Lobbying, elections a potent mix

Chris Jankowski has a hobby that helps his day job.

The long-limbed, bespectacled lobbyist, in effect, runs campaigns for Republicans, supplying them with money and polling, advertising and mail consultants.

Jankowski's role: informal, but fully engaged.

Republicans win targeted elections in the fall. Jankowski wins targeted legislation in the winter. So he hopes.

At a minimum, Jankowski remains in the good graces of GOP pashas, including Bill Howell. The Speaker's PAC just pocketed another 50K from Jankowski's corporate-fed cash cow.

"It's a business model that allows me to work openly under partisan identification and leverage national contacts to build my firm in Richmond," says Jankowski, whose clients include automakers, tobacco giants, car-title lenders and energy firms.

While Jankowski indulges in campaigns, many lobbyists -- in both parties -- more than dabble in them.

They may be exercising their right as citizens to participate in politics. But their ties to big business, big money and big shots mean lobbyists are more equal than others in the shadowy, cramped forge in which public policy is hammered out.

Welcome to Washington on the James.

Frank Atkinson and Eric Finkbeiner, former top aides to George Allen, sit in Bob McDonnell's privvy council. They could have roles in a McDonnell transition, possibly his governorship. Finkbeiner was a stand-in for Creigh Deeds in debate prep with McDonnell.

David Hallock, an ex-Mark Warner staffer who works with Jankowski on behalf of car-title lenders, played McDonnell in Deeds' pre-debate tune-ups. John Daniel, a Cabinet secretary under Jerry Baliles, was literally at Deeds' side for the Buena Vista Labor Day parade, the fall campaign kickoff.

Jankowski usually isn't seen at a candidate's HQ. But the paper trail -- in the '07 Richard Stuart Senate race and this year's House bid by Chris Stolle -- leads to Jankowski's door.

Stuart, cozy in John Chichester's Northern Neck seat, and Stolle, in a rematch with vulnerable Democrat Joe Bouchard of Virginia Beach, use the same TV advertising and direct-mail companies -- companies with which Jankowski has worked for years.

But the real tip-off to the Jankowski connection is money.

Stuart and Stolle -- Howell, too -- are among the biggest beneficiaries of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a 527 represented by Jankowski's lobbying shop; specifically his partner, Carrie Cantrell, another former Allenista. It's spewed $1.5 million this cycle.

The committee, to which Jankowski has had ties since 1999, when he was an insurance-industry lobbyist in D.C. under former South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell, gave Stuart $62,400.

Stolle, brother of the state senator who is likely Virginia Beach's next sheriff, has received $326,000.

That puts him at the top of the RSLC pledge class -- and, assuming Stolle wins, in the crosshairs of a prying press that is suspicious of the corollary between cash and conduct.

McDonnell knows all about that, having to answer for $2 million he took in a single contribution from RSLC in the 2005 attorney general's race against Deeds.

But maybe that's why Jankowski is now on McDonnell's finance committee.

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or . Watch his video column Thursdays on TimesDispatch.com. Follow him at twitter.com/RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis Fridays at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE (88.9 FM).