FIRST IN PI — MEHLMAN CASTAGNETTI ADDS A DEM: Lisa Goldman, the senior counsel for Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is departing the Hill after more than eight years to join Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas as a principal. Her addition comes as one of the firm’s co-founders, David Castagnetti , departed the firm this week to join Dentons Global Advisors. — Goldman has been with E&C for her entire Hill tenure, mainly working for the panel’s consumer protection, commerce, trade and manufacturing subcommittees. “I expect to have a pretty wide range of clients that I work with,” Goldman told PI, adding that she expects to work on many of the same issues on K Street that she did on the committee, including consumer protection, tech and auto issues. YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT FRIENDS IN WASHINGTON: “Crypto megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried helped bankroll Democrats’ overperformance in the midterms. But any friends he may have had in Washington won’t be there for him as his crumbling business empire threatens to torpedo the entire digital currency market,” our Sam Sutton reports. — “Bankman-Fried’s Washington influence — as well as billions of dollars of his personal wealth — nearly vanished in the span of 48 hours, after it emerged that the giant crypto exchange he founded was insolvent and unable to meet customer withdrawals.” — “The crisis has demolished Bankman-Fried’s public image as a go-to resource for policymakers writing rules for crypto — a reputation that was built on his willingness to write multimillion dollar checks to boost Democrats.” — “One Democratic congressional staffer who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly compared the collapse to seeing the man behind the curtain in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ with Bankman-Fried’s razzle-dazzle performance for lawmakers and regulators amounting to smoke and mirrors.” — Even industry players are keeping their distance. Kristin Smith, the head of the crypto lobbying group Blockchain Association, called the crisis “an absolutely stunning turnaround from somebody who was the darling of Washington policy circles.” — Robert Baldwin, head of policy at the Association for Digital Asset Markets, “said the broader meltdown could lead to congressional hearings on crypto’s potential risks to the financial system and to consumers. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be as big of a seat at the table for industry,’ he said.” — The hits kept coming today as FTX’s U.S. affiliate resigned from the Crypto Council for Innovation, the industry trade group it had only joined earlier this year, Sam reports. The organization, whose other members include crypto investment firm Paradigm, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets and Block , “accepted the resignation of FTX.US as an associate member, and we remain committed to working toward building regulation that protects users and safeguards innovation, in order to bring about real change,” the group's CEO, Sheila Warren, said in a statement. PRIVATE EQUITY MOVES IN ON K STREET: “Private equity is pouring more money into Washington , investing in a group of polling, public relations, lobbying and political consulting firms,” The Washington Post’s Theo Meyer (a PI alum) reports. — The latest is California-based Seidler Equity Partners, which “has taken a minority stake in a conglomerate of 10 firms. They include Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican polling firm; GuidePost Strategies, a bipartisan lobbying firm; and Bullpen Strategy Group, a consulting firm led by the GOP operative Joe Pounder.” — “Seidler’s investment will allow the conglomerate — known as GP3 Partners — to buy more companies in an effort to become a bigger player in Washington, said Darrell Lauterbach, GP3’s president and chief executive. The idea is to serve clients better by offering a wider array of services under one umbrella. ‘We’ve got 10 firms now,’ Lauterbach said in an interview. ‘We will have probably 16 in fairly short order.’” — “The deal is one of a series of private equity investments in Washington’s influence industry this year. Coral Tree Partners, a Los Angeles private equity firm, took a stake in the lobbying firm Subject Matter earlier this year. And the consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies merged with four other firms in September in a deal backed by Falfurrias Capital Partners.” ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE: “Voters in Arizona, sharply divided over which candidates should represent them, found broad agreement Tuesday on a different matter — those candidates should not take office propelled by major sums of undisclosed money,” the Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reports. — “That was the message sent by an emphatic victory for a ballot measure to curb undisclosed spending in political races, sometimes referred to as ‘dark money.’ … The measure, Proposition 211, requires any group making independent expenditures of at least $50,000 in statewide races or $25,000 in other races to report donors contributing more than $5,000.” — “Voters favored that idea by a lopsided margin, with about 73 percent backing the measure based on ballots tabulated by Wednesday afternoon. The Associated Press declared the measure a winner. Only uncontested races and a handful of state legislative and judicial contests had wider margins in incomplete results.” — “The new disclosure rules were embraced despite Republican misinformation about their effects. In a bid to turn voters against the measure, the Arizona GOP falsely warned residents that it ‘would create a new tax for certain business activities,’ according to a sample ballot mailed to voters and obtained by The Washington Post.”
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