Former congresswoman says Gingrich also urged her to vote for government drug coverage

{mosads}”Newt called me to vote yes,” Musgrave, now a director at the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List, told CNN. “He asked for a yes vote on a Medicare prescription drug benefit. … But I had already made up my mind to vote not to expand an entitlement that we were going to have to pay for down the road.”

Musgrave said she wasn’t sure if Gingrich was technically lobbying when he called her. The former House Speaker addressed the issue during a campaign stop in Iowa on Wednesday.

“I’m allowed as a citizen to say I’d like to see this passed and that’s not lobbying,” he told reporters in Mason City, according to CNN. “I wasn’t paid by anybody to say that. It was a public position I had taken for a practical reason. … That was a public position taken publicly and is literally by definition not lobbying.”