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

After Guste, the attorney general, filed a new claim for $387 million against Texaco in the spring of 1987, he met with Governor Edwards to discuss the litigation. According to sources involved with the meeting, Edwards asked Guste to hire Billy Broadhurst to handle the new litigation. But this time, knowledgable sources have said, Guste refused to go along. Broadhurst is not representing the state of Louisiana in the case agianst Texaco.

Besides the Texaco case, Broadhurst has beenfited from other oil interests. Last year, the state Mineral Board, all of whose members serve at the pleasure of Governor Edwards, saved a client of the Broadhurst firm thousands of dollars less in royalty payments to the state of Louisiana through a procedure that had previously been prohibited by the board.

Initially, the board issued a routine denial of Cashco Oil's request to deduct certain transportation expenses from the company's royalty payments to the state. The board had turned down similar requests by other oil companies. But after Cashco hired Broadhurst's law firm, the board reversed itself -- even though no nvel arguments for the deduction were offered. Giving Cascho their deductions cost the state $127,000 immediately and $30,000 per month in subsequent payments. The chairman of the Mineral Board, Janet Boles, is the daughter of Billy Boles, who along with Broadhurst is a major stockholder in the First City Savings and Loan of Baton Rouge of which she is chairman. On the Mineral Board, she not only reversed her earlier denial of the deduction but helped persuade her colleagues to do so, too. She said of the deduction won by Cashco, "I think it is a good deal."

The lobbyist's townhouse

But even as Broadhurst was pulling off coups like the one for Cashco, and working the backwaters of Louisiana politics, he was working Washington, too. In 1985, the end of the Edwards era seemed within sight as the governor was indicted on 50 counts of racketeering and accepting $2 million in bribes. (Though aquitted, Edwards lost his subsequent reelection bid.) The same year Broadhurst began to spend more and more time with Gary Hart.

When Hart and Broadhurst met in 1984 through Ray Strother, the Louisiana native and Washington political consultant who formed Hart's media strategy during the 1984 presidential primaries, the two became very close. After his defeat that year, Hart marshalled his forces for another race -- and sought to pacify a growing mob of creditors. Broadhurst was close at hand, with a brand new Washington law office staffed with former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials, to pursue oil and gas legal work.

He bought two townhouses near 4th and A Streets on Capital Hill, a few blocks from Hart's residence near 6th and F, and merged them into one house that he used to entertain clients. "Billy gave the appearance of being a high roller, and Hart thought Billy would raise a lot of money for his campaign," says a Broadhurst law associate. "Billy thought the townhouse could be used to impress corporate executives, congressmen, and anyone who might generate business. He threw a lot of parties and fundraisers there," says another.