew how to reach out to different kinds of members. He never worried about his |place'; he was never too awed by the institution."

Moffett's proudest memory was helping to defeat President Ford's request for additional military aid to Cambodia and South Vietnam in 1975. The House anti-war coalition, led by Robert Carr (Mich.), Tom Downey (N.Y.) and other freshman Democrats, held its strategy sessions in Moffett's office. "It's fair to say that if we hadn't come along it wouldn't have happened," Moffett says.

He went on to play a key role in driving through tough Clean Air Act amendments in 1977 and enacting the 1979 energy bill, which put emphasis on energy conservation and renewable resources. As a veteran Connecticut political observer described it, Moffett was "gaining a reputation as a sharp legislative operative."

Weeks into his third term, Moffett vaulted over three senior Democrats to chair the high-profile investigations sub-committee on energy and environment. Under him, the panel forced the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to disclose a list of contaminated groundwater sites. He angered powerful colleagues by attacking pork-barrel water projects. And his panel helped to touch off a constitutional showdown when Reagan EPA chief Anne Gorsuch and Interior Secretary James Watt refused to turn over documents the panel subpoenaed.

Moffett's panel also probed the near meltdown of Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979. In one of those ironic twists of fate, at the same time Moffett was piling dirt on operating utility Metropolitan Edison, his future employer - Hill and Knowlton - had been retained by the utility to brush it off.

Later, Nader

If there is a single turning point in Moffett's political career, it has to be the fall of 1982. When the year was over, Moffett once again would be a private citizen and Nader would turn his back.

With four successful terms in the House and 100 percent approval ratings from the Consumer Federation of America and the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, Moffett was expected to go home and challenge Republican Sen. Lowell Weicker or Democratic Gov. William O'Neill.

So it surprised nobody when Moffett finally announced against Weicker. What did surprise Moffett's allies was what the Hartford Courant, the state's most influential newspaper, called his "drift to center": a reputed willingness to suspend the damn-the-establishment liberal stances that made him well-known enough to mount a credible statewide campaign in the first place. He praised the governor, whom Moffett's allies reviled as a conservative, old line party hack, and voiced support for an anti-abortion state legislator. He even declined to endorse a former staff aide and fellow liberal activist, William Curry, in his bid to succeed Moffett in the House.

All this seemed strange "coming from Moffett, a man who in the past seemed to hold himself above conventional political maneuvering and who positioned himself as an outspoken defender of the poor and working class," the Courant reported.

Moffett refused - still refuses - to be pigeonholed. "All this nonsense about my principles changing, I really must say I carry some resentment over," he told the newspaper then, insisting he was as liberal as ever "in terms of ... openmindedness and toughness as far as regulation and social justice are concerned."

But one person left unconvinced was the man who arguably launched Moffett's political career. Nader had occasionally criticized Moffett's stands on various issues. But the final straw came when Moffett, accepting the Democratic nomination, promised to represent corporate as well as consumer interests as a senator.

"He has surrendered," Nader intoned at the time, "one of the most deeply held election assets - the impression among voters of being a fighter who does not cave in to pressure politics. He had it, and he's given it up."

Moffett was steamed. Nader, he responded, is "off the wall as far as his political views are concerned.... If he thinks I'm going to attack corporate Connecticut in my campaign, he better go back to the drawing board."

Moffett's strategy was to paint Weicker as beholden to monied special interests, recalls Jonathan Pelto, an '82 campaign aide and now deputy majority leader of the Connecticut House of Representatives. But Moffett couldn't overcome Weicker's reputation as a maverick and progressive on social issues and lost by a narrow margin.

On the Rebound

Moffett would joke that his 1982 defeat was like being "dumped by a girlfriend," but he was known to be traumatized by the loss. Someday he'd be back.

He hired tennis champion John McEnroe's agent and landed a few stints as a TV political pundit, once squaring off with conservative Pat Buchanan on the CNN gabfest Crossfire. He taught government courses at local Connecticut colleges and advised labor unions, antipoverty agencies and arms control groups. All this would help when he geared up to challenge the state Democratic party machine by running against Gov. O'Neill in 1986.

Moffett was backed by a coalition of labor and citizen action groups. But the way former aide Pelto tells it, Moffett alienated much of his core liberal constituency by shifting further to the political center. The breaking straw was when Moffett opposed a state income tax, considered crucial to addressing the state's underfunded social programs and mish-mash of regressive consumption taxes (and which Weicker, now governor, recently rammed through the state legislature).

"I was hardly alone in the sense that Moffett had betrayed us," Pelto says. "Here was the guy we were hoping was gonna bring change."

Pelto - perhaps because O'Neill's Democratic machine held the keys to his own political ambitions - helped lead an effort to prevent Moffett from collecting enough state party delegates to qualify for the race. "We beat him at his own game," Pelto says. "We took it to the field. Used his own tools against him."

Moffett still hasn't recovered. "We had the election stolen from us," he says with genuine heat, blaming the Democratic machine for blocking his way.

Both Sides Now

When a New Britain TV station hired Moffett to co-anchor the evening news with veteran anchor Joanne Nesti, some pundits joked that the governor and his challenger both got exactly what they wanted: O'Neill got to stay in office and Moffett got to be on television all the time. Some politicos grumbled that Moffett was hoping to gain more statewide exposure for future political plans, but Moffett vowed he was out of politics for good.

As a newscaster Moffett was considered a little wooden, but co-anchor Nesti praises his work, saying he was "knowledgeable on the issues and experienced from having been in Congress, which most people from broadcasting don't have." After three years Moffett quit, however, bored with being a talking head. "This is not an example to be followed - taking political people and making them anchors," Moffett says now. "It's really tricky. Viewers say, wait a minute, I thought this guy was just out on the campaign."

The job did leave Moffett with a 90 percent statewide name recognition, which helped when he moved his family across district lines into a rented home and ran for the House of Representatives again in 1990. Republican John Rowland had resigned the fifth district seat to seek the gubernatorial nomination, and Democratic party officials virtually begged Moffett to go for the vacancy.

"I was really torn," he recalls. And no thanks to his close friend and '74 classmate, Rep. George Miller. As soon as Miller got wind of Moffett's plan he phoned his buddy's shoreline home.

"Don't do anything until I get there," Miller said.

Instead of flying to his California district for the weekend as usual, Miller hopped on a plane to New Haven and rushed out to Moffett's house.

"We go out fishing in my whaler," Moffett recalls. "We fish and drink beer all weekend. And all weekend he says, |You don't understand. It's horrible. It's a terrible place. No one's having fun. Everyone's cynical. You should not do this."'

So why don't you quit? "No no no," Miller says. "I'm tied into it. But to start over again.... You're not going to like it. People are miserable."

"So," Moffett says with irony, "I ran."

This time Moffett faced a far more blue-collar, Reagan-Democrat district. His opponent was up-by-the-bootstraps Waterbury alderman Gary Franks, whose campaign drew national attention because he's a black Republican. The GOP pegged Moffett to his 1974 liberal persona and, most damaging of all, called him a carpetbagger.

Moffett portrayed himself as a more pragmatic realist, backing certain capital gains tax breaks and a presidential line-item veto. This time around Moffett collected more than $400,000 in PAC money, nearly half his total campaign receipts, much of it from the insurance, medical, defense, securities and liquor industries. A token donation even came from the Wexler Group PAC.

Moffett lost by 8,000 votes out of 178,000 cast.

Casting about again, Moffett taped a pilot series for the Fox network in which he traveled the country handing out $25,000 checks to people who had done good deeds. The show never aired.

Then came the call from Ann Wexler, former liberal activist herself, Carter White House aide and now consummate insider. "Come down here. Just come down," Wexler said. "You're going to pick your clients. You don't want to work on something? You don't work on it."

"So I came down," Moffett says. "And guess what. I liked it."

At Ease

Moffett was wary about being interviewed for this article. He said he'd just been "burned" by the Washington Post, which he said shortened an hour-long interview to one quote: Moffett saying he became a lobbyist "because I needed the money. The money isn't bad."

The long version, Moffett says, is "there are people who've been in public service and haven't saved a lot of money, and they've got to take care of their kids.

"But don't make me sound mercenary. I would never just be doing this for the money. I'm doing things that I enjoy doing. It's pleasant being plugged back in the process."

To a man who enjoys political wheeling and dealing, lobbying in Washington can be the best of all worlds. "It gives me an opportunity to be involved" in national politics, he says, but without the lawmaker's 80-hour work weeks.

He's also had free time to give political help to House Democratic friends, including Tom Downey, Connecticut's Sam Gejdenson and Rosa DeLauro, and Peter Kostmayer (Pa.), and hit the campaign trail for Bill Clinton. (Downey and Kostmayer lost.) And he enjoys relaxing with old congressional comrades. "Now all these guys are hanging out at my house," Moffett says. "They're living in these cramped quarters on Capitol Hill. We have a bigger house. They come up here, watch ballgames, play pool."

If Hill and Knowlton's troubled reputation bothers Moffett, he makes the best of it. "Yeah, sure it concerns me," he says, noting that he spends little time at the parent firm across town. "[But] there's going to be certain baggage with almost any institution. I don't think people should say, |I'm not going to go to work for United Way, look at the problems they've had."'

But Hill and Knowlton is hardly a charitable cause. The firm was already suffering bad publicity and internal strife over its controversial clients when Moffett arrived just in time for a searing new revelation: The anonymous Kuwaiti woman the firm brought before a congressional panel to testify about Iraqi atrocities amid the Persian Gulf crisis was no objective witness - her father was the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.

Big headlines; the network investigative news programs 60 Minutes and 20/20 aired back-to-back segments trashing the firm. Then came Susan Trento's widely publicized book, a portrait of "how corporate, government. international and private powers can be marshalled for their own purposes and profit, often at the expense of the public good." A number of executives fled amid the turmoil, some to form a competing firm. The man who built and headed the Washington office, Robert Gray, was ousted.

Moffett believes he can have a positive influence working from within. He takes some credit, for example, for the firm's decision not to help the government of El Salvador fight a reputation earned by the country's history of officially condoned human rights abuses.

As for his own clients, Moffett insists he isn't fighting for any causes that Congressman Moffett wouldn't have. He maintains that the U.S. Bioscience patent extension is justified because the government has sat on the cancer treatment for so long that the patent will expire before the firm can market the product.

Actually, the Hughes panel declined to help U.S. Bioscience even though Moffett and Hughes are close friends and '74 classmates. But Moffett had better luck in the Senate. As it happened, U.S. Bioscience's CEO is the well-known cancer doctor who attended to the son of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). "We put him together with Teddy and the cancer victims' advocacy groups," Moffett says.

As a one-time Washington outsider himself, Moffett was asked what advice he has for the new gang of real and self-styled reformers coming to Congress.

"First you have to decide what you want to be, how long do you want to stay, how will that govern how you behave, how are you going to keep your principles intact," he says.

"Because there's a natural erosion process. Absolutely. Totally. You cannot avoid that.

"Decide how you're going to arrest the erosion of your principles to the point where you actually stand for something. And can get something done."

COPYRIGHT 1992 Common Cause Magazine
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