Annals of the revolving door

From: POLITICO Influence - Friday Jan 27,2023 12:05 am

Jan 26, 2023

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With Daniel Lippman

ANNALS OF THE REVOLVING DOOR: There's much to be said about how porous post-employment restrictions on congressional staffers are, but two instances illustrate that reality quite well. In the first case, Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) former chief of staff, who left the senator’s office this month after nearly 10 years in total to work for the American Petroleum Institute, previously lobbied the Senate on several issues Manchin worked on during a stint with a trade association before returning to Manchin’s office, according to a PI analysis of lobbying disclosures.

— Lance West left Manchin’s office, where he was a legislative assistant, in March 2018. The same month, he joined the National Marine Manufacturers Association, which represents the recreational boating industry, as its director of federal affairs.

— Within months, the association reported that West was among several in-house lobbyists advocating for the industry before the House, Senate, Interior Department, Coast Guard, Commerce Department, International Trade Commission and others, disclosures show. West and others from the trade group lobbied on a wide range of issues from tariffs and boating regulations to public lands and water infrastructure legislation.

— Among the bills West was listed as lobbying on during his 10 months with the trade group were the Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act, which would — among other things — increase recreational access to ocean fisheries and modernize ocean data collection procedures.

— Manchin was one of the original co-sponsors of the bill, and in May 2018 NMMA called the legislation a “focal point of ongoing industry advocacy.” The group’s president at the time, Thom Dammrich, also penned a blog post making the case for “why the Modern Fish Act is good for West Virginia,” thanking Manchin for his support and urging the state’s other senator, Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) to lend hers as well.

— There is no indication that West lobbied his former boss or colleagues in Manchin’s office, which would violate Senate ethics rules. Neither Manchin’s office nor the NMMA responded to requests for comment.

— President Donald Trump signed the Modern Fish Act into law on Dec. 31, 2018, and a week after traveling to the Chicago boat show to represent NMMA, according Senate expenditure reports, West rejoined Manchin’s staff as the deputy staff director for Democrats on the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, where Manchin was the ranking member.

— West was listed as lobbying on another bill for which Manchin was an original co-sponsor that would establish a national park restoration fund to address priority deferred maintenance needs at the National Park Service. That bill never made it into law, but in 2020 lawmakers passed a Manchin-sponsored public lands package that included funding for the issue and which NMMA applauded. West, whose former boss lives on a houseboat in Washington, also lobbied against luxury boat taxes on NMMA’s behalf.

— In the meantime, West appeared to have remained close to the association since rejoining Manchin’s staff, participating in a roundtable with another Senate chief of staff during NMMA’s annual fly-in in 2021.

A16Z REGISTERS TO LOBBY: Another more recent addition to the revolving door caught our eye today. The crypto arm of venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz has registered to lobby for the first time, marking the firm’s formal entrance into the advocacy world as the digital assets industry faces a make-or-break year in Washington.

— Collin McCune, who joined a16z crypto as its head of government affairs at the end of last year, will lobby on the decades old securities and commodities laws that are central to the turf war over crypto regulation at the SEC and CFTC, according to disclosures filed Wednesday. He’ll also lobby on stablecoin and other crypto legislation.

— McCune was the latest major hire for a16z, which has raised billions to invest in crypto and Web3 startups and embarked on an aggressive lobbying push in Washington. He is the former deputy staff director for Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, a former top aide to the committee’s new and industry friend Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).

— Unlike in the Senate, where the Ethics Committee imposes revolving door restrictions of some sort on every former staffer, McCune does not appear in a House database that tracks former staffers who’ve reached the threshold that would subject them to statutory restrictions on lobbying activity. That means he’s free to lobby his former boss and committee on a16z’s behalf right away.

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

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FLIP THE SWITCH: “TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video app, has been in the cross-hairs of American regulators for years now, with both the Trump and Biden administrations weighing how to ensure that information about Americans who use the service doesn’t land in the hands of Beijing officials,” The New York Times’ Cecilia Kang, Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe report.

— “Through it all, the company has maintained a low profile in Washington, keeping its confidential interactions with government officials under wraps and eschewing more typical lobbying tactics. But as talks with the Biden administration drag on, pressure on the company has arrived in waves from elsewhere. Congress, state lawmakers, college campuses and cities have adopted or considered rules to outlaw the app.”

— “Now, TikTok is upending its strategy for how to deal with U.S. officials. The new game plan: Step out of the shadows. ‘We have shifted our approach,’ said Erich Andersen, general counsel of ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok. He said the company had been ‘heads down’ in private conversations with a committee led by the Biden administration to review foreign investments in businesses in the United States, but that then the government put the negotiations ’on pause.’”

— “‘What we learned, unfortunately the hard way, this fall was it was necessary for us to accelerate our own explanation of what we were prepared to do and the level of commitments on the national security process,’ Mr. Andersen said.”

WHO’S FUNDING MODERATE DEMS PAC: “A cadre of moderate Democrats and Republicans are joining together to revamp a political action committee to fight against progressive primary challengers to establishment Democrats,” The Intercept’s Akela Lacy reports.

— “With President Joe Biden’s former campaign manager as the PAC’s only consultant and a defense contractor executive as its treasurer, the Moderate PAC — not to be confused with the older Moderate Democrats PAC — stands to be an exemplar of the Democratic Party’s corporate-friendly, centrist wing. Its financial heft, though, comes from the other side of the aisle: So far, Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania, is virtually the only one putting money into the group.”

— “Axios reported last week that the PAC planned to raise $20 million to fight off Democratic primary challengers in 2024 and ‘scare off’ progressive groups like Justice Democrats that have backed several successful primary challengers and helped create a growing squad of progressive lawmakers in Congress.”

— “The Moderate PAC has raised just over $1 million since last year, all from a single donor: Yass. Yass, co-founder and managing director of a Philadelphia-based investment firm, gave the PAC $1 million in July. (The Democratic leadership’s house campaign arm, House Majority PAC, gave the Moderate PAC results from a poll in September 2022, which is recorded in disclosures, though no money changed hands.)”

— “A vice chair at the Cato Institute, Yass has come under fire for using creative money-moving structures to avoid some $1 billion in taxes, according to ProPublica. Yass, most recently registered as a libertarian, occasionally gives to centrist local and national Democrats, but the overwhelming balance of his political contributions go to GOP candidates,” whom he spent $47 million backing last year.

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MEANWHILE, ON THE ’GRAM: “The lobbyist behind the popular Instagram account that memifies Washington’s revolving door is exhausted and stepping away from the daily grind on Capitol Hill, but not before shedding her anonymity,” per Bloomberg’s Jack Fitzpatrick.

— “Katie McMichael, manager of government relations at Aurora Innovation, told Bloomberg Government she’ll maintain her ‘Just Off K Street’ Instagram presence, but she’s taking a reprieve from government affairs to spend more time with her family after a chaotic few years in Washington.”

— “‘We joke about being swamp monsters and how evil we are — and I post jokes about it all the time — but it’s important to remember that it’s easy to beat yourself up or get burnt out,’ McMichael said. That chaos is apt to continue with Congress drawing lines over a debt limit standoff by summer — an issue that typifies McMichael’s memification of Washington for a captivated Beltway audience of roughly 18,000 followers.”

— “She started the account in late 2019 inspired by other parody accounts on Capitol Hill, such as the ‘Committee on Ways and Memes’ and ‘The Congressional Scheduler.’ It gradually became one of the most-followed accounts in the genre, surprising McMichael, who said she didn’t expect to garner a following beyond friends and family. ‘I saw a lot of posts making fun of lobbyists and thought, “I can make fun of myself much better than they can make fun of me,”’ she said.”

— “She plans to do part-time nonprofit work while figuring out her next career steps, but will be happy to spend more time with her family. She’ll keep the page running, so followers will see more posts — though they won’t be tagged to congressional office buildings.”

THE NEXT CLASH FOR BANKS, FINTECHS: “The banking and fintech lobbies are bracing for a fight over an upcoming Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule that would set guardrails around how financial services businesses access and use consumer data,” POLITICO’s Sam Sutton reports.

— “Wall Street industry organizations and financial technology groups on Wednesday began publishing lengthy comment letters in an attempt to influence the CFPB over how the sweeping consumer data rule should apply to their industries. Last year, the agency released a 71-page outline of the proposal, which was required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, to solicit feedback.”

— “The final rule could sway the competitive balance between old-guard financial institutions and tech-focused startups that aren’t subject to the same level of federal oversight. The CFPB plans to release draft language later this year and finalize the measure in 2024.”

— “Banks and fintechs are at odds over what types of customer accounts and financial institutions should have to adhere to the new requirements. They’re also facing off over the future of screen scraping — how an individual’s financial information is collected by middlemen — and how that information can be packaged and sold by data aggregators to other businesses.”

CORRECTION: Wednesday’s Influence misstated the lobbying activities of the Children’s Hospital Association.PI regrets the error.

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Jobs Report

SPOTTED at a going away party for Laura Friedel, who is leaving her role as clerk for the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee, after 12 years and after 22 years in the Senate, per a tipster: Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), former Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Abby Blunt, former NIH Director Francis Collins, acting NIH Director Larry Tabak and various Senate and House Appropriations staffers including Ashley Palmer, Emily Slack, Patrick Magnuson, Anna Lanier Fischer, Susan Ross, Kathryn Salmon, Stephen Steigleder, Alex Keenan, Meghan Mott, Mike Gentile, Daniel and Morgan Ulmer, Emy Lesofski, Lucas Agnew, Alley Adcock and Brian Daner.

— Katie Berge is joining Waxman Strategies as senior director of health policy. She was most recently director of federal affairs at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

— The Healthcare Distribution Alliance has hired Amelia Allert as director of policy. She was most recently senior legislative assistant for Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.). HDA also promoted Kristen Freitas to senior vice president of federal government affairs and alliance development and Leah Lindahl to vice president for state government affairs.

— William Crozer has been voted to be a principal at BGR Group.

— Rebecca Lubot is now principal in The Raben Group’s government affairs practice. She previously was a director at Porzio Governmental Affairs.

— Kids in Need of Defense named Alexander “Sandy” Thomas its inaugural chief legal officer. Thomas is the former global managing partner at Reed Smith.

— The Coalition for Community Solar Access hired Stephanie Burgos-Veras as senior manager of equity programs. She was previously senior campaign manager at Joule Assets.

— Hannah Muldavin will be senior comms adviser for the Congressional Integrity Project. She previously was deputy communications director for the Jan. 6 select committee.

— Ray Zaccaro is joining the AFL-CIO as strategic adviser and head of public affairs. He previously was an adviser for Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

— Joanna Burgos is launching a new firm, Compel. She previously was with OnMessage Inc. for a decade, and will continue to share some clients with OnMessage in her new endeavor.

— Kathee Facchiano is now a vice president at Van Scoyoc Associates. She previously was chief of staff for Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

— Evan Barker is launching Lifecycle Media, a political media business focused on TV and ads. He previously was director of statewide campaigns at Left Rising.

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New Joint Fundraisers

LANGWORTHY CONGRESSIONAL VICTORY COMMITTEE (Rep. Nick Langworthy, Circle the Wagons PAC, NRCC)

New PACs

Conservative Policy Action (Super PAC)
War Room PAC (PAC)

New Lobbying Registrations

Ah Capital Management, L.L.C. (D/B/A Andreessen Horowitz): Ah Capital Management, L.L.C. (D/B/A Andreessen Horowitz)
Boundary Stone Partners: Kimmeridge
Carmen Group Incorporated: Green Education Foundation
Carmen Group Incorporated: Muwekma Ohlone Tribe
Horizons Global Solutions LLC: Recce Pharmaceuticals
Hsa Strategies: At&T Services, Inc. And Its Affiliates
Lewis-Burke Associates, LLC: The University Of Rhode Island Research Foundation
Lsn Partners, LLC: Thrivedx
Westmoreland160, LLC: Avantus Federal

New Lobbying Terminations

Karv Communications, Inc.: German Insurance Association

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