Anti-Trump Political Stances Won't Affect Lobbying, Communications Officials Say

CTA President Gary Shapiro called then-candidate Donald Trump “dangerous and unqualified to lead.” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Jim Cicconi, since-retired AT&T senior executive vice president-congressional affairs, publicly endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (see 1606230070). NAB President Gordon Smith donated to Trump's Republican primaries opponent Jeb Bush (see 1611150062) . Now that the election is over, those stances aren't expected to affect those entities' efforts to lobby the Republican-controlled Congress or the FCC, numerous attorneys, lobbyists and industry officials said in interviews.

Now that the campaign is over, associations and companies don't believe their position on Trump's campaign will affect their ability to influence policy, numerous industry officials said. Though the FCC and the communications sphere has become more partisan than it once was, it’s largely understood in the industry that campaign endorsements and positions mostly don't bleed into policy advocacy, said a longtime broadcast lawyer. “There are areas of policy where we were critical of both candidates,” said CTA Vice President-Congressional Affairs Tiffany Moore. “We are all united in trying to advance sound policy."

In every presidential election, “people who advocate before the FCC pick a side,” said former Commissioner Robert McDowell, now with Cooley. “It's been the tradition once that the election is over it's time to get to work and set aside differences." Statements made during the election matter less over time, “the smaller the election gets in the rear-view mirror,” he said.

Shapiro criticized Trump in a series of posts on Medium.com, while Hastings, Cicconi and Google parent Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt were among 50 communications industry officials who endorsed Clinton in a letter that was sharply critical of Trump. Not electing Clinton “would set our Nation on a very dark path,” said Cicconi in a released statement on the endorsement. Trump will “destroy much of what is great about America,” Hastings said in a statement released by Clinton's campaign. Smith, a former Republican senator who said he's a longtime friend of the Bush family, said repeatedly during the election he had donated to Jeb Bush's campaign. Though industry officials told us they don't expect repercussions from those sorts of statements during a campaign, many of them also noted their organization's distance from their leader's official stance. An NAB official said the association didn't formally endorse anyone, and Moore made the same point about CTA. Netflix, CTIA, NCTA and AT&T didn't comment.

One reason such statements aren't likely to affect the entities' lobbying prospects is that there were so many of them, several industry officials said. A huge swath of the industry was represented in the endorsement that Hastings and Cicconi signed, a former FCC eighth-floor official said. That makes it very difficult for a new majority seeking to punish disloyalty to single out any one company or group, because they're all in the “same boat,” the official said. The situation is similar when it comes to lobbying Congress, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. Since many GOP lawmakers spoke against Trump, it's not very likely his administration would hold having done so against associations and companies that seek to lobby it, he said. Also, the election didn't change the makeup of Congress very much, so lobbying it is unlikely to change much, Moore said. “We will continue to advocate for policies we agree with.”

Partisan politics don't carry over perfectly to the world of lobbying associations anyway, said a former trade association official. NAB has never endorsed a presidential candidate, but Smith is a longtime Republican, and his predecessor, longtime former NAB president Eddie Fritts, was also a Republican, the official said. Those relationships haven't kept NAB from working with Democrats, the official said. “Broadcast issues register neither Republican nor Democratic,” an NAB spokesman said. Like Smith, many of those who endorsed Clinton had long been on the record with their political views, so their stance wasn't a surprise, the former FCC official said. Shapiro's columns were based on political views he has held publicly for years, and so don't represent a departure, the official said. That also makes it harder to hold those views against CTA, the official said.

Few industry officials we spoke with thought campaign positions would affect lobbying Congress. Even fewer thought it would be a factor at a Republican-controlled FCC. Partisan political stances have little to do with lobbying on behalf of an industry, one communications attorney said. Mostly, FCC officials do their job based on their political philosophies rather than on who backed whom in an election, Schwartzman said. FCC officials generally are experienced with political shifts, and so political stances don't factor much into commission decision-making, a communications attorney who has frequently lobbied the commission told us.

While past political positions don't generally have an effect on industry lobbying, some communications officials suggested they can't be sure of that this time. The industry “may be dealing with a different kind of administration here; payback may pay a larger role,” Schwartzman said. He said he believes Trump personally will have little involvement in day-to-day matters at the commission. The nature of a Trump-run FCC is largely unclear, so far, said numerous industry officials. “Many experts are trying to analyze if Trump is a populist, a conservative or something else," said McDowell.