Broderick Johnson, a former lobbyist who helped promote the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline last year, today joined President Obama's re-election campaign as a senior adviser, to the consternation of the project's green critics.

The hiring of Johnson, who left his partnership at the firm Bryan Cave LLP earlier this year, comes as environmentalists seeking to derail the $7 billion XL line focus their message on charges of coziness between the pipeline's K Street backers and the State Department -- which expects to rule on the project's fate by 2012. Among the lobbyists in conservationist cross hairs is Johnson, whose communications with State are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request that previously pulled pipeline lobbyist Paul Elliott into the national spotlight (E&E Daily, Oct. 6).

The hiring of Johnson for an Obama campaign that staked its first White House bid on repudiating lobbyist influence "stinks," 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, a climate change activist and vocal Keystone XL foe, said in a statement today.

"I don't think you could conceive a more elaborate way to disrespect not just the environmental community but also Occupy Wall Street, because this is simply a reminder of the way that corporate lobbyists dominate our politics," McKibben added. "Forget 'Hope and Change' -- it's like they want their new slogan to be 'Business as Usual.'"

Friends of the Earth fuels campaigner Kim Huynh echoed that frustration among XL opponents who view the pipeline as a risky spur for increased greenhouse gas emissions and have long pressed Obama to personally veto the project.

"President Obama ran for office in 2008 promising that the days of lobbyists setting the agenda in Washington were over, yet now he's hired a top oil pipeline lobbyist into his campaign," Huynh said in a statement.

Bryan Cave first registered in 2009 to lobby for Keystone XL's sponsor, Alberta-based TransCanada Corp., according to federal disclosure records. Johnson does not appear as a representative for the account until the fourth quarter of 2010, when liberal and environmentalist resistance to the pipeline began to rise, and he was not listed on the firm's reports for the first quarter of 2011.

Before joining Bryan Cave, Johnson -- whose wife, Michele Norris, announced plans to step away from her National Public Radio anchor post during his time on the campaign -- lobbied for AT&T and BellSouth. He previously served as deputy assistant to the president during the Clinton administration, acting as its chief liaison to the House.

Johnson's senior advisership will entail serving as "a national surrogate for the campaign and our representative in meetings with key leaders, communities and organizations," Obama for America said in its press release on his hiring, first reported by Politico.