Thomas Hale Boggs Jr, 73, Lobbying Giant

Thomas Hale Boggs Jr, who was the son of two prominent members of Congress and yet, as a pioneer of the capital’s lobbying and fund-raising industry, was the one who came to be called “King of the Hill,” died at his home in Chevy Chase (MD).

He would have been 74 on Sept 18. His sister, the broadcast journalist Cokie Roberts, said he had apparently had a heart attack.

After one unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 1970, for a seat from Maryland rather than Louisiana, his family’s stronghold, Boggs chose to follow what the Boggses called the family business, politics, in a more lucrative way. Losing the race, he later told an interviewer, was “the best thing that ever happened to me.” Starting a small company with a partner, Jim Patton, Boggs used his familiarity with both the levers of power and the intricacies of policy to build the firm Patton Boggs into a giant that became synonymous with Washington lobbying and represented some of the nation’s largest corporations and trade associations. Boggs had a notable success as a behind-the-scenes architect of the federal government’s 1979 bailout of Chrysler, his client. He was well known for battling on behalf of trial lawyers to block changes to tort law that threatened to make it harder for people to sue for damages, and for lobbying for free trade, a priority of his father’s, in Congress. Like some of its competitors in the lobbying industry, Patton Boggs went through tough times in recent years. It merged this year with the international law firm Squire Sanders to become Squire Patton Boggs.