The only sure way to get an audience with a member of Congress (there are other ways, but this is the tried and true measure) is to hire a lobbyist to go on the attack. Checks worth millions and millions of of dollars are being written to Washington, D.C.-based attorneys each year to do just that. It is what greases the creaking wheels of Washington.
When the Poker Players Alliance announced its intentions to go to bat for poker players (as well as industry members), founders said the PPA would plant poker issues right in front of members of Congress, and it looks like it has done just that.
So far in 2008, the PPA has spent $629,750 on lobbyists, according to OpenSecrets.org, an organization that has taken the task of keeping track of lobbying spending and campaign donations.
That amount was used to hire 22 lobbyists working for five firms (both PPA chairman Al D’Amato and executive director John Pappas are also listed as lobbyists on OpenSecrets under two of the different firms, Ogilvy Government Relations for D’Amato and Patton Boggs LLP for Pappas).
In 2007, the PPA spent $900,000 bending the ears of politicians using the same five firms, a $360,000 increase from 2006 ($540,000) and a $640,000 increase from 2005 ($260,000), the first year the PPA existed.
Since then, the PPA counts dozens of politicians it has had sit-down meetings with, while hundreds more received e-mails, phone calls, and letters supporting online poker rights.
The PPA clearly has relationships with a handful of Congressmen. It has brought politicians like Congressmen Robert Wexler to the World Series of Poker and helped both Wexler and, most recently, Senator Robert Menendez write bills that would define poker as a game of skill and even set up a framework for an online poker industry in the United States.
As an organization, the PPA has done an outstanding job keeping the online poker community abreast with not only the issues and bills on the table in Washington, D.C., but at a local level. Last week, the PPA filed an amicus brief on behalf of the seven online poker sites that were placed on a list of 141 gambling sites the Commonwealth of Kentucky is trying to seize and also sent out a call to action to its 13,000 members in Kentucky.
But its main focus has been trying to convince politicians that poker is a game of skill and should be exempt from the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006, or any other law that targets online gambling indiscriminately by lumping poker into that category.
It will take a few more years to know if the money was well-spent, as politicians debate the far-reaching rules of the UIGEA and the confusion it has inspired. But these lawmakers are very busy trying to save the economic future of America, as well as the free world, and for many, the issue of the legality of online poker is a featherweight compared to the greater tasks at hand.
But every once in awhile, in those chambers where laws are debated and made, politicians talk about poker, and that has something to do with the PPA and all of those lobbyists who are hired to hammer the talking points home.
