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Legal Times

Jul 21, 2008

Steve Elmendorf
Government Affairs Leading Lobbyists
By Jeff Horwitz
Legal Times
July 21, 2008

Steve Elmendorf was still a lobbying neophyte, only two years into the business, when he set up his own shop. “It was a little scary to go off and put your name on the door,” he says.

Elmendorf needn’t have worried: In the year and a half since, Elmendorf Strategies has built up a 28-client roster that last year produced $4.7 million in revenue.

Clients say they’re in awe of his connections made over the years he served on Capitol Hill, especially as chief of staff and campaign strategist to then-House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.).

“If that’s all there was to him, he’d still be a high-quality lobbyist,” says Bruce Andrews, vice president of government affairs for Ford Motor Co., a client.

But Elmendorf, 48, is set apart by both a campaign veteran’s freakish work ethic—“He reads every publication under the sun before anybody else gets up,” says Andrews—and a decades-long commitment to the Democratic Party that has scattered his protégés throughout congressional offices and campaign staffs.

Elmendorf’s reputation for bare-knuckle tactics hasn’t hurt him with former opponents, he says. “Relationships with people who saw you as a combatant and respected you are some of the best I have,” he says.

There’s no better example than his work with Mark Isakowitz of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock. One of the last major unrepentantly Republican shops in town, Fierce, Isakowitz shares with Elmendorf Strategies a half-dozen clients and the steadfast belief that partisanship alone can’t carry the day.

“Times came up when it just made us look smart to refer our clients to him,” Isakowitz says, citing Elmendorf’s insight into congressional leadership offices and his mastery of the House floor.

Elmendorf’s time as Gephardt’s chief of staff, a position he held from 1997 until the 2004 presidential campaign, capped a lengthy Hill career. He began as a staff aide, rose to chief of staff for Rep. Dennis Eckhart (D-Ohio), and ultimately joined Gephardt’s office. When he finally came downtown, he signed on with Bryan Cave Strategies, but left less than two years later due to a client conflict.

Elmendorf’s expertise was in full view during his work last year on behalf of the Coalition of Patent Fairness. The coalition, an alliance of technology companies, seeks to change patent laws in some ways disfavored by the pharmaceutical industry.

The feud had all the makings of a classic Washington deadlock, but Elmendorf and his Republican partner put the drug companies on their heels last year. They helped push the Patent Reform Act through the House in September by lining up support from conservative Blue Dog Democrats, centrist New Democrats, and the Black Caucus, and then secured the Senate majority leader’s commitment to bring the bill to the floor.

Ultimately the bill stalled, but Elmendorf says time is on his side. He’s expecting an expanded Democratic majority to stress health care reform in the next Congress, a battle that he believes will leave the door open for his coalition.

“Our opponents will have a lot of other things to worry about,” he says, grinning.