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Ayotte’s company worth paying for

By Staff | Jan 23, 2014

There was nothing wrong, strictly speaking, with the ski trip New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte took to Park City, Utah earlier this month.

As described in a Page 1 story in Monday’s New York Times, lobbyists shelled out thousands of dollars to spend large chunks of time with Ayotte, using a loophole in the law to underwrite a luxury weekend at the Deer Valley Resort. In this case, the suggested donation to “Friends of Kelly Ayotte” was $2,500 per PAC and $1,500 per individual, according to the Times’ website. (Ayotte has a similar fundraising weekend scheduled at the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire in September, though she’s not up for re-election until 2016.)

Ayotte’s travel, lodging ($499 per night, plus taxes and fees) and lift ticket ($108 for an all-day pass to ski on trails with names like “Success,” “Hidden Treasure” and “Legal Tender”) were paid for – indirectly, as the law requires – by lobbyist contributions.

Legal though it was, we think there was not much that was right about the Ayotte trip, either.

“Neither the lawmakers nor the lobbyists attending the events want to talk about them,” wrote the Times’ Eric Lipton.

We can understand why. Such trips have the look, feel and smell of something improper.

According to the Times’ account – which Ayotte spokesman Jeff Grappone called “misleading and biased” – Ayotte also held a $1,500-per-person fundraiser during her weekend in Utah at the luxurious home of former U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, who just happens to have a lot of business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which Ayotte sits. The amount of money raised at that event was not available earlier this week, according to Grappone.

But, the Times reported, Ayotte chief of staff John Easton – who also went along on the trip – said there is no connection between his boss taking money from lobbyists and her position on the issues. Ayotte is merely representing the interests of her New Hampshire constituents, her staffers insist.

But that’s not how it looks.

Such trips create the appearance that Ayotte is cozy with big-money Washington power brokers who pony up thousands of dollars to buy her friendship and influence her votes on issues that can mean millions to their clients. Ayotte and her staff claim she’s not for sale or beholden to anyone, but she’s at least partly to blame for putting herself in a position where it looks like she could be.

The system, which some have called legal bribery, is also very much to blame. That it is legal just goes to show the seediness that passes for ethical standards in Washington, where money is the plutonium that fuels the political arms race waged by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Both parties could change that system if they weren’t so preoccupied with gorging themselves on it.

To those who criticize Ayotte for being chummy with lobbyists, her staffers say she’s often accessible to the people of New Hampshire at public events – including six town hall-style meetings this week alone.

Ayotte tries to make herself available, we’ll grant her that, but it doesn’t feel like quite the same thing. Lobbyists get a succulent lunch or dinner with the senator in a private dining room by a roaring fire, while the common folk of the Granite State get 30 seconds to pose a question at a microphone in some drafty gymnasium.

Ironically, a bipartisan group of people will be marching into Ayotte’s hometown of Nashua on Friday to call attention to the way money corrupts the political process. As we noted on Sunday, those members of the New Hampshire Rebellion started in Dixville Notch two weeks ago and have traveled the length of the state on foot in the bitter, freezing cold. They’ve done so in the name of exposing a system in which money appears to buy access and access begets influence, regardless of how much those on the receiving end of the cash want to deny it.

The Rebellion marchers are scheduled to wrap up at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday and hold a birthday party to mark what would have been the 104th birthday of the late Doris “Granny D” Haddock, the New Hamnpshire resident who once marched across the country to call attention to corruption in government.

Perhaps Sen. Ayotte might like to drop by the Rebellion party, greet the marchers and explain her plan for getting the money and corruption out of politics.

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