Let's do lunch: twenty-one new power players you wish you'd been nicer to.

• Author: Roth, Zachary
• Position: Cover story

Last November's Democratic victory catapulted party leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel into prominence. But it's not just those with a capital D after their names whose fortunes are on the rise these days. The changeover on Capitol Hill has reordered virtually every aspect of Washington's political culture. In so doing, it has strengthened hands of a slew of unelected Democratic power players--Hill staffers, lobbyists, political consultants, activists, fund-raisers, even socialites--whose sway is often all the greater for being wielded largely behind the scenes.

Of course, almost every Democrat in town is feeling pretty good about himself lately, and coming up with a comprehensive list of those who've seen their power enhanced in the new Washington would keep us here through 2008. But some of the capital's new influence brokers haven't received a level of attention commensurate with their clout. As we gear up for the major political battles of the next two years--from Iraq to congressional oversight to the presidential race--here are a few of this city's under-covered inside players who'll now be getting their calls returned more quickly than ever.

THE RESISTANCE

Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps

FCC commissioners

The Democratic takeover of Congress won't change the composition of the executive-branch commissions that write and enforce key regulations, and that remain largely majority Republican. But that doesn't mean the shift on Capitol Hill won't dramatically affect those commissions' balances of power.

Perhaps the best example is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is gearing up to address a host of thorny issues, from media consolidation to net neutrality. The FCC's two Democratic commissioners, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, will still be going up against three Republicans, including Chairman Kevin Martin, but they'll have a lot more weapons in their arsenal. That's because they're close with newly powerful Democratic committee chairs like John Dingell, Ed Markey, and Daniel Inouye, who'll use high-profile hearings to advance the Democratic commissioners' priorities. With the help of their allies in Congress, Adelstein and Copps will "put [the Republican commissioners] in a vise in the hearings," according to one Washington Democrat who follows communications issues. "It's like the cavalry coming over the hill."

What will that mean in practice? On media consolidation, it should allow Adelstein and Copps to begin laying the groundwork for reversing former chair Michael Powell's 2003 round of deregulation, which made it easier for big media companies to own multiple outlets in a single market. And it will almost certainly ensure that additional GOP deregulatory efforts are dead on arrival.

On net neutrality, the effects could be even more far-reaching. Already, the commission's Democrats have been working on an ad hoc basis to get telecommunications companies to agree to adhere to the neutrality principle--that is, not giving discounts to big Web content providers while charging little guys more. But their task will be much easier with Markey, a strong neutrality supporter, chairing the telecommunications subcommittee. Whether or not Markey succeeds in passing legislation ensuring neutrality, as he's said he intends to, his mere presence gives Adelstein and Copps vastly increased leverage. Says one expert: "It's certainly going to put a lot of telecom companies on notice that they shouldn't engage in discriminatory practices unless they want the wrath of the Hill."

THE MODERATOR

Perry Apelbaum

Staff director, House Judiciary Committee

Oversight figures to be perhaps the most important task of the next Congress, and many of the key areas that demand investigation--from torture to warrantless wiretapping to manipulation of Iraq intelligence--fall at least in part under the authority of the judiciary committees. The trick for Democrats will be to delve deeply into the failures and cover-ups of the Bush administration in these areas, without allowing the GOP or the press to portray their probes as needlessly partisan, vindictive, and backward-looking.

On that score, House Judiciary chair John Conyers (D-Mich.) has already made some Democrats nervous. Last year, he raised the possibility of impeachment--which Republicans quickly seized on to argue that a Democratic Congress would plunge the nation into turmoil. The impeachment talk was quickly slapped down by Nancy Pelosi, but fears remain in Democratic circles that Conyers's desire for justice could undercut the party's effort to present an image of constructive bipartisanship.

That's where Perry Apelbaum, the committee's staff director, could come in. Apelbaum has worked for Conyers since the congressman became the top Democrat on the committee in 1995, and by all accounts he enjoys his boss's absolute trust. But he also has good relations with the committee's Republican staff--in November, he had colleagues on both sides over to his house to watch the Ohio State-Michigan game. Just as important, as the top committee lawyer for the Democratic minority in the late 1990s, Apelbaum played a role in the impeachment defense of President Clinton, so he's seen firsthand how politically motivated congressional investigations can backfire. "Perry would be a moderating influence," says one Democratic insider who has worked closely with him.

None of this means he'll pull any punches: Apelbaum was the driving force behind two hard-hitting reports released last year by committee Democrats, on the various Bush administration violations of the Constitution, and on voting problems in Ohio's 2004 election. Julian Epstein, a Democratic lawyer and strategist who held Apelbaum's job in the early 1990s, calls him "probably the smartest attorney that I have ever worked with." If Democrats succeed in using oversight to expose and correct GOP failures, without in the process damaging their own image with voters, Apelbaum could be a key reason why.

THE SVENGALI

David Axelrod

Political consultant

Thanks to the Democrats' win last fall and the early excitement over the 2008 presidential contest, perhaps no state now has a more influential congressional delegation than Illinois. Rahm Emanuel, who masterminded the victory as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair, is now a member of the leadership, and almost certainly destined for bigger things. The state's senior senator, Dick Durbin, is the new majority whip. And then, of course, there's Barack Obama--maybe you've heard of him?

But you may not have heard of the Illinois political consultant who's helped engineer the rise of all three: David Axelrod. A former prodigy reporter at the Chicago Tribune who left to run Paul Simon's successful 1984 Senate campaign, Axelrod is the brains behind the Prairie State's newfound political prominence. But though he remains close to Emanuel, and every four years he runs Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's reelection campaign, Axelrod has never had a viable presidential candidate. (Bush media consultant Mark McKinnon calls him "the best guy in the business without a ring.") That's about to change. In recent months, according to a close associate, Axelrod has "cleared his decks" for Obama's presidential run, and has lined up his partner, David Plouffe, to be the senator's likely campaign manager. If Obama makes it to the White House, or even gets close, Axelrod could be the new Karl Rove.

Since 2003--when Axelrod backed Obama's Senate bid despite the presence of several better-known candidates in the Democratic primary field--the two have by all accounts undergone a kind of mind meld, talking every day and mapping out strategy. Axelrod is a skilled image-meister, but his all-around political sense is equally impressive. As a state senator preparing for his Senate run, Obama steered an important piece of death-penalty-reform legislation through the body. The bill was close to Obama's heart, but, as one adviser from the Senate campaign notes, it also represented the pet issue of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board, which ended up endorsing Obama in the hotly contested primary. And it was Axelrod who helped Obama secure the crucial position as the legislation's front man.

Just as Rove is known for his tendency to attack his opponent's area of greatest strength, and for his insistence on ultra-fight message discipline, Axelrod has his own signature style. It's characterized, say associates, by a willingness to let his clients be who they are, and to spend months identifying a candidate's most appealing traits, then working to bring those out. In other words, expect Obama's campaign to ditch the kind of awkward, staged photo ops that have backfired on previous Democratic candidates--think Dukalds in that tank--in favor of efforts to convey the senator's natural charisma and intelligence.

THE DOYENNE

Nancy Reynolds Bagley

Hostess

Republicans didn't just use their time in power to increase inequality and impeach the president. They also created their own high-powered party scene. Over the last few years, Julianna Glover Weiss, a former press aide to Vice President Cheney, emerged at the center of Washington's new conservative social whirl, hosting must-attend events for the right young things of the Bush-DeLay era.

Bush may have two more years, but that era is over. With Republicans on the outs, Glover Weiss's parties--whose cachet always rested on their status as centers of power across a range of fields--have lost much of their luster. Which begs the question: Who's D.C.'s next premiere hostess?

Nancy Reynolds Bagley looks like a pretty good guess. The daughter of Democratic fund-raiser Smith Bagley and...