Five questions for David Custin

TALLAHASSEE --- David Custin is among a shrinking number of Florida lobbyists who aren’t part of large firms.

The Miami-based lobbyist, who’s also a political consultant, has a client base that includes some of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, such as Senate President Bill Galvano, House Speaker Jose Oliva and Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez.

Custin, a grandson of Cuban immigrants, got his start in Sunshine State politics while working for the Florida House on redistricting efforts following the 1990 census.

Custin, who will turn 50 next month, grew up in the bare-knuckles political arena of Hialeah, drives a Tesla, is the proud father of two young boys and has Spotify playlists that include Karen Carpenter.

The News Service of Florida has five questions for David Custin:

Q: We’ve seen a lot of consolidation in lobbying firms over the years. There are fewer and fewer boutique firms like yours. Is there an advantage to flying solo, and how do you compete with larger firms?

CUSTIN: Very good question. Yes, there has been a lot of consolidation. There used to be a lot more boutique firms. They’re either retiring or they’re closing down and joining bigger firms. For me, how do I compete? I don’t compete. I occupy a different space. I do both lobbying and political consulting. So I don’t really head-on compete with the larger firms. I’m selected because I bring different capital, relationships and services to the table. So I’m more like a specialty designated-hitter utility player. Or, in basketball parlance, I’m a three-point shooter. They bring me in to shoot three-point shots. Because I do campaigns, obviously you’re in warfare, you get to build a lot of relationships with different folks when you’re actually helping them win races, and then I also lobby, I tend to have really tight, confidential, trusting relationships. I don’t compete head-on with the big firms. I can’t, and I don’t need to.

Q: How do you balance your work as a political consultant with your work as a lobbyist?

CUSTIN: You firewall it. Ironically, the hardest part is with the prospective clients that are lobby clients. So I run Dara Kam’s race, and Dara Kam wins. Well, there’s a presumption that, not that I’m your guy, but that you’re my gal. And they’ll come and say we want to hire you to lobby Dara, because she’s your gal. And I have to tell them, no, she’s not my gal. She’s an elected official. She’s a client of mine, on the political side, but she doesn’t work for me --- I work for her. Now, you hire me, yes. You get access. I can get a meeting. We can make a pitch, and it brings credibility, because I’m not going to let you pitch and lie to somebody I’ve represented, and the third thing is, yeah, if there’s a tie and there’s a trust factor or benefit of the doubt, I can get there. But if you have an issue that is bad or politically toxic for my client, understand that I’m going to tell them your issue sucks. There’s no conflicts here. I’m going to tell my political client the truth. Period. Because if I don’t, then I’m not going to have people want to hire me in the future. I lose credibility. That’s why, if you look at my lobbying list, I don’t have 50 lobbying clients. A lot of them don’t like the answer at the front end, when I say, listen, if you’re looking for a guaranteed outcome, I’m not the firm to hire. So I just firewall it, and you be honest with them, and then you do your best. I warn lobbying clients before they sign my contract, if I get in a scenario like this, this is what’s going to happen. You hire me. We get the meeting. We make the pitch --- funding, pass a bill, kill a bill, what have you. And then, the elected official says, Custin, can you do me a favor? Can you stay in the room? Thank you, great meeting. And then you guys got to leave and I’ve got to stay in the room, and the elected official says, take off your little lobbying hat, put on my consultant hat, is this going to be radioactive? Is this bad, politically? And I’ve got to tell them the truth. And if you don’t like it, don’t hire me. I tell them, point blank. In those scenarios, I will not tell a political client, no, no, no, no, no. This is fine. It’s not a big deal, if it’s not. I won’t do it. Because guess what? I’ve got to win their re-elect. Or I’ve got to win when they run for something else. I can’t do it.

Q: You’ve been doing this for almost two decades. What are the biggest changes you’ve seen since you started out?

CUSTIN: On the lobbying side, there’s a direct correlation with changes in term limits. Lobbying is free speech. Period. The core of lobbying, the essence, is free speech. You’re nothing but an advocate for someone else, for their free-speech rights to petition their government. Once term limits kicked in, you see the entrance of younger aides going into lobbying. So the market is more saturated, in terms of new entrants. You have former legislators going through their (two- to four-year) ban, and then boom, they’re lobbying. So the entrance into the lobbying field has been very great for those two reasons. Term limits has that impact, at the staff level and at the member level. The other big difference, I think, is the nature of how the Senate and House are operating. It’s a very top-down structure now with leadership. So a lot of lobbying firms and lobbyists themselves tend to try to curry favor with the top five to 10, as opposed to across-the-board, all the rank and file. There is less power in being a chair than there used to be. In the Senate, less so. When you were a committee chair in the House, you could just put a bill in a drawer and kill it. You can’t do that anymore. You don’t see that. Chairs can only put a bill in a drawer if the fourth floor says you can put a bill in a drawer. In the Senate, it could happen, it just depends on the chair’s relationship with the presiding officer. The biggest change on the political side is the increasing proliferation in the use of political committees. The parties have always been a great necessity in terms of using their money and their three-pack (advertising) ability to help their nominees. And that really hasn’t changed. I just think, on the political side, it’s three things. It’s the entrance of PCs (political committees), and how they’re used and the unlimited-donation nature of it. There’s the ascension of digital social media, and that communications market. And then there’s the numbing. What used to be considered silver bullets to defeat a candidate or win a race, are not really the case anymore. It used to be that, on the Wednesday or Thursday before the presidential election, if a recording about a candidate saying about grabbing a woman by her p---y, in public, there’s no way they would win the race. Well, that happened, and that guy still won the race. That would never have happened eight-plus years ago. I’m sorry. So there’s been a societal numbing of what constitutes unacceptable, or unelectable, conduct. As a consultant, what has happened is, when you do your research, there are no silver bullets, really, anymore. You have to basically plan and use multiple angles and do it earlier. Also, with vote-by-mail, elections happen earlier now. So you have anywhere from 40 to 60 percent, in some cases, of elections being determined before Election Day, where they’re either voting by mail or voting early. Election day is just a piece of the outcome. So, taking all of that into consideration, you have to start earlier. You have to make your case and your contrast earlier. There’s no silver bullets. And that costs money. When you go earlier, you’ve got to spend money. Your expenses have to begin easily a minimum 30 days before ballots are mailed, all the way until the actual Election Day. So things are more expensive.

Q. Is that “numbing” true of voters only on the national level? How do you explain the resignation of former Sen. Frank Artiles, a client of yours who stepped down in 2017, after a public tirade that included racially charged and vulgar expletives?

CUSTIN: He didn’t lose at the ballot box. He got pushed out by colleagues. So in that case, I would tell you that an election was overturned. And the fallout was that the Senate suffered. People like Clemens and Latvala (former senators Jeff Clemens and Jack Latvala, who became embroiled in controversies about sexual conduct), as a ripple effect, ended up having to quit. If they would have treated the Artiles matter differently, and not done a forced resignation --- because it was a forced resignation, let’s call it what it is --- they probably wouldn’t have had to resign, either. Now (Senate President) Galvano, give him credit, he has reset the Senate, brought back collegiality, brought back some semblance of sanity, and calmed everybody down. If he hasn’t done anything else, he has brought back the Senate to a more calm place where people aren’t looking (to see) who’s going to get shanked next.

Q: Politics in Miami-Dade has shifted significantly over the past decade. It was once a Republican stronghold, and now is considered purple or blue. One of the biggest state Senate fights this year will be over the seat now held by Sen. Anitere Flores, a Miami Republican who can’t seek re-election due to term limits. How do you navigate the shark-infested political waters of the 305?

CUSTIN: Oooh. The only thing I would correct you on is Miami-Dade used to be purple. Miami-Dade today is blue. It’s a blue county, countywide. We have pockets of red, and we have pockets of purple, but in a totality, I reside in a blue county. There’s no if’s, and’s or but’s. It used to be that you dealt with Jews, blacks, non-Hispanic whites, and Cubans. It ain’t like that anymore. It’s much more diverse. It’s actually much more emblematic of a New York system. Amongst Hispanics, you’ve got Cubans, but you’ve also got South Americans, and you still have some pockets of Puerto Ricans. Amongst your South Americans, you have different sub-groups --- such as Colombian, Venezuelan --- and they all have their own tribes. The tribal nature of politics in the 305 has gone on steroids, OK? Take the African-Americans. You’ve got Haitians, and other islanders that aren’t Haitian that are their own tribe. Then you have the traditional African-Americans that are not Caribbean. Then you still have your Jewish Democrat pockets but even that’s changed because Republicans have tried real hard to put a fissure between that being a D-base by using foreign-policy angles. I don’t think performance has shown it, but in fundraising, it has. You see a lot more Jewish money going to Republican candidates, committees and causes than you saw 10 or 20 years ago. That was non-existent then. But it hasn’t manifested itself at the ballot box yet. I’m an NPA (no party affiliation), which is odd. I’ve been on the payroll, throughout my career, of the Republican Party, state and national, and I’ve been on the payroll of the Democratic Party, state level. So I’m an NPA. I go with the person. In Miami-Dade, you kind of have to, in municipal races. In Miami Beach, everyone who runs is either Democrat or NPA. There are no Republicans running, even though they are non-partisan offices. So I’m an NPA, first and foremost, whether it’s in Hialeah, city of Miami, Miami Beach, those are the big three. … But in the partisan years, almost all my clients, since 2010, for the most part have been Republican. Because at the end of the day, I’ve got to feed my kids. It doesn’t make sense to lobby Tallahassee and be trying to run Democrat races. That’s kind of stupid, if I would do that.

From The News Service of Florida