David Cohen, Pioneer of Public Interest Lobbying

David Cohen, a self-styled Washington white-hat lobbyist who as the president of Common Cause successfully fought for post-Watergate laws on ethics, campaign financing and public disclosure, died on Nov 29 in Westport (CT). He was 79.

Over four decades at Common Cause, the Advocacy Institute and other nonprofit groups, Mr. Cohen helped galvanize resistance to the war in Vietnam, defeat financing for the MX multiple warhead missile system and thwart the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork. Cohen joined Common Cause in 1971, a year after it was founded by John W. Gardner, a Republican who was the secretary of health, education and welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat. Within about five years, the group’s ranks had swollen from 4,000 members, who paid $15 in yearly dues, to 250,000, making it the nation’s largest nonpartisan so-called citizens’ lobby. Cohen was Common Cause’s president from 1975 to 1981.