Examination of the use and ties of Lobbyists to top three Dem Candidates

Huffington post has an inside look at the ties of lobbyists to presidential candidates. they examine the republican and democratic top three.
With all of McCains' retoric it shows his ties are extensive with the lobbyists.
I just took from the democratic candidates as that is of interest to us but, a link will get you to the full story.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic campaigns have fewer ties with lobbyists.

Of the leading Democratic candidates, Barack Obama is the least entangled with K Street. His campaign has no lobbyists on the payroll or serving as key advisers.

Obama is followed by John Edwards. Nick Baldick, a senior Edwards adviser, is not a registered lobbyist, but he is the founder of Hilltop Public Solutions. Hilltop "manages its national network of state affiliates to build support for our clients' public policy goals," boasting of victories for "the nation's largest financial services firm, one of the nation's largest airlines, a major fast food retailer, the world's largest healthcare provider, and numerous additional industry leaders."

The Edwards campaign political director, David Medina, was a lobbyist for the AFL-CIO from 1998 to 2003.

While falling short of McCain's ties to lobbying networks, Hillary Clinton has made the most use, among Democrats, of the special interest community.

Chief Clinton consigliere Harold Ickes represents the International Dairy Food Association, Equitas, and TransCanada Pipelines. Finance Director Jonathan Mantz came to the campaign from the PodestaMatoon lobbying firm where his clients included Sigma Tau Pharmaceuticals, General Dynamics, and United Airlines.

Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, is president and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations behemoth in the nation's capital. Although Penn is not a registered lobbyist, his company is part of the WWP Group conglomerate, a "family of companies" including such heavy hitting lobbying firms as BKSH (Alcoa, Kaiser Aluminum, AT&T) and Quinn & Gillespie (Bristol Myers Squibb, Qualcomm, and Microsoft).

Penn's controversial role has been written up by Ari Berman in The Nation and in the Washington Post .

The growing role of lobbyists reflects a major change in their status in campaigns. Once consigned to conducting their work in secret, lobbyists now thrive on publicity, routinely appearing on television as political commentators. Even running for office is no longer out of the question: a stint as a lobbyist did not prevent Jim Talent from winning a seat from Missouri in the U.S. Senate nor did one of the most powerful lobbying careers in history hamper Haley Barbour's successful 2003 bid to become governor of Mississippi.

I'm thinking more folks need to know about the "other guys" in the race.

And one of his head honchos in New Hampshire was a lobbyist for the gambling industry...