Landlords trade group hires Invariant

By Caitlin Oprysko

With Daniel Lippman 

LANDLORDS TRADE GROUP HIRES INVARIANT: The top trade association for landlords added Invariant to its roster of D.C. lobbyists last month, just before the Biden administration prepared to roll out new regulations aimed at helping tenants in the wake of post-pandemic rent surges, according to newly filed disclosures.

— Invariant’s Mary Stanton, Ashley O’Sullivan, Noah Marine, Kelly Hitchcock and Dena Baron Smith will lobby for the National Apartment Association on housing affordability and supply, consumer reporting and fair housing policy, according to the filing. The trade group dropped $460,000 on lobbying last quarter — its most ever — and spent more than $1.7 million on lobbying throughout 2022, also a record for the association. The NAA has just one other outside firm, Porterfield, Fettig & Sears, on retainer.

— Landlords sparred with the Biden administration throughout its first year over the sluggish pace of getting money out the door that was aimed at taking the sting out of a pandemic-era eviction moratorium. The National Apartment Association sued the administration in 2021, claiming that rental assistance was insufficient to cover landlords’ debts.

— More recently, landlords have sought to fight cities trying to cap rent hikes in the wake of soaring prices, and the housing industry mobilized to tamp down new rules meant “to strengthen tenant protections and improve rental affordability.”

— The rules, finally released late last month, sparked some complaints from industry, but the package was more restrained than expected and groups including the NAA took credit for watering down the White House’s plan following “months of engagement.” The group’s lobbying, it boasted, “helped avert an executive order advanced by renters' advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes.”

FIRST IN PI — VOGEL GROUP HEALTH CARE LOBBYIST: The Vogel Group has poached health care lobbyist Meg Gilley from McDermott+Consulting, where she was a director and advised a number of clients in the industry including hospitals, biomedical companies, coalitions and vaccine manufacturers. She also advised clients on appropriations issues, including drafting report language and navigating the newly revived earmarks process. Gilley will be a principal at Vogel Group.

— Prior to joining McDermott+Consulting, Gilley spent four years at Squire Patton Boggs, and before that she lobbied for the American College of Surgeons and worked in government affairs for the Georgia Hospital Association.

Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. Thanks to the fantastic Hailey Fuchs for pinch hitting for me as I fulfilled my civic duty this week. Let me know what I missed: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

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JORDAN SUBPOENAS TECH CEOS: “House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has sent subpoenas to the chief executives of five large U.S. tech companies, demanding information on how they moderate content on their online platforms,” The Wall Street Journal’s Natalie Andrews reports.

— “The queries are part of House Republicans’ plan to scrutinize communications between the Biden administration and big technology and social-media companies to probe whether they amounted to the censorship of legitimate viewpoints on issues such as Covid-19 policy that ran counter to White House policy.”

— The subpoenas target Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Apple’s Tim Cook and Amazon’s Andy Jassy. One notable omission? New Twitter chief executive Elon Musk, who has allied himself and the platform with conservatives.

— Jordan, “who chairs both the Judiciary panel and the newly created House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, asked the companies to produce documents and communications by March 23 that show any communication between them and the executive branch of the U.S. government relating to moderation, deletion, suppression or reduced circulation of content.”

— “Mr. Jordan first asked for these documents last year before Republicans formally took the majority and is now stepping up his requests for them as chairman who has the power to subpoena documents.”

SBF’S DARK MONEY BREAD CRUMBS: Puck’s Teddy Schleifer is shining light on new little-known entities tied to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his dark money political operation, thanks to a filing last month in the collapsed crypto exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings “that enumerated all of the corporate and nonprofit entities that FTX believes [Bankman-Fried’s brother] Gabe could speak to, ones that Sam or Gabe ‘founded, directed, advised or were otherwise involved with.’”

— The groups listed ranged from Gabe’s well-known pandemic preparedness advocacy group Guarding Against Pandemics and the super PACs tied to Sam and FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame’s political giving last cycle. Several other entities listed have virtually no public profile.

— According to incorporation documents, one group, Prosperity Through Enterprise, “is a New Hampshire-based 501(c)4 created by Keenan Lantz, a top Gabe Bankman-Fried aide who served as the chief of staff for GAP and succeeded Gabe as the organization’s leader after Gabe stepped down.” Amid FTX’s collapse, Salame’s self-funded super PAC “moved all of its remaining money, about $1.2 million, into Prosperity Through Enterprise,” and “according to the FTX legal filing, investigators appear to believe that Lantz’s 501(c)4 was very much a part of the Salame and FTX political operation.”

— Another low-profile group, People for Progressive Governance, was formed “by none other than Michael Sadowsky, one of S.B.F.’s top political aides,” who served as the “head of one of Sam’s super PACs, Protect Our Future, the group that spent upwards of $40 million on congressional races across the country,” Delaware incorporation documents show.

— Yet a third organization, Defending America Together, has no public links to Bankman-Fried or his advisers, but raised eyebrows after spending millions of dollars in GOP primaries last cycle, including backing Senate candidates Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and Michael Durant in Alabama. “But FTX seems to think there are indeed connections between the two. I was reminded of the now-infamous claim made by S.B.F., in an unintentionally public interview, that he was one of the biggest dark-money conservative donors of the 2022 election,” Schleifer writes.

MEHLMAN’S LATEST: Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Consulting is out with his latest slide deck, which examines the issues and leaders that will drive politics and policy this year. The overarching theme is disequilibrium, Mehlman argues — across the economy, on the world stage and within domestic politics.

— While Mehlman is bullish on the new Congress accomplishing more than people might give them credit for, the deck also warns executives to prepare for continued pressure to speak out on social issues, an increasing patchwork of state laws and tough questions on China that “will drive pain” but also offer opportunity.

ALL IN THE FAMILY: “Soon after President Biden found that he had improperly retained classified documents, he turned to the team that had seen him through multiple political and legal crises over the last few years: Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer,” The New York Times’ Katie Rogers and Glenn Thrush report in a profile of the D.C. power couple.

— “On Nov. 2, a lawyer found a small cache of documents while clearing out a closet at Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington. One of his first calls was to Mr. Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, a white-bearded election lawyer known for straddling the line between politics and the law.”

— “To no one’s surprise, Ms. Dunn, the president’s most senior communications adviser — and Mr. Bauer’s wife for the last 30 years — was called in by day’s end, according to interviews with two dozen people in their orbit.”

— “To their allies, the two are loyal and steely under fire. To their critics, the couple — and Ms. Dunn in particular — are the embodiment of Mr. Biden’s affinity for revolving-door Washington operatives who move back and forth between high-powered political jobs and lucrative corporate clients.”

— “But Mr. Biden has entrusted them with central roles in the documents matter because he sees in them the strengths that he most prizes in himself: experience, toughness and resilience. … They also reflect Mr. Biden’s mixed views on transparency.”

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SPOTTED at an annual DSCC fundraiser hosted by Prime Policy Group’s Emily Katz, Nathanson+Hauck’s Melanie Nathanson and SplitOak Strategies’ Sarah Egge, per a tipster: Sens. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.); Sherry Widicus of Quest Diagnostics, Marty Paone, Paul Weiss and Karen Antebi of Prime Policy Group, Nellie Wild of Perspectum, Kristin Bass of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, John-Michael Villarama of the American Osteopathic Association, Anne Cassity of the National Community Pharmacists Association, Vijay Yadlapati of the National Association of Realtors, Ali Esquea of Cambia Health Solutions, Amanda Major of Coherus BioSciences, Acacia Salatti of UnitedHealth Group, Natalie Williams of the American Academy of Family Physicians, Abby Pinkele of Johnson & Johnson, Brendan Devine of Cigna, and Judy Feder of Georgetown University.

— Darian Burrell-Clay has joined the Children’s Hospital Association as federal affairs manager. Burrell-Clay most recently served as a policy adviser for health, education and labor to Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).

— Zachery Bishop has been promoted to be corporate communications manager for thought leadership and media relations at IBM.

— Amber Littlejohn has joined Ice Miller’s public affairs group as of counsel, where she will work with clients focused on the cannabis and dietary and nutritional supplement industries. She was most recently president and chief strategy officer at Equitas Strategies and sits on the board of the International Cannabis Bar Association.

— Catherine Ashton has joined Eurasia Group as senior adviser. She was previously the EU’s chief diplomat.

— Michaela Sundermann has joined ROKK Solutions as account director. She was most recently communications director for Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) reelect and is a Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) alum.

— The Governing Majority Education Fund has added former Reps. Rodney Davis and John Katko to its board of directors, where they’ll join fellow former Tuesday Group/Republican Governance Group members John Faso, Jeff Denham, Susan Brooks, Mimi Walters, Erik Paulsen and Pat Tiberi.

— Lizzie Nealon is now a director at Touchdown Strategies. She previously was a senior associate at Keybridge Communications.

— Jocelyn Kelly is now vice president of communications at the Consumer Brands Association. She was most recently PhRMA’s chief of staff of public affairs and is an American Petroleum Institute and MGM Resorts alum.

— PhRMA has promoted Lucy Vereshchagina to senior vice president and head of science and regulatory advocacy and Mike Ybarra to chief medical officer. Ybarra is also vice president of advocacy and strategic alliances for the trade group.

— Alex Norcia joined Altria as a senior manager for regulatory advocacy. Previously, he was a news editor at the harm-reduction magazine Filter.

— Ann Marie Cumming is leaving the National Association of Broadcasters, where she was senior vice president of communications, after 23 years with the trade association. She’ll be joining The Congressional Club Museum and Foundation as executive director.

— Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark has joined Vaya Space as a senior adviser.

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