Recently, Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times published a fascinating report on William Delahunt, a former member of Congress from coastal Massachusetts, and his activities since leaving office:
Soon after he retired last year as one of the leading liberals in Congress, former Representative William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts started his own lobbying firm with an office on the 16th floor of a Boston skyscraper. One of his first clients was a small coastal town that has agreed to pay him $15,000 a month for help in developing a wind energy project.
Amid the revolving door of congressmen-turned-lobbyists, there is nothing particularly remarkable about Mr. Delahunt’s transition, except for one thing. While in Congress, he personally earmarked $1.7 million for the same energy project.
So today, his firm, the Delahunt Group, stands to collect $90,000 or more for six months of work from the town of Hull, on Massachusetts Bay, with 80 percent of it coming from the pot of money he created through a pair of Energy Department grants in his final term in office, records and interviews show.
Given that Senator Scott Brown and his leading Democratic rival, the populist Harvard Law School professor and Obama ally Elizabeth Warren, have placed heavy emphasis on political reform, one assumes that they’ll both have much to say about Delahunt in particular and “influence-peddling” more broadly.