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Delivered daily, Influence gives you a comprehensive rundown and analysis of all lobby hires and news on K Street. | | | | | |  | | By Caitlin Oprysko | With Daniel Lippman ROYCE, BROWNSTEIN WILL LOBBY FOR EXXON: ExxonMobil has added another lobbying heavyweight to its roster of outside firms, retaining a team from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck that includes former Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and several former congressional finance and tax aides back in May, according to newly filed disclosures. Royce, a former member of the House Financial Services Committee, and a coalition of former staffers for that panel and its Senate counterpart, in addition to a former chief of staff for House Ways and Means ranking member Kevin Brady, will lobby on behalf of Exxon on energy, corporate and international tax issues, according to the disclosures, as well as trade, tariff, international diplomacy, financial services and social and corporate governance. — The oil giant already retains 10 other firms — including Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Capitol Counsel, the Simmons & Russell Group and Hannegan Landau Poersch & Rosenbaum Advocacy — that it collectively paid $150,000 during the first quarter of the year, according to disclosures. That’s in addition to the $1.6 million the company spent on its in-house lobbyists in the first quarter, one of whom has landed the company in hot water for his candid camera admissions about Exxon’s government affairs approach — comments the company raced to distance itself from. MORE NEW BUSINESS: North Carolina-based Ward and Smith has signed Wildchild Stockholm, the company behind popular baby “dock” maker DockATot, to lobby on regulation for infant and child products. Like its parent company, DockATot hired its first federal lobbyists, from Bracewell, in May, according to disclosures filed last week. Both registrations came weeks ahead of a new rule approved early in June by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission cracking down on a range of sleep products for infants that had previously slipped through the regulatory cracks. — The rule, approved by a 3-to-1 vote, established a new federal standard for products marketed for use for sleep, as DockATots had been previously. The new rule was initially meant to target inclined sleepers like a recalled Fisher-Price product that a company executive told Congress last month had been linked to nearly 100 infant deaths. The proposed rule was later broadened to include other infant sleep products. A Consumer Reports investigation linked two infant deaths to DockATot out of nearly a dozen infant deaths tied to several other in-bed sleepers between 2012 and 2018. Good afternoon and welcome to PI. I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Send K Street tips and musings: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. MONUMENT ADDS CYBER, PROCUREMENT LOBBYIST: Monument Advocacy has added Omid Ghaffari-Tabrizi as a principal, bringing more cyber and federal procurement chops to the firm’s tech practice as Washington grapples with issues like cybersecurity and privacy, as well as AI and machine learning. He most recently served as the head of cloud policy at the Internet Association . Before that Ghaffari-Tabrizi spent several years with the General Services Administration’s department Technology Transformation Services, including leadership roles at digital services agency 18F, login.gov and the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence. In an interview Ghaffari-Tabrizi said that he will be registering to lobby, and expects to make an impact with his expertise especially with IT modernization issues so the firm can "have more fully fleshed out arguments that we make in these different areas.” | | | | SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | HAPPY FIRST DAY TO ANDY JASSY: “The Department of Defense announced Tuesday it’s calling off the $10 billion cloud contract that was the subject of a legal battle involving Amazon and Microsoft . But it’s also announcing a new contract and soliciting proposals from both cloud service providers where both will likely clinch a reward,” CNBC’s Lauren Feiner and Amanda Macias report. The contract, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, was meant to “modernize the Pentagon’s IT operations for services rendered over as many as 10 years. Microsoft was awarded the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating out market leader Amazon Web Services.” Amazon then sued over the decision, accusing then-President Donald Trump, who had repeatedly publicly disparaged the company and its then-CEO Jeff Bezos, of interfering in the process. (Andy Jassy, who previously ran AWS, takes over today as chief executive.) — “The fight over a cloud computing project does not appear to be completely over yet. The Pentagon said in the press release that it still needs enterprise-scale cloud capability and announced a new multivendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. The agency said it plans to solicit proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft for the contract, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet its needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could also meet its specifications.” K&L GATES ADDS TRUMP DOT ALUM: Jordan Cooper is joining K&L Gates as a government affairs analyst in its transportation and infrastructure practice. Cooper was most recently special assistant to the chief of staff at the Maryland Department of Transportation. Before that he served as special assistant to former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and was a global public affairs manager at UPS . He joins a T&I practice at K&L Gates that includes former Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and several other former transportation agency officials. TENEO NAMES NEW BOARD CHAIR: Executive consulting firm Teneo has tapped former Xerox Chief Executive Ursula Burns to be its next chair following the resignation of the firm’s co-founder and longtime leader Declan Kelly amid allegations that he drunkenly groped women at a charity concert in May. Burns told The Wall Street Journal’s Chip Cutter that “she would focus on bolstering Teneo’s culture while also continuing to counsel the company’s roster of corporate clients,” which decreased by at least one in the wake of the allegations against Kelly. “She has worked as a paid senior adviser at Teneo since 2017 and was previously a client of the company. In taking on the chair role, Ms. Burns, 62, signaled her confidence in the firm following weeks of tumult. ‘My reputation is pretty well known,’ she said. ‘I put my name on things I believe in.’ Ms. Burns added, ‘I understand what’s ahead of us, and I’m confident that we’re ready for the future.’” HOW BUSINESS GROUPS ARE HOPING TO WARD OFF TAX HIKES IN RECONCILIATION BILL: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation and other deep-pocketed lobby groups plan to use the same argument they employed in 2017 to secure huge tax cuts from Republicans: higher corporate taxes equal fewer jobs,” Reuters’ David Lawder reports. — “Business lobbyists are focused on persuading Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and a few Democratic House members that tax hikes will hurt small businesses just emerging from the pandemic. ‘I'm going to target 10 or 20 of the most vulnerable House Democrats,’ said Tom Spulak, co-leader of King and Spalding's government advocacy and public policy practice.” — That’s already begun in Arizona, where “a new coalition of 28 business groups called America's Job Creators for a Strong Recovery is advertising ... to influence voters to sway Sinema and fellow Senate Democrat Mark Kelly . ‘This may not be in most people's eyes the right time to start slamming tax increases on businesses that are just coming back from the pandemic,’ said Jade West, chief government relations officer for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors in Washington, the coalition's organizer.” CHECKING IN ON JUUL: “Sales have plunged by $500 million. The work force has been cut by three-quarters. Operations in 14 countries have been abandoned. Many state and local lobbying campaigns have been shut down. Juul Labs, the once high-flying e-cigarette company that became a public health villain to many people over its role in the teenage vaping surge, has been operating as a shadow of its former self, spending the pandemic largely out of the public eye in what it calls ‘reset’ mode,” The New York Times’ Sheila Kaplan writes. “Now its very survival is at stake as it mounts an all-out campaign to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to allow it to continue to sell its products in the United States” ahead of a Sept. 9 deadline for the agency. — “Juul is sparing no expense to push back. Last week, the company agreed to pay $40 million to settle just one lawsuit (with North Carolina) out of thousands lodged against it, avoiding a looming jury trial. The company had urgently sought the deal to avoid courtroom testimony from parents and teenagers while the F.D.A. is reviewing its vaping products.” The company also “paid $51,000 to have the entire May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior devoted to publishing 11 studies funded by the company offering evidence that Juul products help smokers quit.” And Juul’s federal lobbying spending has remained high, approaching $4 million last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with tobacco giant Altria, which owns part of Juul, spending close to $11 million. | | | — Leah Charette has joined Avisa Partners as an associate director of government affairs. She was most recently a senior legislative associate at Thorn Run Partners. — Roberto Jose Coquis is now director of operations at the consultancy Golden Key Group. He most recently was deputy assistant secretary of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is also an HHS alum. — Democratic digital firm Authentic has announced a slate of new hires. The DNC’s Chioma Iheoma will be a senior digital strategist and the committee’s Alexandra Soraya Vaezi will be senior advertising strategist. Sebastian Hamirani, Gordie Murphy and Jessica Gregg will be senior advertising strategists. The firm also added Sharre Brooks as operations director, Julianne Micoleta as digital strategist, and Genevieve Onyiuke-Kennedy, Londyn Harry and Linda Sandor as digital associates. — Hank Kilgore will be senior adviser to Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.). He most recently was assistant vice president of government affairs at CTIA. | | | None. | | | Activiting (sic) San Antonio Progressives PAC (PAC)
usa way alliance (PAC)
United States-India Relationship Council (PAC) | | New Lobbying Registrations | | 1607 Strategies, LLC: United Wholesale Mortgage, LLC
Becky Shipp Consulting, LLC: County Of Los Angeles
Becky Shipp Consulting, LLC: Embrace Families, Inc
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: Clearprism LLC
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: Eos Linx, LLC
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: Exxon Mobil Corp
Clark Street Associates: Everactive Inc.
Clark Street Associates: Ionq Inc.
Clark Street Associates: Rambus
Clark Street Associates: Running Tide Technologies, Inc.
G2G Consulting: City Of Shaker Heights
G2G Consulting: Ri Bio
G2G Consulting: Wellesley Center For Women
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP: Geobroadcast Solutions, LLC
Story Partners, LLC: Ant Group Co., Ltd
Van Scoyoc Associates: Cma Cgm (America) LLC
Ward And Smith, P.A.: Wildchild Stockholm Inc. | | New Lobbying Terminations | | Hannegan Landau Poersch & Rosenbaum Advocacy, LLC: Emergency Safety
Hannegan Landau Poersch & Rosenbaum Advocacy, LLC: Ofg Bancorp
Holland & Knight LLP: Bacardi Limited
Holland & Knight LLP: California Manufacturing Technology Center
Holland & Knight LLP: Los Angeles Lgbt Center (F/K/A Los Angeles Community Service Center)
Holland & Knight LLP: Portofino/South Pointe Master Association, Inc.
Holland & Knight LLP: The Continuum/South Pointe Master Assocation, Inc.
Holland & Knight LLP: White Memorial Medical Center
Mr. Marshall Brachman: Cardiology Advocacy Alliance
Splyss LLC: Supporters Of Agricultral Research Foundation (Soar)
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