The loyalty litmus test comes at a time when newly laid-off Democratic staffers are flooding the job market. With Republicans in firm control of the Senate, staff ratios will no longer be almost evenly divided. The GOP is expected to reimpose the traditional two-thirds staff for the majority, one third for the minority.

Republican leader Trent Lott is under a lot of pressure to make sure those out-of-work Democrats don’t land plum jobs with the top lobbying firms synonymous with K Street. Lott met in his office last month with a dozen representatives of trade associations to thank them for their financial support in the election–and to warn them and others that helping the other side could be hazardous to their careers. Political insiders gasped at Lott’s overt hardball, but headlines about Republicans targeting the K Streeters don’t get average voters exercised. “It’s like the Iran-Iraq War,” says a Democratic consultant. “The more casualties the better. Nobody cares about lobbyists.”

Lott has done the equivalent of hanging out a shingle on K Street that says NO DEMOCRATS NEED APPLY. His goal is to reorient campaign money for 2004 so that it flows almost solely to Republicans. Lobbyists are typically former members and staffers, and their calling cards are the relationships they made in Congress and their insider access. Republicans have been frustrated at the staying power of Democrats as lobbyists and the continuing practice of many business groups to give money to both political parties. The party in power typically gets more, but there’s been a gentleman’s agreement that the other side gets to play, too.

Now Republicans are testing their newfound power with an ongoing, coordinated effort to get Democrats fired and to prevent them from being hired. A Democratic lobbyist who has felt the wrath of the GOP says Republicans are flirting with illegality in the way they are “threatening businesses and CEOs who do not kowtow and do 90/10 giving to the Republicans [over Democrats]. Getting control over the vast lobbying apparatus in Washington has long been a priority for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, who moves up a notch in the House leadership when Congress returns in January. On the Senate side, the GOP’s chief enforcer of this line is Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a hard-right ideologue who is close to Lott and is seen as the Tom DeLay of the Senate. Lott fended off a challenge to his leadership from the right and has got to prove he can be tougher than anybody in funneling campaign money to the GOP. “He’s not going to let these lobbyists come up for air,” says a Democratic consultant.

To the victor go the spoils–that’s the American way. Republicans say this is how the game is played, and the Democrats should quit whining. It was a Democrat after all, Tony Coelho, who used his leadership position in the House in the 1980s to set the tone for aggressive fund-raising. Coelho was lauded at the time for convincing business groups that opposed Democratic policy positions that it was nonetheless in their interest to contribute to the party in power at a time when the Democrats had a seemingly permanent grip on the House. “When you showed up with a $1,000 contribution, he’d say, ‘Where’s the rest?’ He was joking, but only half joking,” says a trade-association lobbyist. “There was no formal scorecard, but he knew who his friends were.”

Democrats didn’t try to exact retribution on lobbyists who traded with the enemy. Without a president of their party in the White House, it would have been an empty threat. Republicans were plentiful on K Street, and Democrats were grateful to get a share of the pie from business lobbyists. “There was never a negative hit on the other side. That was outside the rules,” says a Democratic lobbyist. Now the partisanship on the Hill is replicated on K Street and instigated by former Republican staffers who for years chafed in the minority and now relish the opportunity for payback. The easy camaraderie that once existed among lobbyists is no more. “It used to be, you’d go to a fund-raiser, and Republicans and Democrats would be there, and we’d all be hootin’ and hollerin’ together,” says a former lobbyist. “People knew I was a Democrat, but I also had relationships and friendships on the other side, and I was in a position to have information and access on both sides. That’s less the norm now, and the process suffers as a result.”

This is about institutionalizing political power. Republicans control the White House, Congress, much of the federal judiciary and important segments of the media. While Democrats search the want ads, the GOP continues to expand its reach.