Background

On Monday, June 22nd, three top mortgage industry lobbyists and an insurance PAC will co-host a fundraising event for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) at The Monocle Restaurant steps away from the U.S. Senate. The fundraising event comes less than a week after President Barack Obama announced a series of regulatory reforms of the financial sector, including ones that impact the mortgage industry like a new “Financial Products Safety Commission.”

Grassley has been the beneficiary of the financial, insurance, and real estate industries. Over his career, he’s received $2,273,180 in campaign contributions from these interests, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That total includes $260,810 from commercial banking interests, $888,724 from insurance interests, and $248,655 from the real estate interests. In addition, Grassley’s Hawkeye PAC, a leadership committee, has received more than half a million dollars from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector.1

The hosts – those responsible for raising money for Grassley – are Akin Gump lobbyist Smith “Smitty” Davis, Pace Bradshaw of the Mortgage Bankers Association, Suzanne Hutchinson of the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, and the AFLAC PAC.2

The Hosts

Smith W. “Smitty” Davis

• Lobbyist at Akin, Gump and is the head of their financial institutions policy practice.
  
  
• Current clients (with payments from 2008-2009) include Moody’s ($890,000), Mortgage Insurance Companies of America ($980,000), Private Equity Council ($750,000), and the US Chamber of Commerce ($1,050,000).
  
  
• Worked for Sen. Phil Gramm’s presidential campaign in the 1996 election cycle.
  
  
• Lobbied to pass Gramm’s deregulatory efforts in 2000 as registered as a lobbyist for Dow Jones & Co.3 -- deregulations widely seen as contributing to the current economic crisis as well as the collapse of Enron.
  
  
• Had language inserted in legislation to benefit an insurance company that saved them an estimated a million dollars in rent per year in a Des Moines 14-story building.4

Ryan “Pace” Bradshaw

• Associate director of government affairs and a registered lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).
  
  
• MBA has spent nearly $8 million lobbying since 2007.
  
  
• MBA’s PAC over that time has also given $1.4 million in campaign contributions.
  
  
• MBA led the fight to stop Sen. Durbin’s bill to allow renegotiation of mortgages by bankruptcy judges, which Grassley voted against.
  
  
• MBA’s chairman, David Kittle, told assembled members at their annual gathering that they needed to remain vigilant: “We need to keep fighting this. We need to keep giving to the PAC, on a regular basis,” he told them, emphatically.5
  
  
• Sen. Grassley and his leadership committee called the Hawkeye PAC have received $28,909 from the MBA’s PAC, over his career.

Suzanne Hutchinson

• Executive vice president and a registered lobbyist for the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America (MICA).
  
  
• MICA spent $8.5 million lobbying Washington since 2007.

AFLAC PAC

• AFLAC employees and their PAC have given $14.3 million in campaign contributions over the past two decades, including $2.3 million since 2007.
  
  
• They’ve spent nearly $20 million lobbying Congress and the White House in the past five years.
  
  
• Over his career, Sen. Grassley and his leadership committee called the Hawkeye PAC have received $50,000 from AFLAC employees and its PAC, including twin $5,000 checks to both his re-election campaign (he’s running for re-election in 2010) and his Hawkeye PAC this year.

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1. All campaign finance and lobbying data in this document were accessed on the Center for Responsive Politics website, opensecrets.org, on June 21, 2009 and June 22, 2009.
2. Political Party Time, http://politicalpartytime.org/party/12100/
3. Office of the Senate Clerk.
4. Charlotte Observer, June 29, 1997.
5. American News Project, http://americannewsproject.com/videos/mortgage-bankers-celebrate-victory