Jeffrey Shockey

Rep. Jerry Lewis and Bill Lowery's close connections were further exposed by a February 2006 Time Magazine report on Lewis staffer/Lowery lobbyist Jeffrey Shockey. Shockey began his career on Capitol Hill working for Lewis for eight years. He then left his post in 1999 to join Lowery's lobbying firm, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White. "Many of his new clients, including municipalities, hospitals and lesser-known universities, were from Lewis's district" and had business before Lewis and the Appropriations Committee. Shockey "helped win at least $150 million in pork for an array of clients," with the help of earmarks added to appropriations bills. 

When Lewis took over the Appropriations Committee he brought Shockey back to work for him, while Shockey's wife went to work for the very lobbying firm that her husband had just left. Shockey received a $600,000 severance package from the Lowery firm and continued to receive payments from the buyout even as he worked for Lewis. 

An updated version of Shockey's financial disclosure forms show that the severance package he received when he quit the lobbying firm to go back to work for Lewis was actually for $1.9 million and not the previously reported amount of $600,000.

On June 14, 2006, Shockey announced that he amended his 2004 financial disclosure form to show $2 million in yearly income rather than $1.5 million. The mistake, according to his attorney, occurred because $1.5 million was his 2003 salary; this figure was used in 2004 because he had filed an extension for his 2004 taxes and had not yet calculated his income for 2004 at the time of the initial disclosure.