Interesting new Jerry Kammer piece on appropriatons committe chairman Jerry Lewis, his aide turned lobbyist Letitia White, congressman turned lobbyist Bill Lowery, and several defense contractor clients, including San Diego based Orincon, a White client to which Lowery was named a member of the board, and in which he received a percent of the proceeds when it was sold to Lockheed Martin in 2003:

...Orincon grew slowly after it was founded three decades ago by former UCSD professor Daniel Alspach. But in the late 1990s, after it signed on with Lowery's firm, the privately held company's growth curve turned sharply upward.

Early each year, as the defense appropriations subcommittee was assembling the annual Pentagon spending bill, Alspach and Lowery would visit Lewis' office, meeting with Letitia White and sometimes with Lewis himself, according to records examined by Copley News Service. [...]

Orincon paid $720,000 for the firm's services between 1998 and 2003. Lowery was given a seat on Orincon's board of directors.

Alspach and his Orincon colleagues also invested heavily in political contributions to Lewis – at least $102,000 between 1998 and 2003 – and provided first-class hospitality for the congressman and his staff.

In April 1999, White, Lewis and Lowery traveled at Orincon's expense to San Diego to visit the company's headquarters. They stayed two nights at La Valencia, one of La Jolla's most prestigious resort hotels. Lewis' eighth-floor, oceanfront suite cost $700 a night. White reported that lodging for her and her husband cost a total of $1,000.

Orincon's sales, heavily dependent on federal contracts, zoomed from $10 million in the mid-1990s to $52 million in 2003, the year Lockheed bought the company.

Terms of the sale were never announced. But Lowery received part of the proceeds as owner of several thousand shares of Orincon's closely held stock. When Alspach went on to start a venture capital company, Homeland Venture Partners, he named Lowery to its advisory board.

More here.

Posted by Laura at June 25, 2006 08:27 AM