Garn is going back to D.C. as a lobbyist

WASHINGTON — I never met anyone in power who seemed so deeply to despise, hate, loathe and downright detest Washington as much as former Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah — nor anyone who so gleefully rushed away from it when he retired.

But he's baaaack — at least temporarily and part-time — as a lobbyist.

To those of us who worked with Garn before he left Washington in 1992 after serving 18 years in the Senate, that's roughly as surprising as it would have been for, say, Abraham to return for vacations in Sodom and Gomorrah, or Orpheus to build a summer home in Hades instead of trying to rescue his wife from there.

After all, comparing Washington to Hades or Sodom and Gomorrah was exactly the sort of thing that Garn did constantly — half-jokingly — even though he was a U.S. senator and part of the Washington establishment.

When he won elections to the Senate, he gloomily talked as if he were really the loser condemned to another six-years-to-life term to serve in a place with too many phonies and blowhards, and too far from the Utah that he loved.

But recent listings of new lobbyists show that Garn registered to represent Cerberus Capital Partners — creditors owed money by the now-bankrupt MCI/Worldcom.

The listing said he is "working to educate members of the House and Senate regarding creditors' issues pertaining to the MCI/Worldcom bankruptcy." Garn knows most of the key congressional players involved, because he was once chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees such matters.

"It is the first time that I have had to register as a lobbyist, although I did help a few friends (lobbying) through the years," Garn told the Deseret Morning News.

After he retired from the Senate, he returned to Utah — where for a time he was vice chairman of Huntsman Chemical, and he continues to serve on a few other corporate boards. He now works mostly with a partnership he says helps organize venture capital deals.

He said he wasn't really aiming to do any paid lobbying, but Cerberus came to him with the offer — which he says he was not necessarily anxious to accept.

"I told them I could not represent them if I didn't agree with them," he said. "I found that I did."

He notes that some competitors of MCI/Worldcom essentially would like to see it go out of business, saying it otherwise would benefit from corporate misdeeds and fraud that led to its bankruptcy. But its creditors, whom Garn represents, hope it will survive — so that it can pay them.