The Power Player

Cloherty's success reflected the firm's. For years in the 1980s, Cassidy and his colleagues could truthfully tell prospective clients that they never failed to win an earmark for an institution that had retained them. "Sometimes it took longer than we expected," admitted Elliott Fiedler, who worked at the firm from 1987 to 1995, "and sometimes the client had to settle for a good deal less than it hoped for. But for years every client eventually got something."

From its inception the firm also represented businesses. One of Cassidy's earliest corporate clients was the Ocean Spray Cranberry cooperative, a national organization of cranberry and grapefruit growers. Ocean Spray got him into the political contributions business; he set up a political action committee for the group and decided which members of Congress would receive its largesse. That only increased Cassidy's influence.

Selling the Firm Again and Again

In the decade that began in 1989, Cassidy & Associates was transformed. Cassidy was able to fulfill his dream of becoming not just prosperous and successful, but rich. In two stages, he sold a portion of the firm to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, an unusual financial transaction that put $15 million in his pocket.

He used some of the money to greatly expand his business. He created Powell-Tate, a public relations firm named for its key partners, Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter's press secretary, and Sheila Tate, press secretary to first lady Nancy Reagan. Cassidy also acquired a Republican lobbying firm, a polling firm and a grass-roots lobbying firm.

The Republican victory in 1994, taking control of Congress from the Democrats whom Cassidy had spent more than 20 years befriending, cost the firm about $6 million in revenue, or roughly 20 percent of what it had been making. Cassidy cut his own salary way back; for a couple of years he earned no bonus. But he survived, and business slowly picked up again.

'A Republican Lobbying Firm'

Another guest at the 30th birthday party was Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip in the House. Ten years earlier, a Republican as important as Blunt probably would not have attended an event honoring a Democratic lobbyist. But times changed after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, forcing Cassidy to adapt to Republican tastes.

His latest adaptation had been the hiring of Gregg Hartley, an open, friendly Missourian like Blunt, who had worked as Blunt's right-hand man for nearly all his political career. In 2003, following a path trod by countless other Congressional aides, Hartley had decided to "go downtown" -- to become a lobbyist. A bidding war for his services ensued. Cassidy won it with an offer of just under $1 million a year plus a substantial percentage of the lobbying fees paid by clients Hartley could bring to the firm.

Hartley had earned $150,000 as Blunt's senior aide. Now he was the chief operating officer of Cassidy & Associates. Hartley worked the crowd at the party with a friendly, low-key style. A number of the guests represented corporate clients he had attracted to the firm.

Blunt was a nice catch for the Cassidy party, but not in the class of the man who arrived soon afterward, surrounded by a bustling entourage. That was Tom DeLay of Texas, then still the House majority leader. His presence was probably a favor to Hartley, who had belonged to the House leadership's inner circle.

To have someone with Hartley's connections essentially running Cassidy's firm, as he has since 2005, showed how the times had changed Cassidy. "I'm running a Republican lobbying firm," Cassidy quipped sheepishly to an old friend.

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One of the most influential guests at the party was a senior senator who once went after Cassidy in public -- Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.), ranking Democratic member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In 1989, just after Byrd became that committee's chairman, he threw a theatrical temper tantrum when The Washington Post reported that the University of West Virginia had hired the Cassidy firm to help win an earmarked appropriation for an $18 million facility to study the uses of coal. When this became public knowledge, Byrd decided he was furious. He actually blocked the $18 million, which the House had already approved, and forced his home state university to fire Cassidy. In a speech on the Senate floor he denounced "lobbyists who collect exorbitant fees to create projects and have them earmarked in appropriation bills . . . for the benefit of their clients," a thinly veiled reference to Cassidy.