Tuesday, November 4, 2008 3:30 PM

No Lobbyists in the White House in 2009?

If the polls are right (and if they aren't, we in the media are in big trouble) Barack Obama will be elected president on Tuesday. And if that happens, a lot of folks on K Street will be asking: "Can a lobbyist get a job in the White House, or anywhere else in the new administration?"

Obama senior strategist David Axelrod told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that, yes, lobbyists will be able to work at the White House, but added the caveat that no lobbyist can work on policy that would impact a former employer.

Stephanopoulos: "If Senator Obama wins on Tuesday, no one who's been a lobbyist will be able to work in his White House?

Axelrod: "No, it doesn't mean that, but it means exactly what he said for the two years of this campaign. He laid out a very specific plan for how he was going to deal with that. No one who is an active lobbyist and no one who has been lobbying on issues for the last two years related to their industries is going to come into our administration and work on those. We want to end this revolving door that we've seen in Washington where people come from industry, go into government, rig the deck in favor of those industries and then go back. We simply can't afford that anymore, George."

But Axelrod's comment is different from what many lobbyists have been hearing from colleagues working on Obama's transition. Several sources have told National Journal that no federally registered lobbyist will be getting a job in the White House. Nor will they be considered for any senior policy position requiring Senate confirmation. Lobbyists will be considered for mid-level policy jobs within the executive branch, but they won't be able to work on any issue that would benefit a former client, the sources said.

                                                          -- Bara Vaida, with reporting by Alexis Simendinger

One lobbyist said she received the following advice: "I was told the best way to get a job in an Obama administration is to leave my job for Capitol Hill, and then apply for something in the White House."

The transition team, run by John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, is working on a conflict of interest policy that will spell out in more detail how lobbyists will be treated.

What is certain is the policy will lay out a strict revolving-door policy. Senior policy officials working for an Obama administration won't be able to leave for K Street and lobby their former colleagues. A cooling off period isn't unusual. There is a one-year ban on Bush administration officials who leave the administration from lobbying their former executive branch colleagues. The difference with Obama is that the cooling off period will last the length of Obama's administration.

American University Professor James Thurber finds Obama's policy a bit "disingenuous" because Obama's campaign employs 23 recent lobbyists or advocates. One example is former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (an Obama senior strategist) who isn't a federally registered lobbyist but who Thurber considers an "advocate" because he works at law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.

"It's going to be difficult for Obama to run an administration without people who have had experience in an advocacy area," Thurber says.