Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008 by Bara Vaida
Republican lobbyists Phil Anderson and Mark Isakowitz are bucking K Street's latest trend.

Anderson, co-founder of DC Navigators, and Isakowitz, co-founder of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, run all-GOP lobbying firms. Although other Republican firms are hiring Democrats for the first time, Anderson and Isakowitz have no plans to do so, even as poll data show that Democrats may add to their majorities in Congress and take the White House in 2008.

"Yes this is a business, but this place isn't just dollars and cents," says Isakowitz, in explaining why the 11-person firm launched in 1978 won't change its business model. "Our culture is that we are people who do Republican politics who also lobby."
Anderson said of his 23-person firm that opened in 2003, "Most of us are old campaign people and old Republican White House and congressional officials, and that gets hardwired into your system. Making money is great, but loyalty is important too."
Over the past two years, prominent Republican lobbying firms -- including the Federalist Group (renamed Ogilvy Government Relations); Lesher & Russell; and most recently, Barbour Griffith & Rogers (renamed BGR Holding) -- have hired Democrats or made plans to do so. These decisions reflect an expectation of continuing political change in Washington and the business community's desire to better cultivate Democratic relationships.

"You can't base your business model on ideology," says G. Stewart Hall, managing director of Ogilvy Government Relations, which hired its first Democratic lobbyist in January 2006. "You can't let your personal feelings get in the way."

Hall's firm, famously partisan until it was purchased by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide at the end of 2005, hit a ceiling in terms of growth before turning bipartisan. "We pitched a client [in 2004] that I really wanted badly [for geographic reasons], and they didn't choose us," Hall says. "That really bugged me. We decided we were missing out on business." The bipartisan model is working for the firm, which posted $12.4 million in revenue for the first half of 2007, compared with $6.8 million in the first half of 2006.

Isakowitz, a former aide to the late Rep. Paul Gillmor, R-Ohio, says his firm hasn't missed any business, nor has it lost any clients since Democrats took control. His model works, he says, because Washington has a niche for small partisan lobbying firms. Many corporations and interest groups want to pick their own set of Democrats and Republicans for representation. In fact, Isakowitz's team often partners with, and even suggests to clients that they hire, such Democrat lobbyists as Jeff Peck of Johnson, Madigan, Peck, Boland & Stewart; and Steve Elmendorf of Elmendorf Strategies.

"As sure as I am that the sun will come up tomorrow, I am equally sure major legislation will never be done in this town without the help of both parties," says Isakowitz, who predicted that his firm's 2007 revenue would top the $7.67 million posted in 2006.

Anderson of DC Navigators says that his company, which earned $5.3 million in lobby revenue in 2006, has continued to add business by diversifying into communications strategy and public relations, where partisanship is less important. Navigators also makes alliances with Democratic firms on behalf of its lobbying clients. Still, Anderson says he and his partners will be watching the polls closely in 2008.

"We are obviously trying to make decisions that serve our clients, and we still feel like there is a market for an all-Republican firm," says Anderson, a former assistant to Vice President Quayle and the late GOP operative Lee Atwater. "A year is a lifetime in politics, and we'll keep looking at the primaries and the election in 2008, and then we'll make a decision on whether [hiring a Democrat] serves our clients."

If so, the Democrat who comes on board could have some adjusting to do. Ogilvy Senior Vice President Andrew Rosenberg took some ribbing from his new GOP colleagues when he became the first Democrat at the firm.

For a while, "I was jokingly introduced as the communist" on staff, says the former aide to Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Ogilvy now employs six Democrats and nine Republicans, and Rosenberg is the one making jokes to his Republican partners. "No question the tide has turned," he says. "We tease them about their relevance."