If you sell homes in Washington, D.C., it’s a sure thing that “you’ll run into a fair share of lobbyists and other power brokers, whether you’re married to a senator or not,” the Huffington Post notes.
If, like Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Sales Associate Frank Snellings, you’re married to a senator, you can also be sure your dealings with those power brokers will become fodder for the news.
Snellings found himself in the news this week after the Washington Examiner reported that he stands to make about $50,000 selling the home of “super-lobbyist” Tony Podesta.
Podesta’s lobbying firm represents clients who, from time to time, have issues with bills making their way through the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security subcommittee, which Snelling’s wife, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., chairs.
Now HuffPo has dug up a more extensive list of Snelling’s past clients, which includes lobbyist John Breaux, who works for a law and lobbying firm, Patton Boggs, whose employees are big contributors to Landrieu’s campaigns; Acadian Ambulance Services CEO Richard Zuschlag (company employees have donated more than $85,000 to Landrieu campaigns over the years); Comcast lobbyist Milissa Maxfield (who’s hosted three Landrieu fundraisers); and Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association lobbyist Chris John (who defended Landrieu in the Washington Post in 2007 when she voted with Republicans to maintain oil industry subsidies).
Landrieu’s staff has pointed out to The Hill that Snellings has been selling real estate for 11 years, and the Senate Ethics Committee has ruled that it’s “completely permissible and appropriate” for him “to be a real estate agent for anyone.” Source: huffingtonpost.com.