USA Today leads with a story about Obama’s lobbyist connections.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama often boasts he is “the only candidate who isn’t taking a dime from Washington lobbyists,” yet his fundraising team includes 38 members of law firms that were paid $138 million last year to lobby the federal government, records show.

Those lawyers, including 10 former federal lobbyists, have pledged to raise at least $3.5 million for the Illinois senator’s presidential race. Employees of their firms have given Obama’s campaign $2.26 million, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance data shows.

Thirty-one of the 38 are law firm partners, who typically receive a share of their firms’ lobbying fees. At least six of them have some managerial authority over lobbyists.

“It makes no difference whether the person is a registered lobbyist or the partner of a registered lobbyist, if the person is raising money to get access or curry favor,” said Michael Malbin, director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a non-partisan think tank.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that while Obama’s refusal to take money from lobbyists “isn’t a perfect solution … it does reflect Obama’s record of trying to change the way that Washington does business.” He declined to elaborate.

Lobbyists have long played crucial fundraising and policymaking roles for candidates, and lobbyists are raising money for both Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain.

Obama fundraisers who work for firms that lobby and share the fees include:

•Allan Katz, a Florida lawyer who chairs the government relations practice of Akerman Senterfitt. The firm took in $3.6 million for Washington lobbying last year, according to public records compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. The firm touts on its website “an enviable level of access” for clients.

•Mark Alderman, managing partner of Philadelphia’s WolfBlock law firm. The firm’s lobbying subsidiary earned $930,000 in Washington last year representing clients including defense contractor Lockheed Martin, records show.

•Scott Blake Harris, managing partner of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, a Washington telecommunications law firm. Harris withdrew as a lobbyist for Microsoft and Cisco in June, but his partners still lobby, he said.

Now see, I honestly don’t care that he has all these lobbyist connections - it’s almost impossible to run an effective national campaign without them, and the Beltway finance world is notoriously incestuous.

What I do mind is the cynicism with which he proclaims himself to be outside the system, when he’s merely going through the back door.