With Daniel Lippman DEM AIDES STILL HOT COMMODITIES DOWNTOWN: Well-connected Democrats are still in demand downtown, even as firms around town are working to shore up their inroads with the new House GOP majority and Republican-led firms expect business to pick up thanks to the chamber’s flip. — In addition to the cadre of former Democratic lawmakers who have landed on K Street in recent days, top aides to Democratic leaders are decamping for the private sector as well. This week, Mercury Public Affairs brought on Andy Vargas, a longtime aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, and Michael Hardaway , a former staffer for new House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, the firm shared exclusively with PI. — Vargas has worked for Harris since the beginning of her Senate term before moving over to her Biden campaign and transition staff. He was most recently senior associate director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs. He’ll be a senior vice president at Mercury and is one of just a handful of former aides to the VP on K Street. — Hardaway will be a managing director in Mercury’s New York office after working for Jeffries for nearly a decade and serving as head of communications for the House Democratic Caucus. Neither plans on registering to lobby. — Meanwhile Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld snapped up Reggie Babin, who most recently served as chief counsel to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Babin started this week as a senior counsel in the firm’s public law and policy practice, joining Hunter Bates, Brendan Dunn, Arshi Siddiqui and Casey Higgins — all former aides to either Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or the two most recent House Speakers from each party. — In an interview, Babin noted that his experience in the narrowly divided previous Congress will be especially pertinent now, with Democrats only holding a one-seat majority in the Senate and Republicans clinging on to the same razor-thin edge that Democrats held last time in the House. — At Akin Gump, Babin said he’ll use the insight he gleaned “working through difficult problems in the Senate and working to build coalitions and build support for issues in the Senate to assist [the firm’s] clients who have matters that can benefit from someone with that experience and expertise.” — The ability to navigate those dynamics in order to pass anything will be “essential,” he said. “It's critical.” And it’ll be a necessity for years to come, he predicted. “I don't think anyone envisions a scenario in which either party has more than 60 members of the Senate in any near future.” — The Clyde Group has also landed a onetime Schumer aide, former senior Treasury spokesperson John Rizzo. Rizzo, who is also a longtime Bob Casey (D-Pa.) aide and was Treasury’s lead public affairs official on issues like crypto and fintech, will be a senior vice president of public affairs focused on its financial services clients. Hello and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. GUESS WHO’S BACK: “Lobbyists are celebrating their return to the Capitol as it reopens to the public, ending nearly three years of pandemic restrictions that severely limited physical access to lawmakers,” The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom reports. — “The decision by Capitol officials to end strict rules for visitors on Tuesday, which followed pleas from the lobbyists and House GOP leaders, will boost K Street’s visibility on the Hill in time for the new Congress. Thousands of lobbyists roamed the Capitol campus this week without an appointment or congressional escort for the first time since March 2020, when Congress implemented COVID-19 restrictions.” — “‘It really was a very nostalgic, almost emotional feeling, truly,’ said Brian Pomper, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss [Hauer] & Feld and former Democratic Senate aide. ‘Talking to other people, I think they felt similarly that it just was so good to be back, and a reminder of just how important face-to-face interaction is for this business, which is very much a people business in many ways.’” — “The pandemic restrictions, which were extended after last year’s Capitol attack, made it difficult for lobbyists to meet with lawmakers in their offices. Congressional aides and K Street representatives increasingly relied on Zoom calls because getting people into Capitol buildings required too much time and planning.” — “The restrictions prevented lobbyists from loitering in Capitol buildings — taking away the chance encounters that hired guns often lean on to build connections with members of Congress — as well as traveling between offices to attend multiple meetings. Now, lobbyists are once again enjoying largely unfettered access to lawmakers and their staffers, something they had become accustomed to before the pandemic.” THE SUPER PAC SPEAKER’S ELECTION: As House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) worked through Wednesday to corral enough votes to become House speaker, a McCarthy-allied super PAC and a top conservatives grassroots group announced what they hailed last night as a “key agreement in support of Kevin McCarthy for speaker.” — As part of the deal, head of the House Republican group the Congressional Leadership Fund, agreed not to spend money in open primaries in safe red districts — a top complaint lobbed by conservatives, including at the conservative grassroots advocacy group Club for Growth that has agitated against McCarthy’s speakership bid. — In exchange, the Club, which even issued a key vote alert for the Speaker’s race, extended its support to the Californian conditional upon McCarthy’s approval of a rules agreement with his critics. — Because super PACs are prohibited from coordinating with candidates as a condition of being able to raise and spend unlimited sums, The Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker writes that “the circumstances of the agreement may present thorny campaign finance questions,” according to Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center. — Spokespeople for McCarthy and CLF told the Post the GOP leader “had no role in brokering the super PAC deal unveiled last night,” per Stanley-Becker. ADAMS’ TOP AIDE HANGS A SHINGLE: “The chief of staff and long-time friend to Mayor Eric Adams is launching his own consulting firm after one year in the public sector,” POLITICO’s Sally Goldenberg reports. “Frank Carone, who left his $251,982-a-year City Hall post in December, plans to stay involved in politics by working for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as the new Democratic Congressional leader looks to take back the House of Representatives.” MORE LAYOFFS HIT DOWNTOWN: GOP digital and public affairs firm Targeted Victory is laying off nearly a third of its staff, per Daniel, a move announced Wednesday during an all-hands Zoom call. Though Targeted Victory declined to comment on the exact number of staffers affected, a comparison of the “team” page of the firm's website between mid-December and Wednesday showed roughly 100 fewer employees. — In a statement, CEO Zac Moffatt characterized the layoffs as an “end-of-cycle adjustment,” and an official with Targeted Victory told Daniel that the reduction reflects the demands of the corporate and political market in a non-election year, and that the majority of those affected were either junior-level or political staffers employed for less than six months. One person who was laid off called the cutbacks “shocking,” explaining that they hadn't expected to lose their job after recently hitting their six-month mark with the firm. — The firm, which is part of the marketing conglomerate the Stagwell Group, is not the only downtown player undergoing staff cuts due to economic headwinds. Global PR giant Edelman laid off around 130 people last month. The firm told Daniel at the time that it was pausing new hiring, limiting employee travel and firm events and doing a “strategic review” of its more than 6,000-person workforce because of uncertainty in the economy.
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