Saudis, PGA add political muscle as Congress bears down

From: POLITICO Influence - Thursday Jun 22,2023 10:34 pm
Delivered daily, Influence gives you a comprehensive rundown and analysis of all lobby hires and news on K Street.
Jun 22, 2023 View in browser
 
POLITICO Influence newsletter logo

By Caitlin Oprysko

With help from Daniel Lippman 

GOLF TITANS TAP SOME D.C. MUSCLE: Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and the PGA Tour have brought in some political heavy hitters as they seek to save their blockbuster deal to join forces from an increasingly hostile Congress, I report.

Teneo CEO and co-founder Paul Keary registered Wednesday as a foreign agent working for the Saudi Public Investment Fund to help sell the deal with the PGA Tour. Keary’s firm has represented PIF — which bankrolled the upstart LIV Golf and the golf league’s litigation against the PGA Tour until this month’s stunning detente — since 2021. But it’s the first time Keary has registered under FARA, DOJ filings show.

— At least two other big names in Washington also have registered under FARA to help the Saudi fund on the PGA deal. Among them are Geoff Morrell, whose short lived tenure as chief corporate affairs officer for the Walt Disney Company included the beginnings of Disney’s ongoing brawl with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Nate Tamarin, a longtime aide to former President Barack Obama.

— The PGA Tour, meanwhile, retained the progressive firm Bully Pulpit Interactive as its new communications agency following the announcement of the deal. In addition to its roster of blue-chip corporate clients, the firm has also represented political clients like the 2020 Biden campaign, the DNC, the DSCC, the Human Rights Campaign, and Everytown for Gun Safety, and Bully Pulpit’s staff have circled in and out of the Biden White House, including with the recent hiring of Ben LaBolt as communications director.

— The ramped up communications support is the latest round of monthslong warfare that previously pitted a small army of lobbying shops and PR firms against one another, and of course comes against the backdrop of multiple efforts by Congress to probe the sudden ceasefire, beginning with a Senate hearing next month.

— After a rocky rollout of the deal, which infuriated players and lawmakers and prompted antitrust and national security questions alike, the Tour has since begun working to mollify its players — now it appears ready to do the same in Washington.

 

SUBSCRIBE TO POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY.

 
 


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

NEW BUSINESS: The Tzedek Association, a Jewish organization active on criminal justice issues, has hired one of former President Donald Trump’s top liaisons to the Black community as well as one of the chief architects of his administration’s criminal justice reform bill. Nicole Frazier, Trump’s director of African-American outreach while in the White House, and Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to Trump and deputy director of the White House Office of American Innovation, began working for the group back in April, according to a newly filed disclosure.

— In addition to advocating for families of the incarcerated — the Tzedek Association pushed heavily for many of the pardons and grants of clemency doled out by Trump — Frazier and Smith will work for the organization on extending the Bureau of Prisons’ elderly and compassionate release policies and expanding insurance coverage for women with infertility.

— Meanwhile the payment processor Stripe has added a new outside firm to its lobbying team after splitting with the two firms it previously had on retainer at the beginning of the year. Stripe retained a group of former staffers for the House Financial Services Committee at Mindset Advocacy to lobby on a general set of issues related to its business, including small business and entrepreneurship, payments and financial regulation.

MANUFACTURERS LAUNCH ANTI-REG PUSH: The National Association of Manufacturers is launching a new coalition to push back on the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda, which the trade group argues is undermining some of the president’s key legislative achievements.

— “President Biden and Congress have prioritized strengthening the manufacturing sector in America through historic legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, initial permitting reform actions in the Fiscal Responsibility Act and even some energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,” NAM’s president and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement.

— “Unfortunately, the continued onslaught of regulations is having a chilling effect on investment, curtailing our ability to hire new workers and suppressing wage growth, especially for small and medium-sized manufacturers,” he added.

— The trade group cited a recent survey it conducted that found many manufacturers are spending thousands of hours each year working to comply with federal regulations. The coalition, Manufacturers for Sensible Regulations, includes NAM as well as members of its Council of Manufacturing Associations — comprised of hundreds of trade groups — and Conference of State Manufacturers Associations.

DOT WATERED DOWN REPORT AFTER TRUCK LOBBY INTERVENED: ProPublica and Frontline’s Kartikay Mehrotra and A.C. Thompson have a behind the scenes look at how lobbyists for the trucking industry were able to stave off recommendations from researchers with the Transportation Department about requiring trucks in the U.S. to be equipped with a safety device called side guards.

— “Over the span of at least six months, DOT officials repeatedly discussed the ongoing research with representatives of the nation’s largest trade group for trucking companies, the American Trucking Associations. And the ATA repeatedly pressured them to alter the report.”

— “The industry objections resulted in a remarkable concession from the department: It allowed trucking company lobbyists to review the researchers’ preliminary report and provide comments on it. By the time of its release in 2020, the report had been dramatically rewritten, stripped of its key conclusions — including the need to federally mandate side guards — and cut down by nearly 70 pages.”

— DOT denied that the report’s conclusions had been affected by any outside influence, while Dan Horvath, ATA’s vice president of safety policy, “acknowledged that the group discussed side guards with the department. ‘ATA spends a great deal of time interacting with our regulators, including soliciting updates about their activities, providing feedback on research and potential rules so we can educate our members,’” he told the outlet.

K&L GATES MARKS A HALF-CENTURY: K&L Gates' lobbying shop this month marked 50 years in business, a remarkable milestone for a town known for its crushingly short attention span. “We're talking about 10 presidents, we're talking about 24 Congresses, thousands of officials, thousands of pieces of legislation, regulations — changes in political party, changes in philosophy, changes in — certainly in media and technology more than anything else,” said Manny Rouvelas, who launched the one-man law and lobbying shop as the first East Coast outpost of the law firm Preston Thorgrimson Ellis Holman & Fletcher.

— The practice focused primarily on maritime policy, and Rouvelas told PI the firm still represents subsidiaries of its first-ever client, the shipping company Moore-McCormack. While Rouvelas declined to take a stab at what K&L Gates might look like in 50 more years, Karishma Page, a partner at the firm, noted that its lobbying practice is “laser-focused” on looking toward future policy fights and as well as making sure its work withstands the ever-changing political tides and influence strategies.

— “What we're seeing is continued — and with more frequency — change elections,” she said in an interview. “That means in order to have policy that is future-proofed, we need to be able to make sure that we can talk to everybody and really be able to put forward compelling policies.”

Andy Wright, who oversees the firm’s congressional investigations work, added that in the meantime, the firm is working to help clients navigate the business community’s rift with Republicans, who had previously served as a bulwark against Democrats’ antagonism of Wall Street and the private sector, in what Wright called a “fundamental shift.”

 

LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today.

 
 
Jobs Report

Nicole Golden is now scheduler for Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). She most recently was associate managing director at Dentons.

Stu Sandler is joining OnMessage Inc. and expanding the firm to the Midwest. He most recently was political director at the NRSC.

Benjamin Gray is joining the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation as vice president. He most recently was at Google, and is a Twitter and FBI alum.

Charles Small has joined HNTB Corporation as its West region government relations officer and vice president. He was most recently deputy assistant secretary for intergovernmental affairs at DOT.

New Joint Fundraisers

None.

New PACs

California IATSE Council PAC (Super PAC)
Legalize America, Inc. (Super PAC)
Local Accountability PAC (Hybrid PAC)

New Lobbying REGISTRATIONS

Covington & Burling LLP: Adamis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Dentons Global Advisors Government Relations LLC: Tzedek Association
Eis Solutions: Out Of Bounds Ranch
Forbes-Tate: Nccs
Holland & Knight LLP: National Association Of Personal Financial Advisors
Horizons Global Solutions LLC: Marathon Targets
Kadesh & Associates, LLC: San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
Mindset Advocacy, LLC (Fka Cypress Advocacy, LLC): Stripe, Inc.
Yorktown Solutions: High Power Exploration Inc. (Hpx)

New Lobbying Terminations

Bockorny Group, Inc.: Benevis, LLC
The Vogel Group: Farmtech Society

 

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Listen on Apple Podcast
 

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings

This email was sent to by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA

Please click here and follow the steps to .

More emails from POLITICO Influence

Jun 21,2023 11:14 pm - Wednesday

Boulanger heads back to Big Business

Jun 20,2023 10:10 pm - Tuesday

Squire adds top trade lobbyist

Jun 13,2023 10:02 pm - Tuesday

What the PGA Tour is telling the Hill

Jun 12,2023 09:46 pm - Monday

Butterfield registers to lobby