Almost a third of the Blue Dog Democrats who retired or were defeated in 2010 have gone to work for organizations that lobby their former colleagues in Congress, according to an iWatch News review.

The Blue Dog ranks were devastated by the 2010 election, falling from a high of 54 to 26. Of those no longer in Congress, eight have moved through the “revolving door” to employment with lobbying entities.

The conservative Blue Dogs formed a key voting bloc for much of the last congressional session, drawing impressive fundraising from energy, financial and health care industry groups hoping to impact proposed legislation from the Obama administration. However, once that legislation was either passed or stalled, industry groups began abandoning the pro-business coalition, instead favoring their Republican opponents.

Some have expressed interest in running for their seats in 2012. Others have opted to retire. These are the eight who went on to work for organizations or companies that engaged in federal lobbying during the first quarter of 2011:

Newt Gingrich, making his first run for elected office in more than a decade, is aiming high—the Republican presidential nomination.

The former House Speaker was announcing his bid Wednesday. Gingrich’s campaign will be bolstered by as many as 2 million supporters collected over time by his K Street entities, often dubbed “Newt Inc.”

iWatch News has reported extensively on the Georgia Republican. Here are a few of the greatest hits:

Newt Gingrich is straddling a fine line: Even as he courts evangelicals wary of his two divorces, a Gingrich political committee has taken millions from a casino titan whose industry is often anathema to the Christian right. Call it Saints and Sinners. Here is Peter H. Stone’s investigation into his dueling constituencies.

John Aloysius Farrell analyzed Gingrich’s support for ethanol even as he takes big bucks from the fossil fuel industry. “I am not a lobbyist for ethanol,” Newt Gingrich declared in a mid-winter spat with the editors of The Wall Street Journal over his support for government subsidies for alternative fuel. Gingrich was a hired consultant to a major ethanol lobbying group—at more than $300,000 a year.

Stone also reported on the political unit of a religious group called Renewing American Leadership. Gingrich, its honorary chairman, is helping the group raise $500,000 to $1 million for high-stakes political issues.

In the wee hours next Monday in Las Vegas, when many Sin City visitors are still sound asleep or just going to bed, an army of top fundraisers for Mitt Romney will start dialing for dollars with an eye toward raising millions for his presidential exploratory committee.

Hundreds of fundraisers have signed up for the money harvest in Vegas. The fundraising marathon, which will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is shooting to corral between $2 million and $3 million, according to Romney fundraisers.

The day’s fundraising begins at 5:30 a.m. Pacific time to hit up East Coast donors early. It will include big-name Romney bundlers from around the country. Among those expected to be on hand are: John Rood, the Florida chairman for Romney and an ambassador to the Bahamas under George W. Bush; John Rakolta Jr., a Detroit construction magnate; Chris Collins, a Massachusetts developer; Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets; and Ron Kaufman, the chairman of Dutko Worldwide lobbying group.

So far, Romney has assembled the biggest network of GOP bundlers of the numerous potential GOP candidates. Romney fundraisers said his committee is trying to raise between $15 million and $30 million this quarter, an ambitious goal since donors can only give a maximum of $2,500 each for the primaries. For the entire primary season, Romney fundraisers are looking to raise a minimum of $50 million.

When Romney announces his formal campaign, as he’s expected to do by the end of the second quarter, donors will be able to give a total of $5,000, half for the primaries and half for the general.

Romney will host a reception the night before for his top fundraisers, many of whom will be spending Sunday night at casino hotels owned by Vegas tycoons Steve Wynn or Sheldon Adelson.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a potential Republican presidential candidate respected for his fiscal prudence, credits his success in government to the business skills he learned as a pharmaceutical executive.

But when Daniels worked as a top executive at Eli Lilly & Co., one of the world’s largest drug firms, the pharmaceutical giant’s reputation was tarred by some of the nation's ugliest drug scandals.

In the decade that Daniels climbed the corporate ladder at Eli Lilly, the company was illegally marketing its leading osteoporosis drug, Evista, as well as its blockbuster antipsychotic, Zyprexa, putting tens of thousands of patients in harm’s way. Lilly pleaded guilty to two criminal misdemeanors, paid more than $2.7 billion in fines and damages, settled more than 32,000 personal injury claims — and copped to one of the largest state consumer protection cases involving a drug company in U.S. history, a review by iWatch News shows.

The company also became embroiled in a high-profile legal brawl over its patent for the antidepressant Prozac.

Daniels became increasingly influential as he rose through the company’s ranks in positions that involved polishing the drugmaker’s image and then shaping its policies. He was vice president of corporate affairs, president of Lilly's North American pharmaceutical operations, and finally in 1997, became senior vice president of corporate strategy and policy.

Decisions at pharmaceutical companies, whether scientific or commercial, aren’t made by any one executive, so Daniels’ precise role in decision-making about the controversial drugs is unclear. “These things transcend individuals — it’s more difficult to say this is the work of person A, B, or C,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen. “It’s industry-wide corporate culture.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will tap Rob Johnson to manage his GOP presidential bid, iWatch News learned Friday.

Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s long time communications aide who will be campaign press secretary, said Johnson will get the top campaign post. Johnson became an adviser to Gingrich about six weeks ago.

The 36-year-old Johnson is well known in Texas GOP circles, but running Gingrich’s presidential drive is likely to be considerably more challenging than his previous experience. Johnson ran Texas Gov. Rick Perry's successful re-election campaign last year. Earlier he served as campaign manager for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in 2002 and then became his chief of staff. 

Tyler said Johnson’s “special strength is how to harness the Internet for modern campaigns. He did that in Texas and he will have the same capability for Gingrich nationally.”

Gingrich will formally enter the race for the Republican presidential nomination by May 13.

In a surprise move, Tyler said Gingrich’s closest political adviser, Joe Gaylord, will remain as CEO of American Solutions for Winning the Future, the 527 political committee that Gingrich set up about five years ago to promulgate conservative positions. In that period, the 527 has raised a whopping $52 million, of which $7 million came from Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

“I’m confident that American Solutions will continue to promote issues from a conservative perspective,” said Tyler. But the 527 can’t coordinate its work in any way with the Gingrich campaign, he said.

Charlie Black, a veteran GOP strategist, praised the “constant stream of good advice that Gaylord has given Gingrich for over two decades.” But Black stressed that if Gaylord remains as CEO of American Solutions, “he cannot be involved in the campaign in any way.”

As billionaire Donald Trump flirts with a run for the White House, his lengthy history of filing lawsuits — often to protect his image or gain a financial edge — is making conservatives wary of excessive litigation wince.

The real estate tycoon has been a party (as defendant or plaintiff) in about 100 federal lawsuits, according to a review of a legal database. Moreover, five of Trump’s major companies have been embroiled in over 200 civil suits in federal courts, according to court records.

A few examples:

• Trump has filed lawsuits against Palm Beach County, Fla., where he owns a palatial home and private club, called Mar-a-Lago, seeking to block a new runway at a local airport because it could increase the noise levels near his property.
• He has sued his former New York law firm, Morrison Cohen, for citing him as an ex-client on its website and treating him like a “cash cow.”
• Trump sued former New York Times journalist Tim O’Brien and his publisher seeking $5 billion in damages because he was depicted in the journalist’s book as worth much less than what Trump claimed was correct.

Trump lost his lawsuit against O’Brien, failed to block Morrison Cohen from using his name as a former client, and so far has been stymied by court rulings in a multi-year battle to halt Palm Beach County’s runway expansion.

For decades, Trump has used the courts to punish and pressure adversaries. No cause is too trivial — from a small Georgia company producing business cards called “Trump Cards” to a Mrs. Universe beauty pageant he claimed infringed on his Miss Universe trademark.

Trump’s heavy use of litigation against critics or those he’s trying to gain a financial edge against could create image and political headaches for him if he chooses to run for the GOP nomination.

House Republicans criticized the Obama administration for failing to disclose the names of thousands of visitors to the White House and suggested Obama staff met with lobbyists in nearby coffee shops to avoid listing their names in the official records system.

Rep. Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, kicked off often contentious and partisan testimony Tuesday by citing Obama’s pledge that his administration would be the “most open and transparent in history.”

“The American people were made a lot of promises that quite frankly do not seem to have been kept,” Stearns, R-Fla., said.

The two-hour hearing follows an iWatch News investigation last month which uncovered large gaps and missing information in the White House visitor logs, despite the administration’s claims that the searchable database contains “over 1,000,000 records of everyone who's come through the doors of the White House.”

Stearns cited the iWatch News findings, noting that only 1 percent of 500,000 White House visitors from the first eight months of the Obama administration have been released, that many entries don’t reflect who actually took part in meetings, and that thousands of visitor names, including numerous lobbyists, are “simply missing from the logs.”

Stearns rebuked the White House for failing to send anyone to testify at the hearing. “This failure to send any witness to a hearing about White House transparency while depriving the public of the administration’s perspective, is revealing in its own way about the administration’s true attitudes,” Stearns said.

Democrats defended the administration. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the hearing was “not about open government, it’s about politics.” He said Republicans had only given the White House six days to respond to the request for testimony, the minimum required.

Almost 10 years have passed since Osama bin Laden orchestrated the worst terror attack on American soil. A pursuit that began under President George W. Bush was finally wrapped up under his successor, Barack Obama, who told the world Sunday night that bin Laden was killed.

“I am not a lobbyist for ethanol,” Newt Gingrich declared in a mid-winter spat with the editors of The Wall Street Journal over his support for government subsidies for alternative fuel.

But Gingrich was a hired consultant to a major ethanol lobbying group—at more than $300,000 a year.

According to IRS records, the ethanol group Growth Energy paid Gingrich’s consulting firm $312,500 in 2009.The former House Speaker was the organization’s top-paid consultant, according to the records. His pay was one of the group’s largest single expenditures, as it took in and spent about $11 million to promote ethanol and to lobby for federal incentives for its use.

In a Growth Energy publication, Gingrich was listed as a consultant who offered advice on “strategy and communication issues” and who “will speak positively on ethanol related topics to media.”

Chris Thorne, a Growth Energy spokesman, said Gingrich was not hired again in 2010. The group was organized by ethanol producers from the Midwest in late 2008, Thorne said. Its members sought Gingrich’s counsel when it started because “they were people who were never involved in DC politics before, and they were looking for someone who knew how to get things done.” The organization’s IRS report for 2010 is not yet available.

Gingrich’s support of ethanol subsidies does not fit well with conservative, free-market theory, said Thomas Schatz, the president of the public interest group Citizens Against Government Waste. And as voters express concerns over the soaring national debt, many in Congress, from both parties, are questioning the value of the $6 billion tax credit.

“At $6 billion, that is real money, even here in Washington,” Schatz told iWatch News.

The palatial Montage resort in sunny Laguna Beach provided a luxurious spot for wealthy liberal donors to relax and listen to pitches from Democratic activists seeking big bucks.

Little wonder that leaders of four fledgling Democratic groups aiming to raise tens of millions for the 2012 elections flew out west earlier this month to woo dozens of donors and advisers to the rich.

Most of the contributors in attendance belong to the Democracy Alliance, a network of affluent liberals which hosted the seaside event April 14-16.

The meeting drew the likes of Rob McKay, the heir to the Taco Bell fortune, and Pat Stryker, whose family founded the medical giant Stryker Corp. Also on hand were Michael Vachon, the political adviser to billionaire George Soros, and Marge Tabankin, who advises Hollywood celebrities such as Barbra Streisand and “Lost” executive producer J.J. Abrams.

The Democratic operatives from Washington who were in attendance included: Sean Sweeney, a former top White House aide who will soon help launch an independent group hoping to raise upwards of $100 million to help President Obama win a second term; Rebecca Lamb, a veteran strategist for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who will help spearhead Majority PAC; Ali Lapp, a former top official at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 elections, who will run the House Majority PAC; and David Brock, the founder of American Bridge 21^st Century, a group that will focus on doing opposition research.

These and other Democratic operatives at the semiannual event explained their missions to the Democracy Alliance at an April 14 dinner.