Why would several timber PACs host a breakfast for Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) at the Charlie Palmer restaurant this morning? The price of entry was $1,000 for a PAC, $500 for an individual.

Here at Party Time, we are like the unpopular kid who didn’t get invited. We don’t know exactly what happens at these soirees, because we’re not actually there, but we can pick up some evidence from the surrounding chatter. It’s mostly circumstantial, it’s true, but oh-so-intriguing.

First, we know that North Carolina is a timber state. And a bit of searching shows that the American Forest and Paper Association, one of the sponsoring PACs, thinks quite highly of the senator, giving her a perfect 100% voting score for the 109^th and 108^th Congresses, if not the current session. We also can find out that the timber industry has been fairly generous to her in the past, giving her more than $67,000 for her campaigns.

Dig a little deeper and we find out the senator is one of 22 sponsors of S. 402, a bill to provide a tax break for timber sales. The other senators are a mix of Democrats and Republicans, with representation from timber states such as Washington and Oregon.

Then it turns out that Weyerhaeuser, the Washington-based company whose PAC was one of the sponsors of today’s breakfast, has been lobbying desperately for tax relief. It seems that the company’s coffers have been declining in a big way thanks to the real estate crisis:

Weyerhaeuser’s immediate troubles come from the same poisoned well that choked Safeco and still menaces Washington Mutual: the housing bust. Weyerhaeuser’s first-quarter revenues declined nearly 24 percent, and last month it announced a write-off of up to $325 million, largely because of real-estate troubles. Impatient investors caused Weyerhaeuser shares to touch a five-year low on Thursday to close at $49.60.

Weyerhaeuser successfully pushed to get a related version of the timber bill sponsored by Dole, the TREE Act, into the recently approved farm bill:

In the end, the TREE Act was included in the farm bill. Weyerhaeuser and some small timber companies will see their tax rate reduced from 35 percent to about 17 percent, congressional aides said.

And we know that Dole voted “yes” on the farm bill.

Dole is also up for reelection this year. She has raised a lot more cash than her opponent, Democrat Kay Hagan. A recent poll from the liberal DailyKos shows that she enjoys a comfortable lead, at 50 percent versus her opponent’s 42 percent. But with Democrats pushing this year to win a filibuster-proof lead in the Senate, no seat is considered completely safe. “I doubt anyone really thinks Dole can just slack off,” writes Kos.

Put all this together and breakfast for a senator who has been very good to the timber industry starts to make a lot of sense. New friends are all very well and good, but old friends are nice and reliable. Pass the coffee.

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