In Georgia, lobbyists also go "catfishing."
A self-employed environmental lobbyist in the Peach State writes Dome that the word is most often used as a verb there, and not as an adjective, as in North Carolina's "catfish amendment."
"We use the term catfishing to mean bottomfeeding, finding unlikely sponsors for amendments that may or more often may not offer things that we want to see, but which will certainly screw up the bill onto which they get fastened," writes Neill Herring.
As an example, he said that a group of lawmakers were trying to pass a bill to build reservoirs. Opponents tacked on an amendment ordering the state to first build one in southern Georgia that had already been denied by the federal government.
More after the jump for the linguistically curious.
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Georgia's usage of the term would appear to be slightly different from North Carolina's.
Instead of the amendment or even the amending process, it appears to have come to denote the act of lobbying for such an amendment.
Herring wrote that he works with a lobbyist who is nicknamed "Catfish" for his ability to kill a bill this way. The lobbyist's wife, he notes, is often identified as "the lovely Mrs. Catfish."
Like a lot of North Carolinians, Herring was not familiar with the origin of the phrase, which may explain how its connotation has slightly shifted there.
He was familiar with the "catfish" joke, but with the words "little fish" instead. He said he had not realized there was a connection between the joke and the phrase.
After being told the joke, he said that "catfish" is preferable.
"It scans a little better, and has a ring of country or cracker authenticity," he wrote.
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