|
Presented by REAL SOLUTIONS®, a community safety program of the firearm industry.: Delivered daily, Influence gives you a comprehensive rundown and analysis of all lobby hires and news on K Street. | | | | | |  | | By Caitlin Oprysko | Presented by REAL SOLUTIONS®, a community safety program of the firearm industry. | With Theodoric Meyer and Daniel Lippman HOW GOP POPULISM COULD PLAY OUT FOR BIG BUSINESS: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton today unloaded on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, blasting the business lobby in an interview on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” as a “a front service for woke corporations” while asserting that the business lobby had “purged … real Republicans” in its top leadership and lost its influence with the party by endorsing Democrats, per The Hill’s Alex Gangitano. (In a statement to The Hill, the Chamber called Washington “confused” and doubled down on its intention to back “pro-free enterprise, pro-business, pro-governing members of Congress in both parties.”) — The interaction is emblematic an ongoing realignment in the GOP that signals “trouble ahead for the tried-and-true coalition of Republicans and corporate America,” particularly when combined with the recently announced retirements of lawmakers like Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the Republican lobbying firm CGCN Group wrote in a memo to clients this morning. — For corporate America, the shift means the party is “increasingly unwilling to listen simultaneously to corporate priorities on, say, tax and trade policy” when viewed alongside the type of “woke-ism” Cotton, a potential 2024 contender, targeted the Chamber over, according to the memo. The retirement of more business-minded lawmakers, it argues, paves the way for populist ones who have “tapped into the party’s anti-Big Business bent, which seems relatively indifferent to an increase in capital gains and corporate income taxes.” — “It’s not clear what this tendency suggests over the long-term,” the memo reads. “But for now, the business community needs to rethink how it engages the GOP on issues they consider fundamental. Because their list of priorities and the GOP’s may not always overlap in the same way it once did.” NEW BUSINESS: Online stock brokerage Robinhood is continuing to fill out its roster of Washington lobbyists as it comes under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators over the role it has played in a retail trading frenzy on Wall Street and the data it shares with hedge funds. The platform hired a team from Sternhell Group to its stable of outside firms, which include Thorn Run Partners, the Williams Group, Daly Consulting and Blue Ridge Law & Policy. Robinhood also registered its own well-connected in-house team of lobbyists last month. — General Motors has also continued its lobbying hiring spree. The automaker hired former Sen. Mark Pryor and four others from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in addition to Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of White House senior counselor Steve Ricchetti, and four other outside firms, according to filings disclosed over the past week, rounding out its total of outside firms to 20. | | | | A message from REAL SOLUTIONS®, a community safety program of the firearm industry. The firearm industry is creating safer communities through partnerships with law enforcement, elected officials, and community leaders. Our REAL SOLUTIONS® programs have distributed more than 40 million free gun locks to promote secure storage, strengthened the FBI background check system to keep guns out of the wrong hands, and provided thousands of suicide prevention toolkits in partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. These are true gun safety programs. Make a difference at NSSFRealSolutions.org. | | | Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Please don’t hold out — send your best K Street tips and gossip today: coprysko@politico.com. And follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. HOW WASHINGTON LET GOOGLE GET AWAY: POLITICO’s Leah Nylen is out with a bombshell report on how the Obama administration’s FTC fumbled the chance to rein in Google and its plans to dominate the internet, part of which are now at the center of the feds’ antitrust suit against the search giant filed last year. — Leah got her hands on 312 pages of confidential internal memos that “reveal what the FTC’s lawyers and economics experts were thinking — including assumptions that were contradictory at the time and many that turned out to be incorrect about the internet’s future, Google’s efforts to dominate it and the harm its rivals said they were suffering from the company’s actions. — “The memos show that at a crucial moment when Washington’s regulators might have had a chance to stem the growth of tech’s biggest giants, preventing a handful of trillion-dollar corporations from dominating a rising share of the economy, they misread the evidence in front of them and left much of the digital future in Google’s hands.” — The documents also shed new light on what companies like Amazon and Facebook, now facing their own antitrust scrutiny, privately told federal regulators about Google’s actions back in 2012 while privately staying mum and even teaming up with Google on lobbying efforts. — Finally, the Google Files include a look at where some of the key players in the 2012 FTC probe are now — like Barbara Blank, the lead FTC staff attorney on the Google investigation, who left the agency last spring to join Facebook as associate general counsel for competition and regulatory affairs, or Jonathan Kanter, who represented Microsoft at the time, represents Google complainants now and has been under consideration by the Biden administration to run DOJ’s antitrust department. | | | | TUNE IN TO GLOBAL TRANSLATIONS: Our Global Translations podcast, presented by Citi, examines the long-term costs of the short-term thinking that drives many political and business decisions. The world has long been beset by big problems that defy political boundaries, and these issues have exploded over the past year amid a global pandemic. This podcast helps to identify and understand the impediments to smart policymaking. Subscribe and start listening today. | | | | | BIDEN DIGITAL GURU STARTS OWN FIRM: “A former Biden campaign senior adviser and a Priorities USA executive director are joining forces to launch a digital advertising firm,” POLITICO’s Natasha Korecki reports, “one of the first such Democratic political consulting outfits to emerge after the 2020 election.” — “Megan Clasen, who ran a $250 million digital ad program for Biden, and Patrick McHugh, who led Democrats’ largest super PAC over the last two campaign cycles, are launching the digital ad firm Gambit Strategies, they tell POLITICO. Gambit will focus on digital persuasion, get-out-the-vote operations and issue advocacy,” which comes “as more Americans migrate to digital platforms, something McHugh said has been ‘supercharged’ by the Covid pandemic.” FIRST IN PI — JUUL ADDS KLEIN TO BOARD: The vaping company Juul Labs is adding Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, to its board of directors. Klein spent more than eight years as chancellor under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and is now the chief policy and strategy officer for Oscar, the health insurance company, as well as the chair of Boston Properties’ board of directors. — Klein will serve on the board of directors, not the policy advisory board that includes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, as PI reported earlier this month. “I believe the company must continue to play a critical role in reducing the devastating harm caused by smoking,” Klein said in a statement. “To accomplish that paramount goal, Juul Labs must, first and foremost, continue preventing underage use of its products.” While a 2019 study found e-cigarettes could help smokers quit, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said more research is needed. CORPORATE PAC MONEY DRIED UP AFTER INSURRECTION: “Early campaign finance data show that companies and organizations largely stuck to their public pledges to pause at least some of their political donations” in the wake of January’s insurrection and 147 congressional Republicans voting against certifying certain election results, Roll Call’s Kate Ackley and Herb Jackson report, vows which of course came after corporations came under pressure to halt contributions to election objectors. — “Donations to candidates and party committees from the PACs that vowed to suspend some or all donations — more than 100 connected to companies and trade associations, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics — totaled just $50,150 in January, compared with more than $2.7 million in January 2019, at the same point in the election cycle, a CQ Roll Call analysis of disclosures with the Federal Election Commission found. That’s a drop of more than 98 percent.” BROWNSTEIN TEAMS UP WITH FORMER DOL OFFICIAL: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck has expanded its tax and financial services team, partnering with former Labor Department official Preston Rutledge as a strategic consulting adviser through his firm Rutledge Policy Group . Rutledge previously served as the Labor Department’s assistant secretary for the Employee Benefits Security Administration before starting the firm last fall, and was a longtime Senate aide on the Finance Committee and at the IRS. ICYMI — TEA LEAVES ON INFRASTRUCTURE: “Sen. Ben Cardin , a senior Democrat on the committee responsible for crafting a surface transportation bill, in a ‘hot mic’ moment told Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Monday that Democrats will likely have to use budget reconciliation for their infrastructure plans, citing expected resistance from Republicans,” POLITICO’s Sam Mintz reports. — “‘Ultimately it’s going to be put together similar’” to the coronavirus relief package just passed by Congress, Cardin told Buttigieg at an event at a UPS facility in Maryland. “Democrats will ‘most likely have to use reconciliation,’ he said, noting that Republicans will only ‘meet with you to a point.’ Biden and Buttigieg have had several bipartisan meetings in the Oval Office, but several factors make earning Republican support for infrastructure legislation a challenge.” — For his part, Secretary Pete told Cardin he’s "pretty process-agnostic,” telling the Maryland lawmaker “‘We just want it to work, and get through,’ but that he's ‘all ears’ as lawmakers on the Hill are trying to figure out the sequence and pieces of legislation.” | | | | A message from REAL SOLUTIONS®, a community safety program of the firearm industry.   | | | | | | — Chartwell Strategy Group has added Keith Cocozza and Brandon Brown to the firm as senior advisers. Cocozza most recently spent more than a decade as executive vice president for corporate marketing and communications at WarnerMedia. Brown previously served as southern states director for the presidential campaign of Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), South Carolina state deputy political director for Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign and in public affairs for several HBCUs. — Chamber Hill Strategies has hired Deema Tarazi as a senior associate. She was previously a lobbyist for March of Dimes and plans to register to lobby in her new role as well, according to the firm. — Dave Banks has started as a policy fellow at the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions Forum . He was previously chief Republican strategist of policy and communications for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Matthew Del Carlo has been hired as chief of staff. He most recently was the principal of the Del Carlo Group. — Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is joining the Government Accountability Institute as a distinguished fellow, per Playbook. — Elizabeth Hart Thompson is joining Coca-Cola’s federal affairs team to head the company’s health and wellness advocacy, Playbook reports. She previously was managing director at the Prime Policy Group. | | | | GET DAILY REGULATORY UPDATES STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX: AgencyIQ’s daily newsletter, FDA Today, provides actionable and insightful explanations of the latest FDA developments impacting the life sciences industry. Sign up for free today. | | | | | | | | Jacky Rosen Victory Fund (Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Smart Solutions PAC) | | | Equality For Everyone PAC (Super PAC)
LEAP PAC (Hybrid PAC)
Norton For Delegate (Super PAC)
Protecting Our Conservative Values PAC (Super PAC)
Veterans United for DC Statehood (Hybrid PAC) | | New Lobbying Registrations | | American Continental Group: Port Authority Of New York And New Jersey
Arent Fox LLP: Aga Service Company
Ballard Partners: City Of Winter Haven
Ballard Partners: Farmaceuticalrx Of Pa, LLC
Ballard Partners: Kra Management LLC
Black Diamond Strategies LLC: Platinum Advisors Dc, LLC (On Behalf Of Jm International, LLC)
Blue Star Strategies LLC: The Mosaic Company
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: America's Newspapers
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: General Motors Company
Chesapeake Enterprises: American Innovation: The Ai Project
Clyburn Consulting, LLC: Lts
Desimone Consulting, LLC: Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids
Empire Consulting Group: Managed Funds Association
J.Sullivan Advocacy: The Boeing Company
Khawam Ripka, LLP: Khawam Ripka, LLP
Mercury Public Affairs, LLC: Caithness Energy, LLC
Mercury Public Affairs, LLC: The Michaels Organization
Mercury Public Affairs, LLC: X Labs
Polaris Government Relations, LLC: Enova Inc.
Smits Speidell Consulting: Strategics Consulting On Behalf Of Centralina Council Of Governments
Smits Speidell Consulting: Strategics Consulting On Behalf Of Statesville, Nc
Steptoe & Johnson LLP: Smartsky Networks LLC
Sternhell Group: Fiserv
Sternhell Group: Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers Of America, Inc.
Sternhell Group: Robinhood
The Russell Group, Inc.: Alltech, Inc.
The Wessel Group Incorporated: Western Digital Corporation
Van Scoyoc Associates: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center | | New Lobbying Terminations | | None.
| | | | A message from REAL SOLUTIONS®, a community safety program of the firearm industry. Partnerships with over 15,000 law enforcement agencies. Distribution of more than 40 million free firearm safety kits. A 266% increase in disqualifying records submitted to the FBI background check system. These are just a few of the success metrics behind the firearm industry’s REAL SOLUTIONS® programs. For decades, the firearm industry has been creating safer communities through partnerships with law enforcement, elected officials, and community leaders. We’re proud to work with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and members of Congress, regardless of political stripe to create safer communities. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing: to keep guns out of the wrong hands. The proven-effective REAL SOLUTIONS® programs promote true gun safety that everyone should be able to rally behind and support. Let’s work together at NSSFRealSolutions.org. | | | | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
