Lobbyist-turned-Romney-advisor Ed Gillespie is now disputing what I wrote yesterday, that he was a pro-individual mandate lobbyist in 2007.
While Gillespie didn’t call me back yesterday or return my email, he talked to National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, who reported Gillespie’s objections. First, Gillespie states twice that he never personally lobbied for mandate, and a second source confirms this to Ponnuru.
Still, Gillespie was the headline Republican lending bipartisan credentials to a lobbying campaign, one of the central planks of which was an individual mandate. Good for Gillespie if he never advocated that particular intrusion into individual liberty, but when you get paid by an ad-hoc lobbying group formed largely to advocate a policy — and when you let them attach your name to it as a way of establishing their credentials and broadening their reach — you bear some responsibility for their policies.
This coverage from the New York Times (in early April) exemplifies the sort of weight Gillespie leant this effort:
Is all of this indicative of a broader shift in the politics of health care?
Did Gillespie ever issue a public minority report of sorts to dispel the public signal sent by his involvement in this pro-individual-mandate group?
And let me address the objections Ponnuru reported from Gillespie, which are mostly about timing, and which I think range from misleading to false. Here they are:
“I stopped lobbying for QGA six weeks after CAHR was launched, there was no consensus in CAHR for a mandate at that time….”
First, the May 7 date was the official public launch of CAHR, but the group was paying Gillespie as a lobbyist before then. On March 1, CAHR started paying Gillespie as a lobbyist for “Advocating and Advancing Healthcare Reform,” according to this lobbying filing. So Gillespie’s “six weeks after CAHR was launched” statement is accurate, judging by the public launch date, but it leaves out the nine-and-a-half weeks pre-launch that Gillespie was a registered, paid lobbyist for CAHR.
Later lobbying filings include Gillespie’s deregistering, and the fact that CAHR was paying Quinn Gillespie $20,000 a month (meaning CAHR paid Gillespie’s firm about $68,000 while Gillespie was there).
Second, I think Gillespie is misremembering when he writes, “there was no consensus in CAHR for a mandate” before Gillespie left June 12.
For instance, here’s CAHR founder Steve Burd writing in the Washington Times on the May 7 launch day:
We agree that any lasting solution to this problem must be based on five core principles…..
Second, every American should be required to carry health insurance.
It’s hard to read that as anything other than consensus that an individual mandate is necessary.
National Journal reported on the May 7 launch event:
An L.A. Times editorial at the time wrote: “the coalition also wants to make insurance mandatory….”
Reviewing Gillespie’s comments, and going over the public record again, I’ll say this: I may been have imprecise to write “he was a for a federal-level mandate,” because he says he never personally advocated the mandate. But it’s still true that Gillespie was a big-name lobbyist for a campaign that wanted to institute a federal-level individual mandate.
