New Capitol Hill Access Site Helps Track D.C. Old Boys’ Network

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

For those of you who like to play along at home, a new website has come online, adding to the citizen-reporter's tool kit. The site is called Capitol Hill Access, and it gives a handy user's guide to the socio-business web that connects so many people in Washington, D.C.

The site tracks members of Congress, former members, their staffers and former staffers and congressional committee staffers, and makes the professional connections: who used to work for whom, where they are now, etc.

So, for example, take (now former) Sen. Barack Obama. His page lists Hill staffers making more than $100,000, former staffers and where they are now, former members of Congress connected to Obama, and a long list of "others with access."

The site is put together by a couple of former Federal Election Commission staffers, Kent Cooper and Tony Raymond. They have a good track record of assembling helpful websites, having founded what is now CQ Moneyline.

Have fun noodling around the new site and cracking the beltway old boys' network.

• Read more by Robert Schlesinger.
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