Miller signs 3 more

From: POLITICO Influence - Tuesday Mar 07,2023 11:00 pm
Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices: Delivered daily, Influence gives you a comprehensive rundown and analysis of all lobby hires and news on K Street.
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By Caitlin Oprysko

Presented by the Coalition for Medicare Choices

With Daniel Lippman and Megan Wilson 

MILLER SIGNS 3 MORE: Business is still booming for one of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s top allies downtown. Miller Strategies, the firm run by McCarthy fundraiser and confidant Jeff Miller, filed registration paperwork for three more new clients on Monday, bringing the firm’s total number of new clients since last November to seven.

Delta Air Lines hired Miller last month to lobby on issues related to infrastructure and airline taxes and fees, according to a disclosure — days after President Joe Biden railed against airline fees in his State of the Union address.

— “My administration is also taking on ‘junk’ fees, those hidden surcharges too many businesses use to make you pay more,” Biden said, pointing to fees from airlines to allow families to sit together on flights and touting a push to require refunds for canceled or delayed flights.

— Miller Strategies also signed Americans for Transparency and Accountability, a nonprofit group pushing for “a more informed and transparent debate about U.S. foreign policy.” The group is backing several foreign influence bills from Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), including one introduced last week that would bar state-sponsored media outlets from obtaining congressional press credentials unless they’re in compliance with FARA and other laws — a shot at Al Jazeera, which receives funding from the Qatari government and includes one property that has been asked to register as a foreign agent by the Justice Department.

— The nonprofit also backs a measure from Bergman that would require think tanks and other nonprofits seeking to shape U.S. policy or public opinion to file FARA-like disclosures with DOJ when they receive funding from foreign principals.

— Finally, Miller’s firm was hired last month by J&F Investimentos, the Brazilian agribusiness conglomerate that owns meatpacking behemoth and USDA contractor JBS. Miller, former Mike Pence aide Jonathan Hiler and Stephen Ruppel will lobby on agriculture and international trade issues for J&F ahead of this year’s farm bill reauthorization. JBS has also come under fire from Democrats in Congress over a $256 million fine it agreed to pay the U.S. in 2020 to resolve charges of bribing Brazilian officials.

Happy Tuesday and welcome to PI. What else is going on out there? Fill me in: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

 

A message from the Coalition for Medicare Choices:

Despite strong bipartisan support for Medicare Advantage, the Administration is considering harmful cuts to the program that would result in higher premiums and fewer benefits. 85% of voters with Medicare Advantage believe that President Biden would be breaking his promise to protect Medicare if cuts are made to Medicare Advantage. More than 30 million seniors and people with disabilities depend on Medicare Advantage for high quality, affordable health care. Don’t cut their care.

 

ANNALS OF DARK MONEY: “An Ohio jury is about to decide whether politicians enlisted by an energy company to seek a $1.3 billion state bailout of its two failing nuclear plants pushed the bounds of campaign spending too far,” The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Bykowicz writes.

— “Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. secretly spent more than $60 million beginning in 2018 to help then-Republican state Rep. Larry Householder win the Ohio House speakership and secure the bailout. Federal prosecutors called the arrangement an illegal pay-to-play bribery scheme.”

— “Much of the company’s donations flowed through an organization called Generation Now and other nonprofit groups organized under 501(c)(4) of the tax code that aren’t required to disclose their donors.” Attorneys for Householder and a co-defendant “say the donations were ordinary political spending, permitted under court rulings that have allowed companies and other donors to spend heavily on politics.”

— But “prosecutors and ethics advocates say the Ohio case illustrates the perils of undisclosed spending through nonprofits,” who are among those that have benefitted from a series of Supreme Court rulings surrounding paid political speech. “Without the federal investigation — which included wiretaps, office raids, document seizures and cooperating witnesses — Ohioans would never have known the role FirstEnergy played in obtaining its own bailout,” critics say.

API ADDS 3 LOBBYISTS: The American Petroleum Institute has added three new staffers to its lobbying team. Chris Boness and Emily Wong are joining the government affairs shop as directors of federal relations, and Jordan Christman has joined as a federal relations manager from another part of the oil and gas trade group.

— Boness previously focused on critical infrastructure cybersecurity for API’s policy team and is a Senate Homeland Security alum and Wong was most recently director of legislative affairs at the American Public Gas Association. Christman was also previously on API’s policy team and will focus on tax issues on the lobbying team. API has promoted Jack Cramton to senior director of federal affairs as well.

HOT JOB: The Justice Department is looking to add one or more “experienced” trial attorneys to its FARA Unit, according to a job posting Monday flagged by former FARA chief Brandon Van Grack. The posting puts an emphasis on experience with civil litigation — the latest signal that the tiny unit’s FARA clampdown isn’t being derailed by last year’s dismissal of the first civil FARA lawsuit brought by DOJ in decades. According to Van Grack, who is now a partner at Morrison Foerster, this is the “first ever posting for multiple” FARA attorneys.

THANK U, NEXT-GEN: Early in the pandemic, some of the smaller biotech companies working to create the next wave of Covid-19 vaccines hired K Street lobbyists to try and get federal government cash. Now, most of them have abandoned their Washington footprint, Megan R. Wilson reports.

— Next-generation vaccines refer broadly to pan-coronavirus vaccines that address a variety of the virus instead of specific variants, those that offer innovative ways to deliver a vaccine — such as a nasal spray, pill or patch — or the development of different platforms on which vaccines for different kinds of viruses can be built.

— At least nine companies and one research organization working on the next wave of Covid-19 vaccines with little or no K Street representation before the pandemic hired lobbying firms to help them get in front of regulators and lawmakers to secure funding. Now, roughly half of them no longer employ lobbyists.

— Lobbyists, researchers and others in the biotech industry described dysfunction among the agencies that fund these types of projects and how — ultimately — leaning on lobbying firms wasn’t the boon they hoped it would be. That’s because dysfunction at the agencies and partisan disagreements on Capitol Hill meant that getting money for development was difficult.

— There is a sense that companies or researchers working on platforms and components — technologies on which vaccines for different viruses can be built — rather than individual products likely have a greater success in advocating for money, however. As such, there are still companies jumping into the lobbying fray — including companies like Vaxxas and Ocugen — but some still fear that politics and “pandemic fatigue” could prevent significant investments.

HOPE YOU FLOSSED: The American Dental Association is hosting its annual Hill fly-in this week with the American Student Dental Association. Hundreds of dentists and dental students hailing from every state and D.C. were set to participate in more than 300 visits on the Hill focused on Medicaid dental benefits, student debt and insurance reforms, according to ADA. 

SOHN WITHDRAWS FROM CONSIDERATION FOR FCC POST: “President Biden’s pick to serve as a telecommunications regulator is withdrawing her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, following a bitter 16-month lobbying battle that blocked her appointment and opened her up to relentless personal attacks,” The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski reports.

— “Gigi Sohn, a longtime public interest advocate and former Democratic FCC official who was first nominated by the White House in October 2021, said her decision to withdraw follows ‘unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks’ seeded by cable and media industry lobbyists” and came after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced that he would vote against her nomination.

— “The opposition to Sohn catapulted the relatively low-profile position to the center of an unprecedented fight, which involved three Senate confirmation hearings, a series of ads and a billboard criticizing Sohn as ‘extreme’ and ‘partisan’ amid dissection of her social media posts.” The withdrawal also “leaves the Biden administration’s ambitious internet agenda mired in limbo, continuing more than two years of a deadlock at the FCC.”

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:IBM and Pirelli Tire North America are among a handful of companies that are joining together to adopt a new set of corporate responsibility principles aimed at helping businesses navigate a turbulent political and lobbying environment,” Roll Call’s Kate Ackley reports.

— “As part of signing on to the principles, developed with the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute, companies choose from a range of policies for political spending, from voluntary disclosures to a prohibition on using corporate funds for such expenditures, organizers said.”

— “The moves come as corporations are under pressure from competing interests, including shareholders and customers who are prodding for more environmental, social and governance initiatives. On the other side, congressional Republicans — and even some Democrats — have sought to clamp down on ESG efforts.”

— “‘You can see over the last few years, companies are facing a lot more pressure about their political influence,’ said Elizabeth Doty, director of the Erb Institute’s Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce, which developed the principles,” which she “said grew out of informal conversations that began among executives and lobbyists who sought nonpartisan common ground to consider these matters.”

— “‘The interplay between government institutions and businesses engaging in both policy and politics is rightfully being scrutinized in ways not seen for generations,’ said Christopher Padilla, IBM vice president of government and regulatory affairs, in a statement. He added that as companies try ‘to navigate this moment,’ the principles offer ‘an actionable framework to follow and so that, collectively, we can strengthen society’s trust in the ways that businesses impact policymaking.’”

 

A message from the Coalition for Medicare Choices:

Coaltion for Medicare Choices

 
Jobs Report

Sarah Miller is now special adviser to FTC Chair Lina Khan. She previously was executive director at the American Economic Liberties Project.

Becky Kramer has been promoted to vice president of research and methodology at Public Opinion Strategies. Kramer was previously director of research for the firm.

Avery Ash is now senior vice president of government relations and special initiatives for SAFE, an energy security think tank. Ash was most recently vice president of global public policy and product strategy at INRIX.

Kati Card is now senior vice president at MissionWired. She previously was chief digital officer for the DSCC for the 2020 and 2022 election cycles and is a Catherine Cortez Masto alum.

Diplomatic Courier Global Affairs Media Network has named Lisa Gable chair of its World in 2050 think tank. She’s a Food Allergy Research & Education, Pepsi and State Department alum.

Samantha Chaifetz is now a partner with DLA Piper’s litigation practice in the appellate subgroup. She previously was an attorney at the DOJ’s Civil Division.

Kristin Solheim is now a government affairs officer at the Investment Company Institute. She previously was director of federal government affairs at Citi.

Katie Tomarchio is now lead director for state government affairs at CVS Health. She was previously senior manager for public policy at ChargePoint.

 

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New Joint Fundraisers

None.

New PACs

None.

 

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New Lobbying Registrations

Ascendant Strategic Partners: Access To Advanced Health Institute
Boundary Stone Partners: American Council For An Energy-Efficient Economy
Cornerstone Government Affairs, Inc.: Kentucky Primary Care Association
Donovan Strategies LLC: The Jackson Laboratory
Gallant Government & Law Group, LLC: Klein Law Group Pllc
Griffin Global Outreach LLC: Quantel USa
Invariant LLC: National Cotton Council Of America
Klein Law Group Pllc: Coalition Of Rdof Winners
Miller Strategies, LLC: Americans For Transparency And Accountability
Miller Strategies, LLC: Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Miller Strategies, LLC: J&F Investimentos
Park&K Public Affairs LLC: Exalt Youth
Steptoe & Johnson LLP: Native American Rights Fund
Stewart Strategies And Solutions, LLC: Si Group Client Services (Fka Swisher)

New Lobbying Terminations

None.

 

A message from the Coalition for Medicare Choices:

Medicare Advantage is facing billions in cuts that would hurt the more than 30 million Americans who depend on Medicare Advantage for high-quality, affordable health care.

The consequences of cutting funding to Medicare Advantage are dire. A majority of senior voters with Medicare Advantage believe that cuts would impact their ability to afford health care.

Funding Medicare Advantage is an extremely important issue for senior voters. Voters with Medicare Advantage overwhelmingly believe that it is important for the federal government and the Administration to fully fund Medicare Advantage to cover increasing health care costs.

Medicare Advantage provides affordable health care to more than 30 million seniors and people with disabilities. 32% of Medicare Advantage enrollees are racial and ethnic minorities – compared to 21% of original Medicare enrollees.

Don’t cut their care.

 
 

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