Pandemic still drives business on K Street

From: POLITICO Influence - Thursday Dec 15,2022 11:06 pm
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By Caitlin Oprysko

Presented by

AT&T

With Daniel Lippman

NEW BUSINESS: Novavax, which makes the first protein-based Covid-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S., is continuing to build out its Washington footprint by adding former Sen. John Breaux and a team of other lobbyists at Crossroads Strategies to its roster of outside firms on retainer.

— FDA cleared the biotech’s Covid shot in July and subsequently OK’d Novavax for use as a first booster dose and among teens, with the hope that Americans hesitant about being inoculated with the newer mRNA technology used for vaccines like Pfizer’s and Moderna’s would embrace Novavax’s more traditional composition.

— But the company saw worse-than-expected demand for its shot, and has yet to get approval for its bivalent booster, which aims to protect against new Covid variants. Crossroads, which Novavax brought on last month to lobby on issues related to Covid vaccines, is the fourth outside firm on retainer by Novavax as it significantly boosts its spending on lobbying.

— Novavax spent just $40,000 in all of 2019, according to disclosures, compared to $480,000 in lobbying expenditures last year — a figure it’s on track to top in 2022. The company also retains Farragut Partners, alb solutions and Crowell & Moring.

— Crossroads signed another client last month to lobby on Covid-related issues, in the latest signal that even as wall-to-wall attention to the pandemic has waned, the virus is still driving business on K Street. Tzedek Association, a Jewish organization active on criminal justice issues, brought on former Sen. Trent Lott and two others at Crossroads to lobby on Covid-19 operations at corrections institutions, according to a newly disclosed filing.

— The group is lobbying on legislation introduced last year that would expand early and compassionate release programs for certain prisoners, including the elderly and terminally ill, or those who are otherwise at increased risk for Covid complications, due to the pandemic.

Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

 

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PI SPORTS BLINK: “When Saudi-funded LIV Golf first arrived in the U.S. earlier this year, it was met with criticism from politicians and the families of 9/11 victims, who claimed the new golf circuit was a bid by Saudi Arabia to use a popular sport to whitewash its reputation for brutality and alleged involvement in the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

— “Now, LIV Golf is claiming in a new court filing that much of this backlash was secretly coordinated by its rival, the PGA Tour, through a Washington, D.C. public relations firm hired by the PGA Tour,” the Wall Street Journal’s Mark Maremont, Louise Radnofsky and Andrew Beaton report.

— “‘The Tour has secretly directed, coordinated, and funded public protest, defamatory advertising, and other tactics to stir up anti-Saudi sentiment directed at its first-ever global competitor, all in an effort to maintain its unlawful monopoly,’ LIV alleged in a filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia submitted Tuesday but made public Wednesday.

— “The PGA Tour hired the Washington public relations firm, Clout Public Affairs LLC , ‘to front this campaign, insisting that Clout conceal the Tour’s orchestration of this effort,’ according to the filing. ‘The Tour knew how bad it would look if its fingerprints were on the campaign to link LIV Golf to the tragedy of the Sept. 11 attacks, so the Tour hid behind Clout,’ the filing claims.”

— “Clout’s president David Polyansky acknowledged that the firm was representing the PGA Tour, and said it was proud to do so. … LIV indicated in an attachment to the filing that it was seeking information from Clout about its communications with the groups 9/11 Justice and 9/11 Families United, in particular, and its communications with the PGA Tour about those groups.”

NCAA TAPS BAKER AMID NIL TURMOIL: Outgoing Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker will become the next president of the NCAA, putting a seasoned political hand at the helm of collegiate athletics’ governing body following a series of challenges to its business practices that resulted in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court to allow athletes to profit off endorsement deals.

— “Although his hire is unconventional — he was not a sitting university president or college athletic administrator — it also highlights the importance of political expertise for an entity that has sought assistance from federal lawmakers, particularly around issues regarding name, image and likeness,” The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach reports.

— “The NCAA has taken a largely hands-off approach to NIL regulation due to antitrust concerns and pressure from both the courts and Congress. [Outgoing NCAA President Mark] Emmert and other prominent college athletic leaders have asked for years for a federal NIL law” to avoid a patchwork of state rules. “Those involved in the presidential search noted Baker’s history of ‘successfully forging bipartisan solutions to complex problems,’ which led them to believe he was ‘uniquely suited to the NCAA’s present needs.’”

— As the NIL battle heated up ahead of last year’s Supreme Court decision, the organization’s spending on lobbying soared — from around $200,000 annually before 2014 to more than half a million dollars last year.

— Meanwhile NCAA’s so-called Power Five conferences — the Big Ten, Big 12, PAC-12 Conference, Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference — have all begun lobbying federally in recent years. They’ve collectively poured more than $1.1 million into lobbying efforts so far this year, according to a PI analysis of lobbying disclosure, advocating on issues from player compensation and NIL legislation to athletes’ rights to unionize.

PHARMA DEPARTURE LOUNGE: The drugmaker AbbVie is withdrawing from top industry trade groups around town, our Megan Wilson reports. The company is leaving the top two pharmaceutical trade groups, PhRMA and the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, as well as Business Roundtable, which comprises the country’s top business executives.

— “We regularly evaluate our memberships with industry trade associations and our most recent assessment led us to decide not to renew our membership with select trade associations,” an AbbVie spokesperson told Megan, while declining to name which associations.

— “The decision comes as regulators begin to implement the drug pricing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that drugmakers spent millions in lobbying to defeat. With the passage of the bill, which allows Medicare to negotiate certain drug prices, the industry and its advocacy groups were handed the most significant legislative loss in three decades and are now regrouping and charting a new path.”

— “AbbVie declined to say why it’s leaving the associations, but said the decision ‘has nothing to do with Humira,’ its blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug. The company expects to have a decline in revenue next year once biosimilar competitors to the treatment — which reached $20.7 billion in sales in 2021 — are allowed on the market, AbbVie CEO Rick Gonzalez said on an earnings call. There will be a ‘significant return to growth’ after the initial decline, he added.”

RESTAURANTS’ NEXT PUSH: The restaurant industry is still clamoring for federal assistance to help it recover from the pandemic despite failed attempts to secure another round of funding for an industry-specific relief program earlier this year.

— Many of the same lawmakers who championed the Restaurant Revitalization Fund have introduced legislation offering restaurant owners who missed out on the grant program another lifeline amid a rocky economic climate. The bill would create a tax credit allowing restaurants to offset their payroll tax liabilities up to $25,000 per quarter next year.

— The tax break would be restricted to the roughly 177,000 restaurants who applied for RRF money but did not receive it, given they demonstrate sufficient levels of loss during the pandemic, and have varying extents of refundability. Both the National Restaurant Association and the newer Independent Restaurant Coalition have thrown their support behind the bill.

— “Even with months of positive steady job growth and families dining out again, restaurant[s] and bars are still under a mountain of debt from month after month of anemic business in wave after wave of the pandemic,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said in a fact sheet on the bill, adding that it “will allow these businesses to stay afloat while fairly compensating their staff.”

SENATE PASSES ANOTHER FARA BILL: Don’t look now, but the Senate last night passed a second bill from Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that would make changes around the margins of FARA’s LDA exemption.

— The chamber adopted by unanimous consent the pair’s bill from September that would require lobbyists looking to avail themselves of the LDA exemption — which allows operatives working for a foreign entity to conduct business under the LDA’s less-stringent reporting requirements — to indicate that on their lobbying disclosure.

— Assuming the Justice Department’s recent endorsement of repealing the exemption altogether is a ways away — if it happens at all — Peters and Grassley’s measure is aimed at shrinking the pool of registrants DOJ’s FARA Unit would need to sift through as it looks for potential violations, without adding too much of a burden on the registrants themselves.

— Earlier this fall, the Senate passed another bill from Grassley, Peters and several others that would require lobbyists filing LDA paperwork “to identify any connection with a foreign government or political party that plans, supervises, directs, or controls any effort of that lobbyist, regardless of those entities' financial contributions to the lobbying effort,” which has previously been the standard for such disclosure. Both bills now await House action.

 

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Jobs Report

Kristina Howard is joining RXN Group as a principal. She most recently served as an executive vice president at Tusk Strategies.

— The National Community Pharmacists Association has promoted Anne Cassity to senior vice president of government affairs. Her resume also includes working at Centene and as a health care adviser to then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

SPOTTED at a holiday party last night hosted by 131 & Counting, a nonprofit aimed at growing the number of women in Congress and building a bipartisan network of women policy leaders, per a PI tipster: Reps. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) and Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Maggie O’Neill, Liz Westbrook of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Annabelle Chang and Katharine Hayes of Viatris, Kelsey Moran of Autodesk, Charla Penn of Winning Strategies Washington, Julie Philip of ACG Advocacy, Liz Albertine of DLA Piper, Miranda Franco of Holland & Knight, Shoshana Krilow of Vizient, Jill Shotzberger of Genentech, Katie Williams of BGR Group, Grace Freeman of Woodberry Associates, Carly Sincavitch of Arnold & Porter and Allison Brennan of NAACOS.

 

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New Joint Fundraisers

None.

New PACs

All-American Blue Dog PAC (PAC)
American Homes 4 Rent TRS, LLC Political Action Committee (AMH PAC) (PAC)
American Liberty Foundation (Hybrid PAC)
Protecting the American Dream PAC (PAC)
Sooner Values PAC (Super PAC)
South OC Taxpayers (Super PAC)
Tremco CPG Inc. PAC, dba Tremco PAC (PAC)

 

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New Lobbying Registrations

Crossroads Strategies, LLC: Morrison Cohen LLP Obo Rexmark Holdings, LLC
Crossroads Strategies, LLC: Novavax, Inc.
Crossroads Strategies, LLC: Tzedek Association
North Star Strategies, LLC: Reelement Technologies
Pioneer Public Affairs: Brimstone Energy, Inc.

New Lobbying Terminations

Invariant LLC: Zoetis Inc.
Kinetic Solutions Group: Alliance For Business Parnterships
Liebman & Associates, Inc.: Rec Silicon, Inc.
Scott Canady: Community Associations Institute

 

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In communities across the country, AT&T has invested more than $100 billion in American infrastructure over the past five years to connect Americans to a brighter future. This includes U.S capital investment and acquisitions of wireless spectrum from 2017-2021. And now, thanks to the unprecedented federal broadband funds made available, communities across the country are also able to collaborate with companies like AT&T to expand broadband availability to residents and businesses at a lower cost. Expanding broadband access and investing in America’s future opens a bridge to possibility for all. Learn more at att.com/infrastructure.

 
 

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