Bruce Andrews, who runs the lobbying department at Ford Motor Co., had the modest start that American corporate lore dictates: He worked in a mailroom.

The story deviates from the Horatio Alger archetype in some respects. It was a mailroom on Capitol Hill, not in some corporate tower. And Andrews has a college degree and a political pedigree that dates to Benjamin Lincoln, George Washington’s second in command. His great-great-grandfather was mayor of Syracuse, N.Y., during the Civil War.

Andrews says he didn’t have the money to work as an unpaid intern in Washington, but after graduating from college he made a beeline for Capitol Hill. He went around, office to office, dropping his résumé to whoever would take it, eventually finding work delivering mail and doing data entry in the office of Sen. Alan Cranston, a California Democrat.

Working anywhere in Washington was good enough, he said, and the $16,000 he made, once he discovered happy-hour specials and the Washington reception circuit, was enough to live on.

“It was a great job. A, I met a bunch of really great friends. And B, I think you learn more about the Hill going up through the ranks of the office. … It was a building block in understanding how Washington worked, how Capitol Hill worked.”

Soon, Andrews noticed he was working in an office with legislative correspondents who had higher degrees than he had and realized greater opportunity may lie in the House. He eventually made his way to the staff of Rep. Tim Holden (D-Pa.) in 1991, and had a small basket of issues that, fittingly, included oversight of the U.S. Post Office.

“I was an expert on postal issues,” he says.

He gradually rose up the ranks in the office, even as he set aside the happy hours for four years of night law school at Georgetown.

“It was hell,” he says. But he credits the experience with strengthening his analytical and writing skills.

In some ways, Andrews’s background as a government staff aide would prove to be the perfect fit for his corporate job. Business and Congress are often at odds, but a growing understanding of how public policy can affect a company’s bottom line underlies the rapid growth in the lobbying industry.

Like other automakers, Ford has been battered by the credit crunch and rising costs of commodities like steel. High gas prices, meanwhile, have turned motorists off of the SUV. The result has been tens of thousands of workers laid off.

“The issues that affect Ford and the auto industry are a microcosm of what affects the U.S. economy,” Andrews said. “What’s important to Ford? Environmental and energy policy, healthcare, taxes. You name the issue that affects the economy, it affects Ford because we are such a big company.”

The relationship between automakers and the new Democratic majority wasn’t the best, however, when Andrews took the job early in 2007 after having spent seven years at Quinn Gillespie & Associates, which had in that time grown into a dominant K Street firm.

Carmakers had fought efforts to raise fuel efficiency standards for years, arguing a higher number would require them to make vehicles that were less safe and didn’t hold the same commercial appeal to American consumers.

Once Democrats took over, though, it was clear automakers would have to accept some increase.
The reputation of American automakers “was not good,” Andrews said. “The fight over CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] for the last 30 years had taken its toll.”

But the common perception that Ford makes only big cars, is “just not true,” Andrews said.

Friends and former colleagues say Andrews was the perfect guy to help re-brand the company on Capitol Hill: a smart, indefatigable personality who never seems to have a bad day, and a Democrat to boot.

“He’s really smart and he knows the substance,” said Steve Elmendorf, who first met Andrews when they were both young staffers.

Jack Quinn, who met Andrews at Arnold & Porter, where Andrews moved after law school, said his new colleague made an immediate impression.

“From the first meeting, it was apparent to me that Bruce was a guy who had a unique combination: a keen mind and inexhaustible energy.

“He’s just the kind of guy who is so smart and he is able to get so much done in a given day, or week or month.”

After a couple of years, Quinn decided to leave Arnold & Porter to start his own practice with Republican operative Ed Gillespie. Andrews was one of the seven original partners.

One benefit of working there, Andrews said, was both Quinn and Gillespie encouraged him to continue to work on campaigns.

Campaign work is critical experience to understanding how Capitol Hill operates, said Elmendorf, who founded his own lobbying firm, Elmendorf Strategies. It is therefore critical background for any lobbyist.

“Members are frequently driven by a desire to get reelected in the service of their constituents. It’s important to understand how it all intersects,” Elmendorf said.

In the case of the auto industry, it all intersects in some useful ways on the Hill. The industry is a huge employer in critical Electoral College states like Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. That fact “helps a lot with Democrats,” Elmendorf said.

Andrews is now working to convince Congress to fully fund a loan guarantee program to help automakers get the financing they need to retool their plants to build more fuel-efficient cars. The program was part of the energy bill in 2007.

The company is looking for a $3.75 billion appropriation to underwrite the loan program, possibly in a second economic stimulus package.

“We need to do our part on fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide, but we also need the government to be a partner, particularly in this kind of economic situation,” Andrews said.

“If we go and borrow money at 14 percent instead of 2 percent, that’s a huge cost that we can’t put into new plants.”

Coming from upstate New York, an area that has suffered from job losses in manufacturing, Andrews said he couldn’t pass up the chance to work at such an iconic American company as Ford.

His old boss says he was disappointed to see Andrews go, but happy he was offered the job.

“It was the right thing to do for his family, the sort of opportunity that can help one get real financial security and stability,” Quinn said. And that’s still the sort of thing that motivates mailroom workers everywhere.