by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The resume for Jacksonville’s newest military lobbyist lists a 30-year career in Washington, D.C. But in the eyes of the mayor’s office, their new hire, former defense Secretary William Cohen, might have done his most significant work in Bangor.
It was in Cohen’s Maine hometown where he learned firsthand the responsibility that comes with running a City. It was a two-year stint as mayor of Bangor from 1971 to 1972 that propelled Cohen to a national political career that included service in both houses of Congress and the White House.
Cohen remembered the daily pressures of the mayor’s office and he assured Mayor John Peyton that his firm, Washington, D.C.’s Cohen Group, would do everything possible to alleviate one major source of pressure now looming on the horizon. In a letter thanking Peyton for choosing the Cohen Group, Cohen said that he had an understanding “of the pressures of your job.”
The City hired the firm to keep local bases off the Pentagon’s chopping block. The axe will fall in May, cutting the military’s infrastructure by about 20 percent. Since the day he took office, one of Peyton’s top priorities has been to keep Northeast Florida’s bases off the closure list.
Those bases pour hundreds of millions into the local economy and $44 billion into the state economy. With the right representation, the State is convinced it can come out of the Base Realignment and Closure process a net winner. Not just by keeping its own bases, but by adding troops and missions from bases that get cut.
The State is spending about $50,000 a month on what the governor’s office calls an “all star team” of lobbyists. The team includes Natter and Associates, led by retired four-star admiral Robert Natter and Piper Rudnick, a partner firm to the Cohen Group.
The City has about $4 million set aside to pay its military lobbyists. Most of that money is an unexpected windfall from last year’s shift of court funding from the State to the counties.
Cohen’s firm has the credentials to stack up with the other lobbyists working for Florida. The Cohen Group’s website scrolls through images from Cohen’s days as defense secretary for Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2000. They depict Cohen inspecting Chinese troops, exiting Air Force One and answering questions from a White House podium.
The Cohen Group specializes in putting its clients together with government contracts. Since opening its doors in 2001, the firm has helped its clients win hundreds of millions in government contracts.