Freddie Mac hired Gingrich as it reshaped strategy

By Marilyn Thompson and Samuel P. Jacobs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Within months after taking over as chief lobbyist at mortgage lender Freddie Mac in 1999, Mitchell Delk hired a prominent Washington insider to advise him on how to build support among conservatives on Capitol Hill: Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives.

A key part of Delk's strategy, as outlined in Federal Election Commission records, was to build goodwill in Congress by holding fundraising events for influential members of House and Senate committees that had oversight of Freddie Mac.

Gingrich had experience in such matters as an architect of GOPAC, one of the Republican Party's most important political action committees.

Gingrich's activity at Freddie Mac has been under scrutiny during his run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, as rivals have accused him of lobbying for Freddie Mac.

The former speaker has rejected such allegations, and his first $300,000-a-year contract with Freddie Mac, released this week by his campaign, states that he would not "engage in lobbying services of any kind."

But the contract, together with the FEC records describing Delk's revamping of Freddie Mac's lobbying shop, sheds light on how Gingrich could avoid the lobbyist label and still be valuable to the mortgage lender as a strategist.

Gingrich's contract says the former House speaker would work with Delk and other Freddie Mac officials on "strategic planning and public policy."

And, it calls on Gingrich to contribute to the lender's "corporate planning and business goals."

"He was a consultant for us, and ... not a lobbyist," Freddie Mac spokesman Doug Duvall said, declining to comment further on the lender's arrangement with Gingrich.

Gingrich's campaign has offered few specifics about his work for Freddie Mac, for which he earned as much as $1.8 million during two contract periods. It said late last year that part of his job was to help Freddie Mac build bridges to conservatives.

He has called himself a "historian" who advised the mortgage lender on issues such as its lending policies.

Gingrich joined Delk's government affairs shop at a time when the former Freddie Mac senior vice president was hiring several former members of Congress and congressional aides for his lobbying team.

At the time, conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill were seeking regulations to rein in the profits of government-sponsored lenders such as Freddie Mac.