THE JUNK FOOD PUSHERS - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 24

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THE JUNK FOOD PUSHERS
Corporations, which should be carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast
becoming the people's masters .
—President Grover Cleveland, Fourth State of the Union address,
December 3, 1888
George Koch, nicknamed “K Street's godfather” by the Washington, D.C., insider rag Roll Call , spent
twenty-five years—beginning in the mid-1960s—as a power broker for the food and consumer products
manufacturing industry. As president of the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) he pioneered the
clever tactics used in the game of influence peddling: hardball media strategies, subterfuge, and schmoozing.
He and a cadre of young lobbyists shaped the GMA into a force to be reckoned with and feared by elected
officials. He was so accomplished, and had such a winning personality, that even his opponents thought he
was a nice guy.
Koch trained dozens of lobbyists at the GMA who went on to head major corporations or lobby shops.
His philosophy: “Hire 'em young, train 'em well, and move 'em on.” In the days of peck-and-tap typewriters
he held letters up to the light to see if they had been corrected, in which case the guilty party was asked
to type them again. His staff was told that Koch “owned them” from Monday morning until Friday night,
and they worked long hours, often joining him at 7:00 A.M. as he ate his morning cheeseburger. He was an
enigma: although a conservative Republican, he spent his own money litigating against a local country club
for ripping off African American and Latino workers in a cash-skimming scheme, but he also successfully
battled the Carter administration's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the establishment of a consumer
protection agency. 1
Koch began his career at a time when there was a small brotherhood of industry lobbyists in the nation's
capital; they knew one other and worked in a back-scratching environment. He worked in tandem with the
legendary lobbyist Bryce Harlow, and went on to hire Harlow's son Larry, illustrating how knowing the right
people in Washington is the first rule for going places.
The senior Harlow was the first-ever hired gun in Washington, first working as an in-house lobbyist
who represented the White House to Congress for Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, and then representing
Procter & Gamble until he retired in 1978. President Reagan gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the highest civilian honor in the nation.
Larry Harlow managed legislative affairs for Koch at the GMA from 1976 until 1981. According to Har-
low, Koch worked his lobbyists hard and found fault if they made mistakes. 2 Then Harlow left to handle
legislative affairs at the FTC for the Reagan administration; he worked for three years as part of the team
headed by the commission's chairman, James C. Miller, and helped eviscerate antitrust law and advocated
allowing food companies the opportunity for unchecked advertising.