With its back to the wall and down to its last gasp, NextWave Telecom Inc. and friends brought in the big guns. Bay Harbor Management, a New-York investment firm and a large creditor/shareholder in NextWave, signed up high-powered lobbyists at the firm headed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. More top-guns were rounded up from Timmons and Co. Inc.
Haley and the boys knew what to do. They crashed the 2000 budget party with meteor-like force.
You know you’ve got good lobbying representation when House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) are unified in cause.
“I realized there was serious stuff going on in Washington. And I couldn’t believe how unconstitutional it was,” said Doug Teitelbaum, a managing principal in Bay Harbor.
The “unconstitutional” of which Teitelbaum speaks is the now-defunct retroactive legislation to reclaim licenses held by NextWave, which is emerging from bankruptcy reorganization.
It’d be nice if the FCC pursued pirate broadcasters in Texas with the same fervor that it stalks NextWave.
Pushing the ill-fated bankruptcy measure were Nextel Communications Inc., which desperately needs more spectrum but swears otherwise, and its kindred spirit, the Clinton administration.
The White House needed more money to fund budget priorities without tapping into the fund that will help baby boomers, like me, buy digital TV sets in old age.
That NextWave exercised its bankruptcy rights in court, and won, was of no significance as the White House and its minions sought to seize NextWave’s commercial property anyway.
In the end, even the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association chimed in to promote equity in the plundering and distribution of NextWave’s wireless assets.
Conservative columnist Robert Novak believes the great injustice is NextWave having to pay only $500 million instead of the $4.7 billion it pledged for mobile phone licenses in 1996.
Insider Novak, in last Monday’s Washington Post, thought it suspicious that Bay Harbor hired influential lobbyists to protect its NextWave investment. He forgot to mention David Leach, a lobbyist and former telecom aide to Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.). Leach, too, worked with NextWave and others to kill the bankruptcy measure.
But then, Nextel, bankrolled by billionaire wireless guy Craig McCaw, had solid representation on the Hill, too. Gerry Salemme, a NextLink executive and a former aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), reportedly played a leading role in Nextel’s legislative power play. For sure, Bill Clinton’s White House had a big say in the debate.
No wonder Nextel lost.
