Rick Tops on This List

More on Santorum, just because there's so damned much and he's such an easy target.

Attytood reports on reports on Santorum's lobbyist money and ties to Abramoff and, once more, the lies about his Penn Hills pretend home:

The folks over at the Congress Watch of Public Citizen have put out a report on the lobbyists who bankroll Congress. It features a list of the 20 biggest givers among lobbyists -- an interesting read, to be sure -- but they've also compiled a tally of the biggest "getters," the members of Congress who've pulled in the most money from K Street during the 1998-2004 election cycles.

Among current members of the U.S. Senate, guess who's No. 1.

Yeah, like you didn't already know. Anyway, to find out the answer and see a lot more good stuff, go read the rest. Thanks to Suburban Guerrilla for pointing this one out.

UPDATE: Rick May Be Tops, But Bobby Casey Ain't Too Far Behind

The Congress Watch list reported above covers a number of years. Bob Casey was out running for (a lot) of other state offices during most of those years. So, the Slob thought it appropriate to take a look at THIS election cycle, for an apples to apples kind of thing.

The devoted readers of this blog, both of you, will recall that Bobby Casey was the only one of the three Democrats in the primary this year who refused to take the pledge to turn back lobbyist donations.

The reason?

Well, until recently, he was on the list of the top-20 recipients of Lobbyist money for this election cycle -- at the time, he was the ONLY non-sitting member of Congress on that list. (Today he'd be about number 21 -- still impressively ahead of more than 500 sitting members of Congress.)

Still, today, in what the Center for Responsible Politics calls the "Lawyer & Lobbyist" segment, Bobby Casey is number 3 -- with nearly $1.5 million, compared to Santorum at number 8 with about $880,000. Most of Casey's money ($1.4 million) comes from the Lawyers/Law Firm PACs on that list. Same with Santorum ($600k).

On the list of all current Senatorial candidates receiving Lobbyist money in the current election cycle, Santorum is number one with $279k and Casey comes in at Number 16 with about $80k.

Not a huge percentage of either candidate's war chest. But, in comparison to the 500 or so sitting members of Congress -- the natural targets for lobbyist money -- it's pretty damned telling for Bobby Casey to be ahead of most nearly all of them. So I'd be a little surprised if Casey tried to make an issue out of that in the campaign. Unfortunately, his own conduct has removed, neutralized, or at least diluted, that major vulnerability for Santorum. (Thanks, again, Schumer.)

UPDATE Part Two: Rick No. 2 overall on '98-'06 list, No. 1 on '06 List

To further clarify, Attytood's report suggests that Santorum was the number one recipient of Lobbyist-connected money during the Congress Watch report period of 1998-2006.

Actually, Santorum was number TWO overall with $1.16 million; former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle holds the number one spot.

Santorum is number one current congressperson on the 98-06 list, and number one on the current-cycle list with $560,000. Hillary is number two on the current cycle list with $417,000.

The overall list is on page 18 of the report and the current cycle list is on page 20.

One, two, three, or twenty, that's a bunch of influence peddling.