You can’t swing a dead cat video in Washington lately without hitting a lobbyist, consultant, attorney or adviser on retainer to Google or one of its tech rivals. Google, whose top executives have long been a bottomless cup of campaign coffee for Democrats, is finally entering its bipartisan phase, theatrically hiring Republican operatives and broadcasting the news through insider Washington publications, pumping air into a K Street tech bubble.
The shift in political strategy comes as Google faces a serious antitrust threat, punctuated by a high-profile hearing on the company held Wednesday afternoon in the Senate. But Google’s investment in the infrastructure of the conservative movement goes much deeper than what’s been reported this summer.
The company known for its progressive politics is now giving money to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Republican Governors Association, the GOP firm The David All Group, Crossroads Strategies, the Republican Attorneys General Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee, among others. On Thursday, Google and Fox News cosponsored a Republican presidential debate.
In the last nine months, Google has hired 18 lobbying shops — not 18 lobbyists, but 18Â firms, a dozen of them since July, a head-turning torrent of hiring that also includes consultants not required to register as lobbyists.
“I consider myself a public works project right here,” Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the committee leading the antitrust investigation, told HuffPost. “My colleagues call it the Leahy Full Employment Act.”
The GOP effort hasn’t quite sunk in: Republicans in the House and Senate reacted with pleasant surprise when told by HuffPost that Google had started donating to movement conservatives. “Are you saying they’re finally becoming bipartisan? That’s a good thing. Bipartisanship is a positive thing,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the head of the Senate GOP’s fundraising arm and one of three Republicans on the subcommittee holding the antitrust hearing. “I understand why people feel like they need to have people they can talk to on both sides.”
Google certainly feels that need. In public and in private, Google officials complain that longtime rival Microsoft, with its more entrenched Washington operation, is more or less out to get them. Microsoft responds that it makes no secret of its lobbying or its efforts to rein Google in: Its complaint to the European Union, for instance, was made publicly, and it fully acknowledges its lead participation in a coalition, FairSearch.org, organized to lobby on behalf of antitrust action against Google. “Clearly Microsoft were the first people to start to blow the clarion call” on anti-trust issues, said one top Microsoft mercenary. “They had the resources to get people engaged in thinking about it, but I don’t think they’ve had any trouble getting people to agree.” Indeed, Google’s public critics have been multiplying almost as quickly as their lobbying roster.
Read more: Spreading Freedom: Google and The war for the webÂ
