Revolving Doorman

Hailey Fuchs at Politico:

[Ivan] Adler, 56, is not in fact a lobbyist. But his job shares some key similarities. He is a recruiter — one of the top in D.C. — who specializes in plucking lawmakers and staffers off the Hill or elsewhere in government and placing them into jobs on K Street, whether it be trade associations, corporations, law practices or lobbying firms.

The president of the boutique shop Ivan Adler Associates, he calls himself “The Lobbyist Hunter.” His eponymous firm specializes in matching government relations and public affairs professionals with gigs on “K Street....and beyond.” His task is to convince the idealists who descended on the nation’s capital to become public servants that the lifestyle of influence peddling is more laid back and certainly more lucrative. He maintains that “nobody has a gun to their head,” but he is, effectively, the doorman for the revolving door.

More Coronavirus Lobbying

Maggie Severns and Rachel Roubein at Politico:

The nursing home industry is one of the lobbying world’s quiet powerhouses. The state actions to protect the industry came after it spent tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and other advocacy per year, according to a POLITICO review of state and federal records. At the federal level, the industry has spent more than $4 million on lobbying over the past year, employing more than a dozen full-time lobbyists and drawing on an army of contractors including Brian Ballard, former lobbyist for President Donald Trump, and ex-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

In early April, nursing home giant Life Care Centers of America — the multi-state chain whose facility in Kirkland, Washington, was the nation’s first epicenter of coronavirus — hired a team of four former aides to ex-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who was close with Senate leadership, to lobby on Covid-19 issues.

Industry advocates, including the American Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes, argue it would be disastrous for care facilities to be held liable for the deaths of elderly residents, who are far more vulnerable to coronavirus than the rest of the population. They also contend nursing homes have been forced to fight the virus while facing shortages of critical protective gear and testing capabilities because of flawed federal policies over which they have no control. They are also adapting to new federal regulations on the fly.

McMaster to Zoom

A release from Zoom:

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced that it has appointed Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond “H.R.” McMaster as an independent director on Zoom’s Board of Directors, effective May 6, 2020, and hired Jonathan “Josh” Kallmer as its Head of Global Public Policy and Government Relations, effective May 26, 2020.

McMaster was the 26th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. He served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for 34 years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018. McMaster currently serves at Stanford University as the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Susan and Bernard Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and a lecturer at the Graduate School of Business. He is a bestselling author and historian who writes and lectures on military and diplomatic history, national security, and leadership.

...
“Zoom does significant good for our society, allowing people to connect and collaborate face-to-face from anywhere. This extraordinary capability is vital now more than ever,” said McMaster. “My goal is to help the company navigate rapid growth and assist in meeting Zoom’s commitment to becoming the world’s most secure video communications platform.”
...
“General McMaster is a welcome addition to our Board. During his decorated military career, he has built an expertise in leading through challenging situations and has demonstrated tremendous strength of character. His leadership will be invaluable as Zoom continues to enable people to connect on a global scale,” said Eric S. Yuan, CEO of Zoom. “

Revolving Door 2019

Theodoric Meyer and David Beavers at Politico:

Former Reps. Joe Crowley and Bill Shuster are heading to K Street, making them one of the rare bipartisan pairs of former lawmakers to team up as lobbyists after leaving office.

Crowley, a New York Democrat, and Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican, are joining Squire Patton Boggs, one of the largest law and lobbying firms in Washington.

The hiring of Crowley and Shuster gives Squire Patton Boggs a second bipartisan duo of former lawmakers, along with former Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who joined Patton Boggs in 2010. (The firm later merged with Squire Sanders to create Squire Patton Boggs.)

...
The pair is the latest to land on K Street out of the dozens of members of Congress who left last month.

Former Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), Luke Messer (R-Ind.), Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.), Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) and Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) have all joined lobbying firms, although not all of them plan to register to lobby. Former Reps. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.) and Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) have started their own consulting firms.

The Revolving Door Comes to Cambridge

Jeff Stein at The Washington Post:

Harvard’s orientation for new members of Congress is pitched as a way for incoming lawmakers to learn about life on Capitol Hill, but some new Democrats broke with precedent and criticized it. The protests from these freshman Democrats, including Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), reflect the left pull of the party, as well as their rejection of some practices once regarded as part of the bipartisan consensus.

After dinner Tuesday, lawmakers attended a session where they introduced themselves. The event included remarks by former congressman Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), who was described in an itinerary provided to The Washington Post by Harvard as vice chair in the Institute of Politics and a former member of Congress. Delahunt also founded a lobbying firm, the Delahunt Group, which in 2018 lobbied for Fuels America, a biofuel lobbying group, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

On Wednesday, new lawmakers also attended “White House Congressional Relations: How to Advocate for Your Priorities.” The panel listed as speakers Dan Meyer and Anne Wall, president and vice president, respectively, of the Duberstein Group. The Duberstein Group, a multimillion-dollar lobbying firm, has lobbied for the Bank of Mellon New York, Comcast, S&P Global and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and other large corporate interests, the Center for Responsive Politics says.

On Thursday, former congressman Joseph J. Heck (R-Nev.) spoke at an event called “Navigating Washington and Capitol Hill.” After losing his seat, Heck joined the firm RedRock, according to Roll Call. He has lobbied on behalf of the American Osteopathic Association; TRAX International, a government tech firm; and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The former lawmakers' ties to lobbying firms were not disclosed on the calendar of events provided to The Post by the Harvard Institute of Politics. In a text message, a spokesman for Harvard’s Institute of Politics said freshman lawmakers “get a binder upon arrival that include lengthy bios of all participants, including their businesses.”

Congressional Staff

Paul Kane at WP:

By tradition, no aide can receive more than a lawmaker, so the highest paid staff make a little less than the member’s $174,000.

But because of the fallout from the Great Recession, and the deep unpopularity of Congress, it’s been politically impossible to increase congressional pay.

That, in turn, has meant that staff pay has also been frozen for the last decade, creating a massive brain drain.

In 2008 the median salary on Capitol Hill was $47,662, according to Legistorm, the nonpartisan for-profit company that researches congressional data.

A decade later the median salary is $50,971.

If this pay had kept up with national inflation rates, the median salary would top $55,000. But that doesn’t even take into account the explosion in the expenses to live in the District.

Consider the demise of the group house.

Twenty years ago the 100 block of C Street SE, half a block from the Cannon House Office Building, had at least four large townhouses filled with congressional staff and one with lawmakers. Rent, divided five or six ways, came in at under $500.

Those homes, now worth more than $1.5 million, no longer rent to 20-somethings.

Instead, today’s younger staffer often crams into large apartment buildings that cost more than $2,500 for a two-bedroom.

Legistorm’s analysis reveals a predictable trend: fewer staff stay longer in those jobs, turning them over to less experienced hands.

In 2001 and 2002, congressional staff in their 30s represented more than 34 percent of all aides on Capitol Hill, while 20-somethings made up 42 percent of staff.

By 2015 and 2016, people in their 30s represented just 27 percent of all congressional staff, while people in their 20s accounted for more than 55 percent of all aides.

The more that salaries stayed flat, the more veteran staff have decided to leave working for Congress to, most likely, head to the private sector as they began to face decisions about marriage, children and home purchases.

The “lifer,” someone serving 20 or 30 years, is a dying breed.

People in their 40s used to represent more than 14 percent of all staff 18 years ago, but have now have shrunk down to a little more than 9 percent.

Saudi Influence, Continued

At The Washington Post,  Tom Hamburger , Beth Reinhard and Justin Wm. Moyer report:

In the past two years, the Saudis have intensified their efforts to cement the U.S. relationship. The kingdom’s spending on U.S. lobbying and consulting, which had dropped from $14.3 million in 2015 to $7.7 million in 2016, surged to $27.3 million last year, according to public records. More than 200 people have registered as agents on behalf of Saudi interests since 2016, according to lobbying documents posted by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Among those on the payroll have been some of Washington’s top public relations and lobbying shops: the McKeon Group, helmed by Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; BGR Group, a firm founded by prominent Republicans Ed Rogers and Haley Barbour; the Glover Park Group, which was launched by Democratic political strategists including Joe Lockhart and Carter Eskew; and the now-defunct Podesta Group, the former firm of Democratic superlobbyist Tony Podesta.

Rogers and Eskew are both contributing opinion writers for The Washington Post. Last week, both of their firms announced they were dropping their representation of Saudi Arabia. The Post had told them they could not continue to write for The Post and lobby for Saudi Arabia, according to spokeswoman Kristine Coratti Kelly.

Separately, Saudi money — and funds from its close ally, the United Arab Emirates — have also flowed into think tanks throughout Washington, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution and the Middle East Institute. All three said last week that they are ending or reconsidering Saudi grants.

“One of the foreign policy truisms force-fed in Washington is that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a special, unbreakable relationship,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat and leading critic of the war in Yemen. “At least everybody who is smart and knows about foreign policy who walks into your office tells you that. But as it turns out, a lot of those people are getting gulf money.”

One of the biggest beneficiaries of Saudi money has been the Middle East Institute, which touts itself as “an unbiased source of information and analysis on this critical region.” The organization is chaired by Richard A. Clarke, who held senior national security positions during the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Between 2016 and 2017, the think tank received between $1.25 million and $4 million in funding from Saudi interests, according to its public disclosures.

The Changing Face of Think Tanks

At American Affairs, Ignacio Delcavoli finds that think tanks are paying their executive much more than in the past.

There also appears to be no significant correlation between the change in an organization’s impact over time and growth in executive compensation, much less the dramatic increases in impact that would be required to justify the high compensation growth shown above. On the other hand, there does appear to be some evidence of a change in focus at most major think tanks. Almost across the board, h-index scores (a more academic measure) have noticeably declined, while op-eds (typically written to advance a more immediate political concern) have noticeably increased. Various explanations can be offered, but one interpretation is that think tanks, initially conceived of as “universities without students,” are now mostly functioning as advocacy organizations.
...
Think tanks are widely known to be breeding grounds for congressional staffers and presidential appointees (despite Trump’s relative unpopularity at think tanks, the current administration is no exception), and they have numerous points of contact with politicians. Thus a more significant measure of impact might be the number of think-tank fellows appointed to executive or legislative roles or the number of nonpublic meetings held with politicians and their staffs. In other words, think tanks today may mainly function as lobbying firms, and many donors may evaluate their impact primarily on that basis.

This was essentially the conclusion of a 2014 paper by Ken Silverstein entitled “Pay to Play Think Tanks: Institutional Corruption and the Industry of Ideas.”8 Silverstein details the many ways in which think-tank agendas (across the ideological spectrum) are increasingly driven by donors, including large corporations and foreign governments. In exchange for larger contributions, many think tanks allow donors to set or veto research topics, sponsor public events under the aegis of a nonprofit organization, enjoy private access to influential politicians or foreign leaders, and so on. Silverstein reports that scholars at the Center for American Progress were told to speak to the development office before publishing on topics that might adversely affect donor interests. Silverstein also describes situations in which think tanks worked to burnish the image of foreign governments and corporations after receiving large donations from them.

The Tax Bill and the Revolving Door

Naomi Jagoda and Megan R. Wilson at The Hill:

Republican aides in Congress who were instrumental in writing the sweeping tax law last year are hitting the exits to take jobs in the lobbying industry.

At least a half dozen high-profile GOP staffers have departed or are departing Capitol Hill, swapping jobs in the legislative branch for plum postings at firms like Akin Gump and Squire Patton Boggs.

...
“It's not unusual for staffers on the Hill, after they've worked on a major piece of legislation like tax reform, to then want to move on. In their minds, they’ve done and accomplished what they wanted to do and then they move on,” said Ivan Adler, a principal at The McCormick Group.

...

“Having a background in making tax policy is a very wanted skill set on K Street,” Adler said. “The deal is this: it's when organizations are looking to hire congressional staffers, there's always a risk and reward thing on whether it's going to work out, but this is the ‘Jerry Maguire’ thing. They're like popcorn kernels in the pan — some pop, some don't. But, in general, there has been low risk in hiring tax policy experts to go to K Street.”

“The old adage that there are two things true in life, taxes and death? It's really true. There's going to be a lot to do in implementing the tax law and these tax staffers will be incredibly useful in navigating those tricky waters,” he added.

Working for Trump: Career Suicide

People who have worked in previous administrations have usually been able to find lucrative employment afterward.  Not so much now.

Megan Wilson at The Hill:

“There have only been a few high-profile people that have gotten out while the getting’s good. A great deal more very well may have committed professional suicide, at least in the short term, by serving in this administration,” said one person, who has been involved in high-profile hiring and asked for anonymity in order to speak freely. “I don’t think it’s potentially a long-term thing. The net of it is, this administration, in general, was not able to attract the A-team. No one’s asking [for] anyone from the Trump administration.”

...

“What might work for the political benefit of a president with an anti-Washington message doesn’t match what the objectives of what a traditional corporate function is, which is to manage legislative and regulatory risk,” said David Tamasi, the managing director of Chartwell Strategy Group and former finance chairman for the Trump Victory Fund.

The turmoil in the White House and the administration has also led to an unusually high volume of departures in Trump’s first year, adding to the competition for open positions.
“Everyone is saying it’s a shitshow, that’s why they’re looking to leave early,” said a person who has conducted executive searches and also asked for anonymity. “Normally you would want to serve the first term at least or the first half of the term. What I’m trying to figure out is, how toxic are some of these people?”

 For headhunters, the turnover in the administration makes it difficult to assess the value of potential hires. A former official could be prized for his contacts to someone still in office — but there’s no guarantee that the other official won’t also head for the exits.

“The question is, you have a rotating cast of characters in the administration and so if somebody is selling themselves as having a relation with one or two people, what is the long-term value of that given … [there appears to be] short half-life of White House employment?” Tamasi said.

...
 The midterm elections in November are another big factor in the marketability of former Trump aides, given the possibility that Democrats could win back one or both chambers of Congress.

“[After] George W. Bush left, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate and it was really hard for some of those people [who served under Bush]. It becomes more challenging,” said Ivan Adler, a principal at The McCormick Group.

“The worst possibility for those working for Trump is to have this become a Democrat town,” he said.

Lobbying for Opioids

This important story illustrates key aspects of legislation today.

• Lobbyists write bills.
• Lawmakers do not read them.
• The revolving door is a thing. The article points out that at least 56 DEA and Justice officials have gone to work for the drug industry since 2000.

Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein report at WP:

In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation’s streets.

...
The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican who is now President Trump’s nominee to become the nation’s next drug czar. Marino spent years trying to move the law through Congress. It passed after Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) negotiated a final version with the DEA.
...
Deeply involved in the effort to help the industry was the DEA’s former associate chief counsel D. Linden Barber. Once a DEA lawyer who supervised cases against pharmaceutical companies, he left the agency and is now an executive at Cardinal Health. While at the DEA, he helped design and carry out the early stages of the agency’s tough enforcement campaign, which targeted drug companies that were failing to report suspicious orders of narcotics.

When Barber went to work for the drug industry in 2011, he brought an intimate knowledge of the DEA’s strategy and how it could be attacked to protect the companies. He was one of dozens of DEA officials recruited by the drug industry during the past decade.

Barber played a key role in crafting an early version of the legislation that would eventually curtail the DEA’s power, according to an internal email written by a Justice Department official to a colleague. “He wrote the Marino bill,” the official wrote in 2014.

Barber declined repeated requests for an interview.

With a few words, the new law changed four decades of DEA practice. Previously, the DEA could freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community, giving the agency broad authority. Now, the DEA must demonstrate that a company’s actions represent “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat,” a much higher bar.

Coda:

Rep.Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar. Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2017

The Revolving Door Into California

Seema Mehta reports at The Los Angeles Times:

Veterans of high-profile political campaigns and White House administrations such as [Obama aide Ben] LaBolt — who in years past would have turned their public-service resumes and connections into jobs as lobbyists on K Street, advisers at Fortune 500 firms or leaders of nonprofits — are increasingly heading west, attracted by the opportunities to put their political skills to use in the technology industry. It can lead to strange bedfellows: Democrats and Republicans who fought each other while working on opposing campaigns find themselves working on shared goals and trying to affect change outside the nation’s gridlocked capital.

It’s a new gold rush — to social media companies, tech start-ups, incubators and key players in the sharing economy.

“Mall shoes. White cars. Buffet specials. Come and get it, this town is now officially a retirement community for D.C. political vets,” said Matt McKenna, who worked for Clinton for nearly a decade of his post-presidency before joining the ride-hailing company Uber and then launching a crisis-communications firm in Sausalito.
Beyond healthy six-figure salaries and better weather than Washington, D.C., the moves make sense — skills developed in politics are in critical demand in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

“In a lot of ways, a campaign is a lot like a start-up: You have to build it very fast, and be prepared to spend millions of dollars to persuade people your candidate is right,” said Matt David, the head of marketing and communications for the dating app Tinder.
David previously worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential bid and in support of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 White House bid. He also worked on communications for former President George W. Bush and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. David said he has implemented his campaign lessons, including how to monitor traditional and social media in real time, in his current job.

Private Equity Lobbying

The New York Times reports:

Since the 2008 financial crisis, Fortress and other private equity firms have rapidly expanded their influence, assuming a pervasive, if under-the-radar, role in daily American life, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Sophisticated political maneuvering — including winning government contracts, shaping public policy and deploying former public officials to press their case — is central to this growth.

Yet even as private equity wields such influence in the halls of state capitols and in Washington, it faces little public awareness of its government activities, The Times found.

Private equity firms often don’t directly engage with legislators and regulators — the companies they control do. As a result, the firms themselves have emerged as relatively anonymous conglomerates that exert power behind the scenes in their dealings with governments. And because private equity’s interests are so diverse, the industry interacts with governments not only through lobbying, but also as contractors and partners on public projects.
...
Private equity firms, onetime “corporate raiders” that made their name taking over distressed companies, have pushed into activities previously dominated by banks and local governments. This shift has upended the definition of private equity as the industry expands into real estate, infrastructure and lending.
...

Today, six other private equity firms are publicly traded, and over 7,500 are in operation worldwide, according to the data provider Preqin — more than ever before. Private equity firms “are ubiquitous, they are everywhere,” said Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research who studies private equity.

Everywhere includes the government. The amount the private equity industry spent on lobbying in 2015 was more than triple what it had spent a decade earlier, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. At the peak of the financial crisis, the figure was even higher. Political donations have increased nearly sixfold. Former House Speaker John Boehner’s chief of staff is now president of the industry’s lobbying group.

That group, the American Investment Council, argues that the public has benefited from private equity. Pension funds have reaped 12 percent net returns from private equity over a recent 10-year period, the group said.

The Latest to Enter the Revolving Door

"People like Elizabeth Dole have given too much power to the special interests." --Kay Hagan, 2008.

"This is going to be a contrast between me putting North Carolinians first and the special interests." -- Kay Hagan, 2014

Megan R. Wilson reports at The Hill:

After being courted by many K Street firms, former Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is joining Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the firm plans to announce on Monday.

Akin Gump is Washington’s largest lobby shop by revenue, taking in more than $35 million in advocacy fees alone in 2014, but Hagan still has another year before she would be able to register to lobby.

Senators are required to take a two-year “cooling off” period before they can directly advocate before their House and Senate colleagues. Hagan left Congress at the end of 2014 after losing a tough reelection battle to then-Rep. Thom Tillis (R).

Hagan, who will be serving as a senior policy consultant within the firm’s public law and policy practice, is staying mum on whether she’ll become a registered lobbyist.

“That’s something we'll look at down the road,” Hagan told The Hill, adding that she’s instead looking forward to doing consulting work for Akin Gump’s clients.

The Revolving Door, Mid-2015

At Politico, Edward-Isaac Dovere writes about Obama alumni working in the San Francisco area.

It’s more than just David Plouffe, who moved out for a multimillion-dollar job at Uber. The not nearly exhaustive list includes: Obama speechwriter Kyle O’Connor, now at Nest; Michelle Obama’s former deputy communications director Semonti Stephens, now at Square; director of citizen participation Katie Jacobs Stanton, now at Twitter; ’08 regional and field director Mike Masserman, now at Lyft; Brandon Lepow, who did advance for the Obama campaign and communications for the White House, now at Facebook; legislative affairs special assistant Nicole Isaac, now at LinkedIn; director of research Liz Jarvis-Shean, first at Tesla and now and currently consulting for Civis; campaign staff director for technology Jim Green, now at Salesforce, along with Obama’s first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra; ’08 regional field director Alex McPhillips, at Google; ’08 regional Gillian Bergeron, at NextDoor; Organizing for America digital director Natalie Foster, at the Institute for the Future; Tech4Obama program manager Catherine Bracy, now at Code for America; ’08 deputy Wisconsin director Hallie Montoya Tansey, at an education-tech startup called Schoolzilla. Nick Papas, John Baldo, Courtney O’Donnell and Clark Stevens are all now at Airbnb. Jessica Santillo, the former White House assistant press secretary who handled much of the Healthcare.gov meltdown response, was the most recent to arrive, now to be a spokeswoman at Uber, along with White House director of strategic & message initiatives Jordan Burke, associate director of intergovernmental affairs Kellyn Blossom and assistant to the deputy White House chief of staff Sarah Fenn.

Of course, not all of the alums are officially in government relations, but there remains a close connection between the tech industry and government.

People in the White House say that having all these San Francisco people around will probably only accelerate the migration to the Bay Area.

Some of that’s already started: In April, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced a branch office in Silicon Valley, to build cooperation between the Pentagon and tech companies, and General Services Administration staff is already on the ground.

At The Washington Post, Colby Itkowitz reports that former attorney general Eric Holder is returning as a partner at Covington and Burling:

In a statement Monday, Holder said it was like “coming home.” Holder was a partner there from 2001 to 2009 before joining the Obama administration, where he served for six years.

Covington is the largest law firm in the District, with about 500 Washington attorneys. It has hired a string of high-ranking Justice Department officials over the last couple years.

Holder, doing the media rounds, spoke briefly with the Loop on Monday morning about his new job, missing the AG gig and not missing certain unnamed congressional Republicans (but we all know who they are.)

His official new job description describes vaguely that he’ll work on “complex investigations and litigation matters.” He said that will include the intersection of business and public policy, and matters ranging from antitrust to taxes.

As attorney general, he said he learned that mostly corporations “are trying to do the right thing, but often they operate in an advice vacuum where they seek counsel too late.” That’s where he hopes to be most effective, stepping in before Covington’s clients do the wrong thing.

There is also a revolving door between the media and the interest group community.  A news release from the Glover Park Group:

 Leading strategic communications and government affairs firm The Glover Park Group (GPG) today announced that Nedra Pickler has joined as a Managing Director. Pickler will work in the Strategic Communications practice, providing strategic and media counsel for the firm’s clients.

Pickler, a veteran journalist, joins GPG after spending 17 years at The Associated Press (AP), most recently serving as a White House reporter covering the second term of the Obama Administration. Pickler previously covered the second Bush Administration. In both of those roles, she covered breaking news, questioned both presidents extensively and reported from abroad on presidential trips across five continents.

“Nedra brings to our firm a deep understanding of politics, policy and an evolving media environment,” said GPG Chief Executive Officer Chip Smith. “Her experience covering two presidents and the most important and complex news stories of the last two decades is unmatched. She is a terrific addition to our team and will be highly sought after by our clients.”

Pickler also served as federal courts reporter in Washington, DC, and covered presidential campaigns for the AP during both the 2004 and 2008 election cycles. Pickler was part of the AP team nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign and received several awards from the AP during her tenure, including the John L. Dougherty Award for coverage of the Ford-Firestone tire scandal, and was twice the recipient of the global Beat of the Week award for breaking news reporting. She started her career in the Michigan bureau of the AP.

The Glover Park Group (GPG) is a leading strategic communications and government affairs firm. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with an office in New York, GPG offers its clients a suite of fully integrated services including public affairs, corporate reputation, media relations, government affairs, opinion research, crisis communications, digital strategy, advertising and brand positioning. Visit gpg.com for more information.

Glover Park belongs to London-based WPP. 

Media-Politics Revolving Door, Mid-2015

Revolving doors link the worlds of media, politics, and interest groups.

Eddie Scarry reports at The Washington Examiner:

MSNBC's vice president of communications is returning to the White House.

Politico's Mike Allen reported Friday that Rachel Racusen, who joined MSNBC in November as vice president of communications, will be joining the communications team at the White House as an adviser.

Before going to MSNBC in late 2014, Racusen was a communications director at the White House.

"She was miserable," a source at MSNBC, who requested anonymity, told the Washington Examiner media desk. "It is a whole new world. TV is cutthroat. And MSNBC is a difficult place to navigate. It is very different from the White House."

Current White House Communications Director Jen Psaki emailed her staff Friday that Racusen would be returning to the White House, according to Politico.

Damon Marx reports at AdWeek:

Dan Pfeiffer, a veteran aide of the Obama White House, has been hired by CNN to serve as a political contributor, announced the network’s president Jeff Zucker Monday morning.

Maggie Haberman writes at The New York Times:

Chris Hughes, the publisher of The New Republic, and his husband, Sean Eldridge, will hold a fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, two people briefed on the invitation said.

The event will be held on June 30 at the couple’s Lower Manhattan home, the people said.

Mr. Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, and Mr. Eldridge have sought in the last few years to become political players. Mr. Eldridge lost a race for Congress in upstate New York last year in which Mrs. Clinton recorded automated phone calls supporting him, despite the fact that polls showed him trailing badly before Election Day.

AP reports:

Newly declared Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham’s interview with George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” Tuesday is the latest sign that the ABC anchor’s donations to the Clinton Foundation seem not to have impeded his coverage of the upcoming presidential elections.

Stephanopoulos also has interviewed declared or prospective candidates Rick Santorum, Martin O’Malley, Bobby Jindal and Ben Carson for ABC News since it was revealed last month that he had donated a total of $75,000 to the former president’s foundation and failed to inform his bosses about it.

The “Good Morning America” and “This Week” host apologized on both programs for the donation and said he would not moderate an ABC debate among GOP candidates scheduled for early next year. ABC promised to stand by its chief news and political anchor, but his three separate gifts to the foundation run by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s husband led some critics to suggest Stephanopoulos’ ability to fairly cover the campaign had been compromised.

Gephardt and the Armenian Genocide: Switching Sides for Money

Chuck Raasch writes at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

As a member of Congress, Dick Gephardt often spoke passionately about the need for the United States to recognize as genocide the mass deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians under the Turkish government that began one century ago.

But as a lobbyist for Turkey since leaving Congress in 2005, Gephardt, a Democrat, has taken the opposite side. His behind-the-scenes work has been cited as a factor in the annual failure of Congress to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Justice Department records show that Gephardt’s lobbying firm has been paid more than $8 million since 2008 to fight the declaration and represent Turkey on other contentious issues, including repatriation of Christian holy sites seized over the last century in that Muslim nation.

Now, in the 100th-anniversary year of what Armenians refer to as Meds Yeghern — “great calamity” — two Armenian-American groups are pressuring Gephardt’s lobbying firm to drop Turkey as a client, and for companies to drop Gephardt as their lobbyist.

Gephardt, who declined to respond to repeated interview requests, has ignored the Armenian groups’ letters. Three companies have ended contracts with the Gephardt Group since the two Armenian-American groups launched a letter-writing campaign in January, although none publicly tied the decision to the letters.

Critics of the former congressman from St. Louis say he is just another example of the revolving door between electoral office and the lucrative lobbying business, where policy positions seem to change based on who’s paying the bill.

In the 1988 campaign, Gephardt ran for president, and Al Gore attacked him for flip-flopping on nearly everything else:

Revolving Door, 2015

Many posts have discussed "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," or "non-lobbying lobbying." Bruce Alpert writes at The New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is joining the Washington lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman, the firm will announce later Tuesday (May 26).

Landrieu said she will join Van Ness Feldman as a senior policy advisor, working closely with another recent hire, former Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the former top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Former senators are barred from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after the end of their congressional careers. For Landrieu, that means she can't lobby colleagues until January, 2017. But she can lobby members of the executive branch, and is free to provide Van Ness Feldman clients with strategic advice. .

Alex Lazar writes at Open Secrets:

CRP’s revolving door data, which we will continue to update, shows that 42 of the 75 who left Capitol Hill at the end of the last Congress or sometime during that two-year term are currently employed — 18 of them by lobbying firms or law firms that also lobby.

They include, among others, former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who lost his bid for re-election and is now a “strategic advisor” at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), one of only two incumbent GOP House members to lose his seat in the 2014 Republican wave and now a senior adviser at Kelley, Drye & Warren; and Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who were both poached by powerhouse firm Squire Patton Boggs. Matheson retired, while Kingston lost his bid for a Senate seat to David Perdue (R).

In an interview with OpenSecrets Blog, Matheson described his current role as “building client relationships and offering strategic advice” during the cooling-off period when he can’t directly lobby Congress (that’s one year for former House members, two years for former senators) — while also noting that he “can still interact with executive branch agencies.”

The Revolving Door Keeps Spinning

Brad Stone writes at Bloomberg:

[Jim] Messina, an in-demand Washington operative and head of Priorities USA Action, a super PAC aligned with likely 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, has become Silicon Valley’s go-to government fixer. He’s still working with Uber—he helped recruit fellow Obama campaign alum David Plouffe as its senior vice president for policy and strategy—and advises Airbnb, used-car market Beepi, and Pishevar’s Sherpa Ventures while serving on the board of cybersecurity company Vectra Networks.

“We call him ‘The Wolf,’ ” says Pishevar, a reference to the murder-cleanup consultant in Pulp Fiction, played by Harvey Keitel. “He’s a mastermind in terms of political strategy.”

Besides Plouffe, who joined Uber in August, Messina has been followed into tech by another Obama alum, former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who signed on with Amazon.com on Feb. 26. But unlike the others, Messina isn’t quitting his day job. He says he plans to keep running the Priorities super PAC. While it isn’t unusual for politicos to peddle their influence and then return to politics, the simultaneity is a potential conflict, says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonprofit that works to limit the influence of money in politics. “We live in a world where political operatives do all kinds of consulting, so it can get complicated,” Wertheimer says.

The Washington Post provides a graphic:

 

Lobbying the Attorneys General

At The New York Times, Eric Lipton reports on the the people who lobby state attorneys general.  Lawyers and lobbyists seek to influence the AGs on a wide variety of issues, though few revolving-door limits or disclosure laws apply.

A result is that the routine lobbying and deal-making occur largely out of view. But the extent of the cause and effect is laid bare in The Times’s review of more than 6,000 emails obtained through open records laws in more than two dozen states, interviews with dozens of participants in cases and attendance at several conferences where corporate representatives had easy access to attorneys general.

Often, the corporate representative is a former colleague. Four months after leaving office as chief deputy attorney general in Washington State, Brian T. Moran wrote to his replacement on behalf of a client, T-Mobile, which was pressing federal officials to prevent competitors from grabbing too much of the available wireless spectrum.
...
Private lawyers also have written drafts of legal filings that attorneys general have used almost verbatim. In some cases, they have become an adjunct to the office by providing much of the legal work, including bearing the cost of litigation, in exchange for up to 20 percent of any settlement.

Money gathered through events like the one in February 2013 at the Loews hotel is flooding the political campaigns of attorneys general and flowing to party organizations that can take unlimited corporate contributions and then funnel money to individual candidates. The Republican Attorneys General Association alone has pulled in $11.7 million since January.

It is a self-perpetuating network that includes a group of former attorneys general called SAGE, or the Society of Attorneys General Emeritus, most of whom are now on retainer to corporate clients.
...

The increased focus on state attorneys general by corporate interests has a simple explanation: to guard against legal exposure, potentially in the billions of dollars, for corporations that become targets of the state investigations.

It can be traced back two decades, when more than 40 state attorneys general joined to challenge the tobacco industry, an inquiry that resulted in a historic $206 billion settlement.