The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 3, 2008
AJC Political Insider
Tomorrow’s Georgia presidential primary has been brought to you by the law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge.Not literally. But nearly so.
Late last week, perhaps a hundred or so of metro Atlanta’s most influential suits — judges, corporate officers, a few politicians — stepped into an elevator that took them to the law firm’s 53rd floor of the SunTrust building on Peachtree Street.
For the visitors, it was a chance catch a spectacular view of a darkening city and its rivers of fleeing headlights. And to get an inside-skinny briefing on a pair of presidential contests bearing down on Georgia like a red bull overdosed on Red Bull. Wine and hors d’oeuvres to follow.
For McKenna Long, the evening was a chance to show off its stable of attorneys. Panelists included Gordon Giffin, the primary Georgia contact for Democrat Hillary Clinton; Eric Tanenblatt, Republican Mitt Romney’s top man in the state; and Randy Evans, who, if Newt Gingrich had run for president, would have been his top advisor.
Scattered in the audience were other attorneys for the firm, sporting other, sometimes out-moded, presidential specialties: Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, even Michael Bloomberg. Buddy Darden, the former congressman, served as Democrat Bill Richardson’s Georgia contact.
Zell Miller, another resident of McKenna Long, was absent. But Keith Mason, who served as chief of staff to the former governor, was present. Another Clinton ally. Perhaps your place of business discourages political debate. At McKenna Long, it’s required.
As a result, the firm has become a large part of how politics works in Georgia. Republicans and Democrats grapple in ideological scrums on the ground, while some of their best people work side-by-side above Peachtree Street.
As a law firm, McKenna Long doesn’t have a monopoly on the phenomenon. Obama has several attorney operatives working for him in several Atlanta firms. On Saturday, John McCain was accompanied to Cobb County by one of his earliest Georgia supporters, former attorney general Mike Bowers of the Balch & Bingham law firm.
Nor is this new. In 1960, Atlanta attorney Griffin Bell was the fellow who squired Democratic presidential candidate John Kennedy, an oddity because of his Catholicism, on his one trip to the state.
But in Georgia, it is McKenna Long that has most successfully developed politics into both a marketing tool and a loss leader.
The Chinese have an old word for this. Guanxi. Or literally, connections. When it comes to success, you’ve either got guanxi, or you don’t.
McKenna Long chairman Jeffrey Haidet said the firm embarked on its political strategy in the late ‘80s. The key was a long-term, non-ideological approach that acknowledged political shifts and divided power.
Participation in political campaigns on the front end, regardless of party, became a key to access after the ballots have been cast.
"Our clients don’t have one-dimensional problems," Haidet said.
Suppose, for instance, a client — and a long list of some are on the firm’s web site — has a problem with a law. Sometimes the solution, the firm chairman said, is to change the law. And to do that, one never knows whether the returned phone call needs to come from a Republican or Democrat.
"Solutions can be as simple as arranging a meeting with a key official," says the McKenna Long web site.
The largest examples of McKenna Long’s guanxi will be forever out of sight. Count on it. But small flashes have been present throughout this presidential campaign.
This summer, it was Tanenblatt, the Romney supporter and former chief of staff for Gov. Sonny Perdue, who had the connections to deliver a phone call from one-time pop star Donny Osmond to a fan, Secretary of State Karen Handel.
In September, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani stopped to shake hands at a Buckhead restaurant. While distracted reporters were inside with the candidate, McKenna Long partner Doug Chalmers, a Giuliani campaigner, snuck his client into Giuliani’s dark SUV.
That’s how Sadie Fields, leader of the Georgia Christian Alliance, came by her private conversation with Giuliani.
We won’t bother you with what was said at McKenna Long’s evening gathering last week. The information is already out-dated.
Suffice it to say that, during the presentation, the cell phone belonging to Giffin, the McKenna Long partner coordinating the Clinton campaign, gave an embarrassing ring.
Bill Clinton would be in town the next day, and needed a place to speak.