The real monkey business; it was Gary and Billy, not Gary and Donna - Gary Hart, Billy Broadhurst, Donna Rice

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1988 by Liz Galtney

The Real Monkey Business by Liz Galtney

Billy Broadhurst's 15 minutes of fame began May 2, 1987, the night The Miami Herald staked out Gary Hart's townhouse. While Hart took only a few questions before retreating inside, the Louisiana lobbyist tracked down the Herald reporters to set the story straight. But Broadhurst, a political associate and close friend to Edwin Edwards, the Louisiana governor who was investigated by seven grand juries, was unable to wring the story from the headlines. By the end of the week, it seemed as if he was a line in every article, op-ed, and soundbite as the press pored over the itinerary of the trip he had arranged for Hart and a couple of friends to take to Bimini.

But that's about all America saw of Billy Broadhurst. While reporters have tailored their inquiries to Hart's womanizing, little has been said about the man Hart met through a political consultant in 1984 and came to know as a close friend and campaign adviser. "A fine, upstanding citizen," Hart said of Broadhurst last September, describing the man with whom he had taken vacations and put on his national finance board. For his part, Edwin Edwards spoke ddifferently of his former law partner and close friend, telling a state senator: "Billy was more careful when he was pimping for me."

Among Louisiana politicos, Broadhurst is notorious as a lobbyist's lobbyist, having parlayed his close ties to Edwards into a lucrative law practice. During Edwards's reign, the state's major interests -- gas, oil, minerals -- became Broadhurst's. Those ties proved useful outside Louisiana, too. His clout and his connections made him important to Hart and his debt-ridden campaign. Around campaign headquarters. Broadhurst's reputation as a man who could tap campaign donors earned him the title of "Mr. Deep Pockets." The two were close enough, recalled former Hart adviser Peter Tauber in an article in The New York Times Magazine, that when he asked for a moment alone with Hart, the candidate said, "This is alone," pointing to Broadhurst, his wife, and two other aides. Looking back on Broadhurst's career and his closeness to Hart, it becomes clear that the real monkey business had nothing to do with Donna Rice.

The bayou connection

The path that took Broadhurst to the Hart campaign began in Crowley, Louisiana in the heart of Acadia, the oil-gas-and-gumbo region that is home to Louisiana's Cajuns. In 1963, this son of an established accountant and graduate of Louisiana State University Law School took a job with one of the town's most prominent lawyers, Edwin Edwards, his senior by a dozen years.

As close as they were and as close as they've stayed, ther have different personalities, say those who know them. One of Edwards's favorite quips is "laissez les bontemps roulez" -- let the good times roll. While Broadhurst also became known for the way he wined and dined people -- not just in Bimini but in Baton Rouge, where he threw an annual crawfish and duck luncheon for state capitol reporters -- he came by his partying less naturally than his senior, Edwards. "He's whatever he needs to be at the time," said one, lawyer who knows him.

Over the next decade the two of them, along with Edwin's brother Nolan, built a business as Edwin built a political career, rising from the Crowley city council to Congress. By 1972, Edwin Edwards was governor, and Broadhurst was on his way to building his own practice, never straying far from his mentor.

"I'd put him in the category of five people who were closest to the governor," says Bob d'Hemecourt, former head of Edwards's New Orleans office and a Hart delegate in 1984. "You can't get any closer than that five. Billy got to see Edwin s much as he wanted." He clearly envisioned having the same access to Hart. A frequent visitor to the Louisiana governor's mansion who is close to Edwards says that when he ran into Broadhurst, "He told me that I should support Hart because (Broadhurst) was going to be one of three people I would have to go through to see the president."

Throughout Edwards's terms of office (from 1972-1980 and 1984 through March 1988), Broadhurst's clout wasn't codified in prestigious government titles but in more mundane lines on his resume like "chairman of the ad hoc committee preparing the rules and regulations for the reclamation of lignite." It was these obscure but important assignments that made him a man for the state's energy interests to know and that bolstered the fortunes of his law firm. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, in 1979, Broadhurst's firm was awarded $585,500 in state contracts to represent indigents, more than any other firm. In 1986, Broadhurst scored another win. Edwards's appointees in the Department of Natural Resources gave his firm's Washington office a $95,000 contract that had been awarded to the firm of Washington lobbyist Tommy Boggs, son of Hale Boggs, the deceased Louisiana congressman and House Majority Leader.

And Broadhurst's stock rose on the basis of a less formal title -- close friend of the governor. It was those ties that bolstered the fortunes of Broadhurst, Brook, Mangham & Hardy, a 40-attorney firm whose offices spread from the Cajun town of Lafayette to Baton Rouge to New Orleans and finally to Washington, and absorbed other power brokers, like Ernest "Dutch" Morial;, the mayor of New Orleans, before being reorganized following the Hart scandal. (Clients include AT&T, Dow Chemical, Exxon and Allstate.) When New Orleans bankers sought passage of important interstate banking legislation, they turned to Hart's friend, known as "Billy B." "Edwards suggested that we hire Broadhurst," said a source involved with the effort. "Broadhurst was hired due to the governor's power over the legislature. Ae hired him because if Edwards hadn't supported the bills, they might not have passed."