The Constant Charmer: Bono

Time Magazine's Persons of the Year

By Josh Tyrangiel

After coaxing $1 million grants out of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros and software businessman Ed Scott, data got real office space and hired lobbyists–Tom Sheridan, a Democrat who had been a star of the domestic aids lobby, and Scott Hatch, a former Tom DeLay aide who ran the National Republican Campaign Committee. data employees churned out policy papers while Hatch, Sheridan and Shriver organized intimate, bipartisan dinner parties (sample guest list: Senators Jesse Helms, Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch; former World Bank president Jim Wolfensohn; Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers) to cement relationships and encourage the sense that at least on one issue, everyone could break bread. Spouses were invited, and to spice things up, Bono might ask a friend from another sphere, like Jordan’s Queen Noor, to drop by. "Your first responsibility is not to be dull," he says. "Why don’t the poor deserve flash in their representation?".

Inside Bono's Washington Lobbying Effort

Congressional Quarterly

By Eamon Javers, CQ Staff

Not too many lobbyists get a shout–out in the liner notes of the latest U2 album, but Scott Hatch and Tom Sheridan do. They’re the Washington lobbyists for U2’s lead singer, Bono, and they’re thanked by name on the band’s "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" CD.

The two lobbyists - Hatch, a Republican, and Sheridan, a Democrat - are the for-profit arm-twisters hired by Bono's foundation called DATA, which is headquartered at 14th and I Streets, just off the K Street lobbying corridor and a few blocks from the White House.

Hatch says working with Bono isn’t all that unusual. "It’s the same in a lot of ways as when I worked for DeLay and [House Speaker J. Dennis] Hastert, R–Ill., in the whip’s office," he says. "You facilitate the relationships, you have good intelligence, and you find the avenue to connect and make a persuasive argument with whoever you're meeting with. The only difference is, my guy's wearing blue glasses."

Young Whip

The Washington Post Magazine

By Jake Tapper

At 30, Scott Hatch had risen to the top of the heap among GOP congressional staffers.

Through DeLay, Hatch became instrumental in helping the Republicans win a House majority for the first time since the 1950s. After that he helped DeLay win the post of majority whip, and after that he served as DeLay's chief floor assistant -- "my eyes and ears on the floor of the House," as DeLay put it -- for four tumultuous years. For many House Republicans, Hatch became the Indispensable Man when they had problems, political or personal.