2007-04-11T15:01:14Z The life and career of Gerald S.J. Cassidy: How lobbying became washington's biggest business. Look for a new chapter every weekday. tag:blog.washingtonpost.com,2007:/citizen-k-street/283 Copyright (c) 2007, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive 2007-04-11T15:01:14Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2007-04-07:/citizen-k-street2007/04/conclusion.html

(Susan Biddle/TWP)">Enlarge Photo Gerald Cassidy's estate on the Chesapeake Bay. (Susan Biddle/TWP) For Cassidy, a shy man, this must have been a high point in a 38-year career in Washington. It surely demonstrated his status as a member of a new Washington aristocracy, whose members enjoy access to the powerful, influence on the deal-making of government and great personal wealth. Cassidy's fortune exceeds $125 million. The upward arc of]]>

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By Robert G. Kaiser Relationships between lobbyists and their clients are usually just business arrangements. Occasionally, they blossom into something much richer and more complicated. Such was the case between John R. Silber, the driven president of Boston University for a quarter century, and Gerald S.J. Cassidy, who has helped BU win earmarks from Congress worth more than $100 million in exchange for as much as $15 million in fees, including nearly $1 million last year. (Boston Globe File Photo)"> (Boston Globe File Photo)">Enlarge Photo John Silber, photographed at his office at Boston University, hired Cassidy's firm in 1981 to lobby for federal earmarks for the school. (Boston Globe File Photo) John Robert Silber is one of a kind, and the kind has no name. He is a smallish man who, at age 80, still radiates energy, determination and an argumentative self confidence. His most striking physical characteristic is his

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By Robert G. Kaiser and Derek Willis On May 24, 2001, Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont, a Republican all his life, announced he would vote with the Democrats in the Senate. His shift suddenly gave the Democrats a working majority of 51, making Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) the majority leader. Two weeks later, Daschle's political action committee held a long-planned fundraising gala. Among the donations recorded that June 7 were four checks totaling $18,000 from Gerald Cassidy and his wife, Loretta. Just a coincidence? When asked, Cassidy replied with a big laugh. Daschle, he said, was an old personal friend whom he had known for decades. "The whole time Tom was in the Senate," Cassidy said, "I only lobbied him once." The contribution was not connected to the sudden change in Daschle's political fortunes, Cassidy said. Daschle is the politician the Cassidys have supported most generously over the years.

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By Robert G. Kaiser In early 1987 Gerald Cassidy offered a job to Elliott Fiedler, an assistant to Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. Fiedler's salary on Capitol Hill was $40,000 a year, he remembered; Cassidy offered him $75,000, then paid him a $40,000 bonus at the end of his first year. "I thought it was a mistake," Fielder said. He took the check back to Cassidy's bookkeeper and asked if a zero had been added by mistake. No, she said, that's your bonus. "I thought, wow," Fiedler remembered. In the very first weeks on his new job in May 1987, Fiedler's son Jonathan, then 7, had to undergo surgery at Children's Hospital in Washington. Jonathan had Neurofibromatosis (NF), a genetic disorder of the nervous system; he needed a shunt to reduce pressure on his brain. "I had to take a few days off

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By Robert G. Kaiser By 1998, Gerald S. J. Cassidy had already spent years looking at different ways he could use his successful lobbying firm to create both substantial capital and personal wealth. The creation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1989 had put $15 million in his own pocket, but he had bigger dreams. Cassidy was swept up in what Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Board called the "irrational exuberance" of the years from 1995 to 2000, when the stock market rose by more than 300 percent. "We were in the era of up, up, up," said Lester "Ruff" Fant, Cassidy's lawyer and chief financial advisor. Cassidy's company's revenues had reached nearly $50 million a year, but he thought they could go to $250 million a year if he made the right acquisitions. He had an appetite for more. "I saw us doing what I thought

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By Robert G. Kaiser Gerald Cassidy's ability to sense shifting winds in Washington is legendary among his colleagues. A memorable example came in 1994. For years Cassidy had employed Fraser Barron, a quirky character who had worked on Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, as the firm's director of research. In June 1994, Cassidy and several of his colleagues remember, Barron announced that the Republicans would regain control of the House and Senate in November. Cassidy found the prediction credible, he said years later. But his Democratic friends on Capitol Hill did not. Characteristically, Cassidy decided he had to take Barron's prediction seriously. He approached two Republican lawyer-lobbyists, Peter Madigan and Michael Boland, both with good personal ties to the George H.W. Bush branch of the GOP. Boland and Madigan had gone into business together as lobbyists, and were doing pretty well. Cassidy offered to acquire them using company shares in

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