Ex-lawmakers 'scrambling and looking' for lobbying gigs

So many former House Republicans are considering heading to K Street that not all of them are likely to find work.

When Sen. Heidi Heitkamp threw a party to thank friends and supporters at an Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill last month, Vic Fazio, a former congressman who’s now a lobbyist, saw an opportunity.

Fazio found the North Dakota Democrat, who’d just lost her bid for reelection, and pressed his card into her palm.

“We should talk,” Fazio told her, according to a person in the room.

Heitkamp has no plans to become a lobbyist, according to Tessa Gould, her former chief of staff. But the brief exchange was one of the countless quiet conversations taking place among many of the dozens of lawmakers who departed Congress earlier this month and the Washington lobbying firms eager to hire the best-connected among them.

More