Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles

The rules ban lobbyists from donating to the transition effort and lobbying during the transition period. Once Obama is sworn in, his advisers must wait a year before attempting to lobby the administration on any transition issues they handled.

The code also says that "if someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied."

That one could be tricky for at least two transition team members. Gitenstein lobbied Congress on a broad spectrum of subjects such as "legal reform" during the past year, according to disclosure reports. As a senior advisory board member, his work could touch on a range of topics that would pose problems for him.

Another senior staff member, Patrick Gaspard, recently de-registered as a lobbyist on health-care issues for the Service Employees International Union. He is the transition team's associate personnel director.

Transition officials declined requests to make Gaspard and Gitenstein available for interviews but said both are adhering to the ethics code.

"Patrick and Mark have jobs on the campaign that are general in nature, but per the unprecedented ethics policy laid out earlier this week they will recuse themselves from the fields of policy or agencies they lobbied in the previous 12 months," said Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director.

Efforts to control influence-peddling go back decades. In the wake of Watergate, Congress passed criminal penalties for senior presidential appointees who, after leaving their posts, lobbied their former colleagues within a year. The law was strengthened in 1988 to cover a wider range of government officials.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton pledged to toughen the one-year lobbying ban. Hours after his swearing-in, he enacted a five-year ban in an executive order that covered about 1,000 appointees. But in 2000, just before leaving office, he lifted the five-year ban, citing bleak job prospects for many aides in the face of a Republican takeover. Podesta, then the White House chief of staff, drafted Clinton's revocation.

Past president-elects have had differing approaches to the transition period, which presents a unique opportunity for lobbyists to shape government in ways that could help their clients and enhance their own business. President Bush's policy demanded that transition workers avoid conflicts of interest, according to Michael Toner, who was chief counsel to the 2000 transition team.

Toner said excluding lobbyists altogether never struck him as advisable.

"Campaign rhetoric is one thing," he said. "You've got to have serious people who know the inner workings of government."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.