Podesta Falls

Our textbook discusses lobbyist Tony Podesta.  Since publication, however, he has fallen on hard times. His wife and partner divorced him and his company closed. Brody Mullins and Julie Bykowicz report at WSJ: 

His troubles, some long hidden, surfaced in the summer of 2016. The Podesta Group lost its banker over news the firm did work for the U.S. subsidiary of a Russian bank under sanctions. Then came headlines that the firm’s work with Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, and an associate may have violated government rules. And in October, WikiLeaks published 20,000 pages of emails stolen from his brother John Podesta, chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The string of embarrassing news accounts disturbed many of the Podesta Group’s corporate clients, companies that preferred to stay clear of such publicity. Mr. Podesta operated as if the whole mess would soon blow over.

He spent most of the fall traveling the world. He returned to the U.S. on Election Day but skipped Mrs. Clinton’s campaign party. Her victory would go a long way to fixing many of his problems. She lost that night, and Mr. Podesta, like many who had banked on her victory, did too.

Clients who had hired him for access to a new Clinton administration fell away. By the end of the year, the departures cost the firm more than $10 million in annual business, according to an internal Podesta Group accounting viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Podesta Abides

Mike Allen at Axios:

Heather Podesta tells me she got the idea for her lobbying firm's new name from the archbishop, while she was watching "The Crown" on Neflix. In a move meant to reflect an expanding bipartisan team at the once-Democratic firm, Heather Podesta + Partners today changes its name to Invariant:

The name connotes something constant you can rely on. Podesta, who leads a team of 16, plus interns, said of the change: "The firm isn't about me. We're a very different firm now."

Heather Podesta does government relations for a number of California companies, and was an early Washington voice for new brands like Snapchat, SpaceX and FitBit.
The history: "Heather Podesta founded her eponymous firm in 2007 with one employee. Today, Invariant is the largest independent, woman-owned lobbying firm in the country."
What's ahead: The firm is in hiring mode, planning to add big names.

Think Tanks and Corporate Money

Our textbook explains that corporations try to influence public policy by supporting friendly think tanks.  The New York Times offers an example:

The defense contractor Northrop Grumman gave money to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, founded by John D. Podesta, as the nonprofit group at times bemoaned what it called the harmful impact of major reductions in Pentagon spending.

Pacific Gas and Electric sent in a donation as Mr. Podesta championed government incentives to promote solar energy and other renewable sources that the California company buys more of than nearly any other utility.

The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was also a donor because of what it said was the Center for American Progress’s advocacy for patients’ rights — and just as the debate heated up in Washington over potential cuts to the Medicare program that covers Lilly’s most profitable drugs.

Mr. Podesta, named a senior adviser to President Obama, is not currently a lobbyist and therefore does not have to worry about the Obama administration’s self-imposed ban on hiring lobbyists to administration jobs. But he will nonetheless arrive at the White House after having run an organization that has taken millions of dollars in corporate donations in recent years and has its own team of lobbyists who have pushed an agenda that sometimes echoes the interests of these corporate supporters.

These financial ties offer a hint of the blurry lines in Washington between the research organizations like Mr. Podesta’s — which is a virtual external policy arm of the Obama administration — and lobbying shops. The ties could also cause some complications for Mr. Podesta as he heads into the West Win
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The Revolving Door of Lobbyists and Staffers

LegiStorm reports:

Former lobbyists currently working on the congressional payroll helping to craft legislation significantly outnumber members of Congress, according to an exhaustive new analysis by the non-partisan group LegiStorm.

In all, 605 current congressional staff - out of about 14,000 total member, committee and leadership staff - have lobbied in the past decade. They are among the nearly 5,400 current and former congressional staffers that LegiStorm has discovered have gone through the lobbying "revolving door" in the past decade alone. The numbers in the new analysis are far greater than any previous analysis has been able to demonstrate.

"For every person the American people have elected to sponsor legislation of public benefit, special interests have more than one former legislative advocate now working on the inside in Congress," said Jock Friedly, founder and president of LegiStorm. "That represents a large network of people to influence decisions and to provide valuable intelligence."

This conclusion and others come after a comprehensive analysis of hundreds of thousands of records and research into more than 130,000 people who have worked as lobbyists or congressional aides since 2000. The analysis was backed by two years of research into the biographies of tens of thousands of individuals. Daily updates of this revolving door database, as well as biographical information about current and former congressional staffers and much more, are available to subscribers of a new service LegiStorm launched today.

In The Washington Post, T.W. Farnam adds some detail, quoting a lobbyist whose family is the subject of a biographical essay in our chapter:

Of the 5,400 lobbyists with recent Hill experience, the study found that 2,900 were registered to lobby on behalf of clients this year. Twenty-five powerhouse firms and organizations employ 10 or more former Hill workers. The largest number are at the Podesta Group, followed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which employs at least 21.

“People who are experienced in Washington tend to be better at doing this kind of work than people who have never worked in the government before,” said Tony Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, one of Washington’s most prominent lobbying firms.

Podesta Bundling

Our chapter on interest groups has a photo essay on the powerful Podesta family. And the Podestas are again in the news, as iWatch News reports at Politico:

If there was any doubt about whether Tony and Heather Podesta qualify as one of Washington’s top power couples, it can now be erased.

The pair, already known as top-tier Democratic donors and lobbyists, appear back to back at the top of the Federal Election Commission’s database of lobbyist bundlers. The Podestas bundled more than $320,000 each in campaign contributions in the first six months of this year, blowing away the nearest competitors and setting themselves up to make an early impact in what’s likely to be the most expensive political cycle in American history.

...

The largest bundler so far is Tony Podesta, with just under $350,000 bundled to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the campaign of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

It should be no surprise that Podesta’s money has gone exclusively to Democrats. One of GQ’s 2009 “50 Most Powerful People in D.C.,” Podesta is wired into the Democratic establishment — his brother John served as Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and more recently acted as President Barack Obama’s transition team co-chairman while running the left-leaning Center for American Progress. His Podesta Group is one of the most powerful lobbying entities in Washington, with clients ranging from the American Meat Institute, to Duke Energy, to Sallie Mae. Since the start of the year, his firm has brought in at least $13.7 million in contracts.

Podesta told iWatch News that the $350,000 total seemed low to him and said he intended to continue bundling through the rest of the cycle with no set goal in mind. When asked whether he was surprised by being the top bundler lobbyist in the database, Podesta replied, “No surprises ever.”

Podesta

Our text has a photo essay on the Podesta family, prominent in the interest group community. A June 2 post described Heather Podesta's lobbying for a nonprofit. The New York Times recently profiled her husband, lobbyist Tony Podesta:

Mr. Podesta, a garrulous, gravelly voiced man known for his bold neckwear, is part of the elite group of lobbyists atop the industry who move easily between black-tie fund-raisers on Embassy Row and closed meetings on Capitol Hill. Despite the recession, lobbying scandals and frequent denunciation from President Obama about their outsize influence, lobbyists are more in demand than ever.

“The irony of it is that every time the president says we lobbyists have all this influence, people who don’t have a lobbyist want one,” Mr. Podesta said in an interview. “He exaggerates our power, but he increases demand for our services.”

...

Despite the popular conception of his trade, Mr. Podesta says he sees his main role as giving information to lawmakers rather than wielding influence.

“Members want to understand what they’re doing,” he said. “It improves decision making for people to understand the consequences of what they’re about to do. People draft language all the time and don’t think about how it applies in different situations.”

Podesta Power

Chapter 9 of the book has a photo essay on the Podesta family. An item in today's Politico gives a hint of the family's wide-ranging influence:

Spotted Friday night at lobbyist Tony Podesta’s 65th birthday party inside the National Museum of Women in the Arts museum: wife Heather Podesta; brother, head of Center for American Progress and former co-chair of Obama’s transition team John Podesta; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with husband Paul Pelosi; Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.); Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and husband Sidney Harman; Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.); Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.); Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.); actress from television’s “thirtysomething” Polly Draper and her husband, jazz pianist Michael Wolff; Beth Dozoretz; Charlie Cook; Meredith Harman; Marlene Malek; Project on Government Oversight’s Adam Zagorin; The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney and Tara Palmeri; NMPA’s David Israelite; and Lisa Tseng.

An August Washington Post profile of Heather Podesta provided more background:

"This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it's incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen," Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. "It's always a good time to be Heather Podesta."

There are more than 12,500 registered lobbyists -- about 23 for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics -- and some are getting richer while others stagnate or even dip a bit because of all of this pesky recession talk. But those who operate at the confluence of this summer's big three legislative streams are happiest of all.

Podesta is right there in the eddy, an It Girl in a new generation of young, highly connected, built-for-the-Obama-era lobbyists. She gets an undeniable boost from a famous name -- she is the sister-in-law of John Podesta, the insider's insider who was Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff and Obama's transition director, and the wife of über-lobbyist Tony Podesta. Heather and Tony run his-and-hers lobbying shops. His grew a staggering 57 percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period the year before, taking in $11.8 million, fourth-highest among major lobbying firms. (Full disclosure: Tony Podesta has long represented The Washington Post, which paid him $10,000 in 2009 and $80,000 the year before, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.) Her six-person shop grew even faster, rocketing 65 percent to $3.4 million.