A Washington lobbyist-turned-congressional candidate-turned author is having a feeding frenzy with what goes down on Capitol Hill, releasing a new book his team calls a “laugh-filled work of fiction that exposes how Congress really works.”
George Franklin spent decades in the halls of the Capitol as the Kellogg Company’s vice president of worldwide government affairs. His work in the nation’s capital helped inspire his new novel, “A Feeding Frenzy in Washington.”
The story centers on a group of food lobbyists working around a $27 billion agriculture appropriations bill and the efforts of the “most powerful lobbyist in D.C.,” named PJ “Snakeboots” Jackson.
“Their prediction is it's all going to end up in a huge omnibus bill, and the idea is that they try to their interests plugged in early in the process, and just go along for the ride with the idea that … it'll get buried in the omnibus bill,” Franklin told ITK.
“It's a Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Buckley kind of book, with a cast of members of Congress, and lobbyists, and trade associations — and it's good-natured fun.”
“I couldn’t have scripted it better, given what’s going on in Washington,” Franklin said with a laugh regarding the book’s timing.
Some of the anecdotes and characters in the book, Franklin said, are composites based on real-life encounters he had.
In the book, Franklin said, “This unnamed lobbyist one time in his office, he yells out, ‘Get Senator So-and-So on the phone!’
“All of the sudden he starts talking [on the phone], ‘Senator, I’ll be glad to help you. And can you help me?’ And he goes on with this animated conversation.”
“Then the other client gets up and leaves the office,” Franklin, 72, recalled. “And I looked at the lobbyist, and I said, ‘Was that really Senator So-and-So? He goes, ‘No, it was just some intern. But you know, the clients like to think you're talking to the senator.’ I never forgot that.”
“I think it's time for everybody to stand back and get a good laugh out of what we're all doing here,” the lawyer said of the book.
Franklin made a House bid in Michigan in 2018, coming in second in the Democratic primary. He’s now based in Atlanta and has written three other books — “Raisin Bran and Other Cereal Wars,” focused on his time as a lobbyist; “So You Think You Want to Run for Congress?” published a year after his campaign; and his first novel, “Incentives.”
With “Feeding Frenzy,” Franklin said his aim was to “not be so serious about all these issues that we’re now clawing and tearing at everybody at every little thing that goes on in Washington.”
“What's happening, it isn't new. It's been going on for years and years and years. And the country is going to do fine. We'll all come out in the end. And we just need to lighten up a little bit,” he said.
But what about those who view what’s happening at the Capitol as not quite so funny?
“I think I feel this strongly, or more strongly, than a lot of people about what goes on in Washington just because I was there, I lived it. It was an integral part of my life,” Franklin said.
“But I think we need to calm emotions down,” Franklin added.
“And I think humor is an effective tool to do that, because when people are willing to stand back and laugh at themselves a little bit, I think that's very healthy.
“I'm laughing at myself when I wrote this book. I mean, I'm part of this book. I was one of the foods lobbyists. It's actually brought about by personal experiences,” he added. “My own involvement and my own activities were the source of the book.
“So in effect, I'm making fun of myself, because this is what I did for years.”
