Appropriations lobbyist lands on his feet

After sending out 150 résumés, having several interviews and receiving more rejection letters than he cares to remember, Stan Skocki finally made it to Washington in 1991, becoming a legislative correspondent for then-Rep. Bob McEwen (R-Ohio).

“About three months later, I was out of a job,” Skocki said.

{mosads}After surviving a tough primary battle, McEwen lost a general election bid to Democrat Ted Strickland, now Ohio’s governor. Skocki began job-searching once again and found himself working with then-Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.).

“The one office I didn’t send a résumé to was Bob Livingston’s,” Skocki recalled. The Louisiana lawmaker had pulled Skocki’s credentials from a résumé bank, and the Columbus, Ohio, native became a top aide to the congressman as he began his climb to House Appropriations Committee chairman and then House Speaker in the 1990s.

Today, Skocki is a founding partner of the Normandy Group. Approaching its two-year anniversary in February, the firm continues to grow, recently adding former Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) to its roster. The firm is comprised of former government-relations consultants from the law firm Fleischman and Walsh who decided to start their own separate lobbying business.

“We took the jump. Our clients were very supportive of us, and all came with us,” Skocki said.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from The Ohio State University, but caught “the political bug” much earlier in his life. Skocki was an eighth-grader when he worked on his first campaign — a successful 1982 House seat bid by John Kasich (R-Ohio). Skocki put up signs and knocked on doors with his father, a Republican Committee member for Delaware County, Ohio.

Working for a state representative throughout his undergraduate years, Skocki was set on eventually finding his way to D.C. He started in McEwen’s district office before heading to the nation’s capital.

Making the move east marked not just a new chapter in Skocki’s career, but also in his personal life. He proposed to his future wife the same day he was offered the legislative correspondent position. The two have now been married 15 years.
“I have to have a job if I wanted to marry her,” he joked.

As a Livingston staffer, Skocki was part of the Republicans’ House takeover in 1994.

“We were just as glad as we could be to get him,” Livingston said, describing Skocki as “very steady, very diligent.”

Popular among his colleagues, Livingston would earn the powerful Appropriations chairmanship. Skocki’s Washington education became a lot tougher.

“All right, the party’s over, time to get to work,” Skocki recalled thinking.

Now in the majority, Skocki and others were under a heavier workload as Livingston took the Appropriations helm. In addition, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was pushing an ambitious agenda to drastically reduce spending by the federal government.

The move to cut the federal budget often faced unforeseen obstacles — like the Capitol Hill Police. To demonstrate the need to trim the government’s finances, several of Livingston’s aides, including Skocki, brought an assortment of knives into the Rayburn House Office Building for the chairman’s first full committee hearing.

“If we couldn’t cut the budget with the Cajun scalpel [a knife use to skin alligators], then we would use the Bowie knife. And if they didn’t work, we would use the machete,” Livingston said.

But police nearly stopped the stunt, questioning the aides about the weaponry. Livingston soon rescued his staff and secured his props.

Following Livingston’s resignation from the House, Skocki returned to his Ohio roots. The lobbyist heard former Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) was looking for staff as he took his seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Skocki was hired as his appropriations director.

“I was looking for someone who really understood the appropriations process,” DeWine said. “He’s a real pro.”

DeWine said Skocki helped him articulate his philosophy for federal government spending by prioritizing earmarks that paid for healthcare for children and the poor.

“You can’t get every appropriation everybody wants, so you have to make judgment calls,” DeWine said.

Working with Livingston and DeWine, Skocki realized the importance of learning to work with the opposing party. “To get this stuff done, there is really only one way of doing it, which is to work with those across the aisle,” he said.

The relationships Skocki fostered with Democrats on the Hill have served him well in his professional life as a lobbyist. Skocki has partnered with former Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) in representing the board of commissioners for Ohio’s Cuyahoga County here in Washington as it seeks federal funding for several different projects.

Stokes said he was “always impressed with him because of the very professional manner [with which] he conducted himself” when Skocki was a DeWine aide. When the lobbyist joined Skocki in lobbying for Cuyahoga County, the former congressman welcomed it.

Emphasizing the need for bipartisan cooperation, Skocki wonders how the latest budget battle between the parties will pan out. He was there to witness the federal government’s last shutdown as President Bill Clinton struggled with the Republican House. Politics for such standoffs can be messy, Skocki said.

“It is kind of like a hand grenade: When it goes off, it hurts everybody,” he said. The Ohio Republican gave Clinton credit for winning that battle. Skocki hopes a compromise between the two parties will be reached sooner this time.

But in comparing the federal government’s last shutdown to Pickett’s Charge — the disastrous infantry assault by Confederate troops in the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg — Skocki appeared uncertain as to who would be damaged most by another closing this year.

“You are wondering right now who is mustering around the trees to try to take that hill,” Skocki said.