In public, the Twenty-First Century Group plays a coy game about what it does. You won’t find any form of the word “lobby” on its web site. Instead, it describes itself as a group of “consultants” with clients that “benefit from our many years of experience, our keen understanding of the political process, and our extensive contacts in government and business.”

However, if you look at the html code of its web site, the sort of work that the Twenty First Century Group does is quite plain. The title to the home page lists the group as a “Washington Lobbyist Firm”. In the page’s meta tags, the firm assigns itself the keywords of “lobbyist” and “washington lobbyist”. Let’s make no bones about it: The Twenty First Century Group is a lobbying firm.

There’s another lobbying game that the Twenty-First Century Group does not play, however. While many lobbying firms put a thick mask over their funneling of donations to politicians, arranging for third parties to hold “parties” which people associated with lobbyist clients will pay thousands of dollars to attend, the Twenty-First Century Group goes right ahead and throws these pay-to-play fundraising events in its own headquarters, with its own lobbyists openly connecting members of Congress with clients carrying money.

The following are members of Congress who had fundraisers at the 21st Century Townhouse, the Washington D.C. headquarters of the Twenty First Century Group, since the beginning of 2006:

Wayne Allard
Michael Arcuri
Joe Baca – 5
John Barrow – 3
Joe Barton
Kevin Brady
Mike Burgess
Henry Cuellar
Elijah Cummings – 3
Phil English
Phil Gingrey
Charles Gonzalez – 5
Gene Green
Ralph Hall
Baron Hill – 3
Mike Honda – 3
Rush Holt
Darrell Issa
Jesse Jackson Jr. – 2
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Barbara Lee
Nita Lowey – 8
Ben Lujan
Mike McMahon
Dennis Moore – 5
Grace Napolitano – 6
Ed Pastor – 2
Donald Payne – 5
Ed Perlmutter – 2
Earl Pomeroy
Ted Poe
Steve Rothman
Lucille Roybal-Allard – 3
Tim Ryan – 4
John Salazar – 3
Mark Schauer
James Sensenbrenner
John Tanner – 3
Mike Thompson
Lynn Woolsey
David Wu

(The number next to some of these names indicates multiple lobbyist fundraiser parties – so yes, Nita Lowey has gone back 8 separate times over the last three years for more lobbyist-arranged money, courtesy of the Twenty-First Century Group.)