Obituaries for the late Oregon Republican Sen. Bob Packwood this week all note that the liberal, pro-choice Republican resigned amid an ethics investigation that revealed years of sexually harassing women on Capitol Hill.
It’s fitting that Packwood’s licentious and unfaithful behavior should hang over his reputation, because it was an abuse of power — he used his position as a powerful senator to prey on more than a dozen women.
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But his corrupt dealings with lobbyists — and his own career as a lobbyist — deserve some attention, too.
Packwood’s own diary entries, which became famous during his ethics hearings, condemn him. He begged lobbyists to hire the wife he was divorcing, so as to spare him the cost of alimony. He also offered legislative favors to lobbyists/donors on multiple occasions. And after he resigned from office, while facing expulsion, he became a Washington lobbyist.
The Oregonian in 1993 reported on the job offers to Georgie Packwood:
“On June 12, 1990, Bob Packwood filed for divorce. The next day, Ronald Crawford, a registered lobbyist, wrote a letter to Georgie Packwood offering her a job.
“The day after that, Lester Pollack, a Wall Street investment tycoon, wrote another letter to Georgie Packwood offering her another job.
“In addition to Crawford and Pollack, job offers came from Steven Saunders and Tim Lee. All were friends of the senator.
“Saunders is a registered foreign agent who represents the embassy of Japan, several Japanese manufacturing firms and the Taiwan Textile Federation. In 1990, the year he offered Georgie Packwood a job, the Japanese government paid him $25,000 to lobby Congress.
“Bob Packwood sided with Japan that year when many members of Congress were arguing for trade sanctions against the country.
“The senator also supported the Taiwanese textile group as a leading opponent of a 1990 bill, eventually enacted, that set quotas and import fees on textiles.”
Politico in 2024 recounted some other details of Packwood-K Street coziness from his time in the Senate:
“In one instance documented in the diary … he pledged to a lobbyist working for Shell Oil that he’d pass a special oil tax bill to thank him for raising campaign cash. ‘Ron, I still hate the oil companies,’ he told the gentleman, ‘but I’ll do you a favor.’”
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And of course, after resigning from the Senate in disgrace, Packwood became a registered lobbyist for corporate interests and labor unions. The Politico piece was titled “Bob Packwood’s Redemption Story.” That wry headline is fitting because so much of the news media seems to love nothing more than a Republican-turned-lobbyist. See the story of Bob Dole, or all the lobbyists who backed Joe Biden in 2020. It’s like they make up for the sin of being a Republican by becoming a mercenary.
More important, though, were Packwood’s dealings with lobbyists while he was a senator. These were corrupt abuses of power that deserve to live in infamy.
