The earmarks Adam Schiff delivered for donors

The Democratic congressman for years secured earmarks for defense companies while taking campaign donations from top corporate brass and Washington lobbyists.

By Christopher Cadelago

09/25/2023 09:01 AM EDT

Adam Schiff is unapologetically touting his commitment to earmarks for local causes — like homelessness and drug treatment programs — as he seeks the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein. The 12-term House Democrat and darling of the anti-Trump left is even calling out his closest rival in the race, Rep. Katie Porter, for her opposition to pork-barrel spending.

But Schiff has offered an incomplete and potentially misleading account of his record on earmarks. A close examination of that record reveals that he secured generous earmarks for corporate beneficiaries early in his career, including at times for recipients who were also major donors to his political campaigns.

Earmarks have emerged as an unlikely source of intense debate in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate primaries. Schiff’s sales pitch — that earmarks are essential to making Washington work for California — hearkens back to his early days in the House, before both parties raced to crack down on the practice. Porter said she views the spending items as a symbol of broken Washington and doesn’t file requests for them.

A POLITICO review of congressional earmarks and political contributions found that in addition to the money for homelessness and drug treatment, Schiff also steered millions to for-profit companies and raised tens of thousands for his House reelection campaigns from corporate executives and people connected to them. The review was mostly limited to publicly available data from the brief three-year window when corporate earmarks were disclosed.

Schiff said he doesn’t have a complete accounting of his earmarks.

The earmarks Schiff delivered for donors

Rep. Adam Schiff’s office told POLITICO he doesn’t have records of his earmarks from the time he entered Congress in 2001 until 2007. Below is a snapshot of publicly available data on for-profit earmarks and corresponding campaign contributions from 2003 to 2020.

Several of Schiff’s earmarks would be barred under reforms adopted in 2010. Among them, Schiff secured millions in funding for Smiths Detection and Phasebridge, Inc., defense companies based in his district. He steered $6 million to Smiths Detection for military warfare sensors between 2003 and 2006 and earmarked another $3 million to Phasebridge that was developing a radar frequency distribution system for the Navy in 2004.

Smiths Detection and Phasebridge both retained PMA Group, a lobbying firm founded and owned by Paul Magliocchetti, a former staffer for the late chair of the powerful House defense appropriations subcommittee, Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat. Between 2004 and 2008, Schiff received $8,500 in contributions from PMA Group PAC and two of Magliochetti’s family members — his lobbyist son, Mark, and daughter, Jennifer, who worked as an assistant ticket director with a minor league baseball team in Florida. Donations from Magliocchetti’s children, in 2007, came on the same day. In 2011, Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced to 27 months in prison for making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions between 2003 and 2008 — among the largest schemes to evade donation limits ever uncovered. Mark Magliochetti was sentenced to 14 days in prison.

Schiff was not named in the Magliochettis’ legal cases. But his record on the issue is a reminder that even as he fashions himself as an anti-Trump combatant fighting on the frontlines for democracy, he’s spent years engaged in bipartisan Washington traditions.

“We were always concerned about the pay-to-play aspects and that’s something that every lawmaker must live with,” said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, who has been analyzing earmarks for decades. “If you’re getting a campaign contribution and getting your earmark for that same company or for a client of that lobbyist, it has that perception.”

Schiff’s campaign downplayed the previously unreported connection to the Magliocchettis and other donations he received from companies for which he sought earmarks, saying the public has confidence in him.

“Californians know and trust Adam’s record of getting things done, and as a U.S. senator, he will do what it takes to ensure Californians’ tax dollars are put to work for them and their priorities,” Schiff spokesperson Marisol Samayoa said in a written statement.

“These contributions amount to less than one tenth of one percent of what Adam has raised over 20 years in Congress, and were driven by what was best for our troops and his constituents. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise,” Samayoa added.

Changes to the earmark process followed rising spending and a series of congressional pay-to-play transgressions in the mid-2000s. Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) admitted to taking millions in bribes from defense contractors; disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who dubbed the appropriations panel a “favor factory,” went down in scandal and the Alaskan “bridge to nowhere” became a symbol of congressional excess.

Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took over the House in 2006 and imposed more transparency around the process. Congressional Democrats banned earmarks to private industry in 2010, and Republicans upped the ante in 2011 by instituting an across-the-board moratorium, under pressure from Tea Party conservatives who emerged following the financial crisis. Then-President Barack Obama also vowed to veto legislation that included earmarks and said officials had a chance to not only shine a light on a bad Washington habit that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, but also take a step toward restoring public trust.

President Donald Trump agitated for the return of earmarks while in the White House. But the congressional moratorium wasn’t lifted until 2021, once again letting members direct money to projects in their districts and allowing House and Senate leaders to dangle carrots in front of them in exchange for support. Earmarks in their current incarnation, referred to as Community Project Funding, cannot go to benefit for-profit companies, and the requests must be posted online.

Now, Schiff is running for Senate on this sanitized version of earmarks, banking on the idea these locally directed spending projects have been rehabilitated with the public.

In a written statement, the congressman said he was proud to have brought millions of dollars back to his Southern California district to combat homelessness and the housing affordability crisis, provide mental health and substance abuse treatment and invest in military technology.

Schiff pointed out that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, herself a former House Democrat, has asked her former colleagues to request via earmark funding for homelessness and housing. Bass has endorsed Rep. Barbara Lee, a longtime House Democrat, in the Senate contest to succeed Feinstein.

“Our next senator must continue to fight for these resources — hundreds of millions over the course of a single Senate term — because California families need a leader who will deliver results, not mere talking points,” Schiff said.

He’s taken that stance one step further and singled out Porter over her opposition to earmarks; Schiff ran Facebook ads that link to a news report about Porter’s refusal to seek them. And he isn’t the only California candidate to do so. Lee also has questioned Porter for standing against earmarks.

But the Schiff-Porter rift has stood out given their dominance in fundraising and polls in the primary for the seat. Under the state’s election rules, the top-two finishers in March regardless of party, advance to the November runoff. Last week, a Porter senior adviser told POLITICO the congresswoman would not seek any earmarks if elected to the Senate.

Schiff’s moves prompted POLITICO to examine his own record of for-profit earmarks. In addition to the PMA Group dollars he raised, Schiff also received donations from other companies for which he secured earmarks. In fiscal year 2008, Schiff guided nearly a third of his earmarks to for-profit companies that were run by campaign donors.

— Schiff directed $1 million to Pasadena-based Eureka Aerospace, which was developing military technology to stop vehicles that ignored checkpoints. Eureka Aerospace CEO James Tatoian contributed $24,600 to Schiff between 2006 and 2016. Others in Tatoian’s household gave another $9,950 through 2020. His only other federal contributions in recent years went to former Republican Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, a retired Air Force colonel and former pilot.

— Schiff channeled $1 million to Tanner Research Inc. of Monrovia for detecting IEDs. CEO John Tanner donated $15,800 to him from 2003 to 2012.

— Schiff got an $800,000 earmark for Orbits Lightwave Inc. for an ultra stable coherent laser project. Yaakov Shevy, Orbits Lightwave’s co-founder and president, donated $2,500 to him over his time in Congress and executive Katrin Saroukhanian gave $1,200 from 2007 to 2010.

— Schiff also secured $492,000 for Superprotonic for solid acid fuel cell research. Co-founder Calum Chisholm of Pasadena and executive Sami Mardini of Duarte combined to donate $1,500 to Schiff in 2007 and 2008.

In response to questions, Schiff’s spokesperson Samayoa said the for-profit earmarks Schiff received went to worthy causes like weapons systems to protect troops and to foster economic growth and innovation.

“At the heart of it, earmarks are a way for a member of Congress to literally bring home the bacon and take care of their communities,” said Murshed Zaheed, a Democratic strategist in California and earmark supporter who worked for Rep. Louise Slaughter and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid during the height of the debate over targeted member spending.

“If Adam Schiff brought home earmarks that benefited his communities, that’s great. I also think Schiff and everybody else should be transparent about their earmarks. If you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to hide.”

POLITICO could not analyze many of Schiff’s earmarks or possible corresponding donations because the public record of dollars that flowed to companies is extremely limited. Schiff’s campaign declined to provide the list of earmarks from between 2001 and 2007, contending they didn’t have one. Schiff refused a Los Angeles Daily News request to reveal his projects when pressed in 2007.

California lawmakers and their aides at the time gave several reasons for the secrecy, including not wanting to offend requestors they couldn’t accommodate, and Schiff himself in 2006 contended it was time for more disclosure by bemoaning “late-night, backroom deals.”

It’s those memories of the days of rampant earmarking that Porter has tried to tap into, relentlessly attacking earmarks since they arose as an unlikely point of tension in a Senate race in which the contenders mostly align on policy. She argued that instead of “neutral experts” identifying where the needs are greatest, earmarks allow elected representatives to choose projects for their own reasons.

That puts her in the camp of earmark abolitionists, who view them as bad policy and optics.

“You’d be very hard pressed to show me how earmarks have made this Congress more functional than the Congress in the moratorium years,” Ellis, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. “I don’t think you can.”

And yet, Schiff may be on to something in his campaign strategy of highlighting his more recent earmarks to demonstrate effectiveness. Celinda Lake, a pollster working for another Democratic Senate candidate, Bay Area tech executive and investor Lexi Reese, said congressionally directed spending is attractive to voters at a time when Washington is synonymous with intransigence. “Earmarks are testing very positive because people want something tangible delivered to them for a change,” Lake said.

Others pointed to recent races to argue there’s little evidence suggesting voters are in the mood to reward politicians for doling out earmarks — or to punish them for being part of the old system, for that matter.

Jeff Millman, who managed Feinstein’s last reelection campaign against fellow Democrat Kevin de León in 2018, largely dismissed the issue as “obscure.”

But, Millman added of the contenders’ differing approaches, “Maybe they can make it part of a broader narrative about their different leadership styles and create a contrast for voters.”