BLACKSTONE-BACKED GROUP ADDS AN IN-HOUSE LOBBYIST: Physician staffing group TeamHealth is expanding its advocacy footprint in Washington, registering its first in-house lobbyist: Former Trump and George W. Bush administration official Lance Leggitt, Megan R. Wilson reports. — Leggitt told Megan that the company will work on physician reimbursement issues and the Biden administration’s implementation of surprise billing rules in the coming year. While Congress appears willing to blunt some of the looming 3.4 percent payment cuts physicians are facing, providers argue inflationary pressures make these issues worse. — “To me, that makes for a very electric 2024, when it comes to looking at these policies and what happens in the middle of an election cycle, especially a presidential election cycle,” he added. — TeamHealth spent $510,000 on lobbying during the first nine months of this year, according to disclosures. It spent $680,000 on lobbying in all of 2022, records show. Until now, the company had relied on outside lobbying firms and coalitions to handle its advocacy issues — including Oldaker & Willison, Harbinger Strategies and Liberty Partners Group. MCCARTHY CHIEF HEADS TO K STREET: Machalagh Carr, the former chief of staff to ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is launching her own consulting shop and joining the new-ish legal arm of the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce. Carr will be the president of the business group’s Center for Legal Action, which is chaired by former Attorney General Bill Barr. CRYPTO SETS ITS SIGHTS ON 2024: “A trio of super PACs backed by cryptocurrency executives and investors said Monday that they’ve raised $78 million as part of a major new push to influence the 2024 elections,” our Jasper Goodman reports. — “The campaign, which has support from venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, marks of a revival of the digital asset industry’s political operations, following the downfall of crypto megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried.” — “The goal of the effort is to back candidates who support crypto-friendly policy at a moment when the industry is facing intense scrutiny from federal regulators. One of the group’s affiliated super PACs, Fairshake, has already spent more than $1.2 million on television ads backing House candidates. The other two super PACs, Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs, have not yet reported any independent expenditures.” — “Chris Dixon, who leads Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, wrote in a blog post Monday that his conversations with lawmakers have made it ‘more apparent that the only way to counteract the lobbies of the big banks and big tech is to show that crypto and blockchain can be a force, too.’” — “The groups’ full donor profile won’t be public until campaign finance disclosures are released early next year. But an initial list of contributors the group released Monday includes major crypto players, including Circle, Kraken, Paradigm and Ripple, as well as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and venture capitalists Ron Conway and Fred Wilson.” A BEAN BOOT-SIZED MARK ON DATA PRIVACY: “Rep. Maggie O’Neil, a Maine legislator, wanted to give the state’s residents a strong set of new online privacy rights. She introduced a data privacy bill in May — rebuffing a Meta lobbyist, who wanted her to get behind a more industry-friendly law. Then L.L. Bean arrived,” our Alfred Ng reports. — “In October, a lawyer for the venerable outdoor retailer appeared in the state Capitol to testify against her bill, saying its new privacy requirements would add unnecessary burdens for businesses. The company also sent a letter urging lawmakers to follow existing privacy regulations in other states, rather than carving out a new set of protections for Maine.” — “As one of Maine’s largest employers and best-known brands, the century-old L.L. Bean has significant clout in the state Capitol. It didn’t endorse a specific law, but its testimony aligned directly with a rival privacy bill supported by the tech industry — one that would give companies much more latitude to use, buy and sell data on consumers.” — “The strange bedfellows in Maine’s privacy fight — a family-owned retail institution standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global tech giants like Meta — offer a window into the complexities of the national debate over data privacy laws currently being waged in state capitol after state capitol.” — “As customer data becomes an increasingly lucrative global industry, and a growing issue for advocates and consumers, the federal government has largely stalled in its efforts to pass national laws. So companies have been waging their influence wars in state legislatures — often cobbling together powerful coalitions of local businesses and national industries to water down potential local laws.” A BIG DEAL FOR NBD: The exodus at Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid — pushing the boundaries of campaign finance law in the process — continued this weekend with the departure of Jeff Roe, one of the group’s key strategists and the head of GOP consulting firm Axiom. — The resignation was the direct result of a bruising report from The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer, Hannah Knowles and Josh Dawsey examining how the experiment between DeSantis campaign and super PAC — legally barred from coordinating with one another but aiming “to function as an integrated whole” — has gone up in smoke. — “The super PAC that funded almost all of the DeSantis advertising and field programs and much of the candidate’s travel and events has been sidelined by the people that created it,” while Roe told the Post “he ‘cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down’ after the super PAC sent statements to The Washington Post suggesting the group fired officials connected to Roe’s firm over ‘mismanagement and conduct issues.’” — “Rather than a new playbook for presidential campaigns, the broader DeSantis project has exposed the dangers of depending on emerging loopholes in campaign finance law that allow candidates to turn over traditional election efforts to groups that can take donations of any size from corporations or individuals.”
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