Blunt's Merger Concerns Echo AT&T, Which Pays His Lobbyist Son
When a lawmaker and a lobbyist are in the same family, these kinds of stories are inevitable. My colleague Sara Jerome unearths an interesting connection between Roy Blunt's policy concerns and those of AT&T, which employs his son as a lobbyist.
She reports:
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who expressed concern this week about how federal regulators treated AT&T's $39 billion merger with T-Mobile, has a connection to the carrier: His son is a lobbyist for AT&T.Andrew Blunt, a son of the senator, is registered to lobby for AT&T in Missouri, according to a disclosure filing. He is also listed as a strategist for Washington lobby shop Cassidy & Associates, which had AT&T as a client worth $150,000 this year, though Blunt is not assigned to that account.Sen. Blunt was one of the only members of Congress to take a public stand questioning the Federal Communications Commission's process on AT&T's proposed merger. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski moved to block the deal last week, saying it is anticompetitive and not in the public interest.Sen. Blunt's spokeswoman Amber Marchand said there's no conflict of interest."The senator's son is not and has never been a federal lobbyist, and he has no contact or affiliation with his father on legislative matters before Congress," she said. Sen. Blunt does not have a position on the merger, she added.
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