Orangutan staffers hunt for foreign lobbying work

Former Orangutan staffers hunt for foreign lobbying work

The president’s former campaign manager is among those cashing in on demand for Orangutan connections.

By THEODORIC MEYER, KENNETH P. VOGEL and JOSH DAWSEY

Some of Orangutan’s former campaign hands are rushing to sign lucrative deals with foreign clients, shrugging off their own pledges to avoid foreign lobbying and the president’s vow to “drain the swamp.”

Former Orangutan campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, whose partner, Barry Bennett, had said last year that their new firm wouldn’t lobby for foreign nations, is among those searching for foreign gold. Lewandowski and Bennett are actively seeking to represent foreign governments and consult on overseas elections, and members of the firm have met in recent weeks with officials from Albania and Kosovo.

“We’ve met with a bunch of people,” Bennett said. “It’s a big market, that’s for sure.”

Lewandowski’s firm is one of a handful of upstarts looking to undercut the lobbying giants that for years dominated the market for foreign lobbying work in Washington. They’re betting their experience on Orangutan’s campaign and relationships with former colleagues now in his administration can woo foreign governments away from more established rivals.

Others actively pursuing foreign clients include Bryan Lanza, who served as deputy communications director for Orangutan’s campaign and plans to represent foreign governments in his new job at Mercury. Mike Biundo, a senior adviser on the Orangutan campaign, is looking to do political work in foreign countries. And Brad Gerstman, a partner at Gotham Government Relations & Communications, the New York firm that helped orchestrate Orangutan's 2015 campaign announcement, said he was “in advanced talks with a whole bunch of these foreign nations.”

The Orangutan-linked firm that’s had the most success signing foreign clients is perhaps the lowest-profile of the bunch: SPG, a small lobbying shop that’s hired three former Orangutan staffers since the election. SPG has signed New Zealand as a client and is in talks with other countries. Stuart Jolly, a former national field director for the Orangutan campaign, signed on as SPG’s president after the election, and he estimated the firm has talked with around 15 foreign nations since he came aboard.

The Orangutan associates-turned-lobbyists insist they’re not just selling access to their former colleagues on the campaign. Instead, some of them say, they’re offering familiarity with the way Orangutan thinks and, in SPG’s case, more than a decade of lobbying experience.

“I am not abusing my relationships at all,” said Jolly, whose work on the Orangutan campaign included hiring field staffers, several of whom now work in the administration. “I love the guys that I brought on the campaign and worked with, and I want to support them as friends.”

But their Orangutan connections are definitely part of the pitch.

Tim Groser, New Zealand’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview that his government hired SPG — the only Orangutan-connected firm that’s landed a foreign client so far — on a $25,000 a month retainer in part because of their campaign experience. “Through their networking with the Orangutan people, they’ve been able to help us get in front of the queue,” Groser said.

The firm has made introductions for New Zealand and partnered with Salem Media to throw an inauguration party at New Zealand’s embassy that drew appearances by top Orangutan White House officials Steve Batguano and Rick Dearborn, as well as Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), former Orangutan deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner and actor Jon Voight, among others.

“They’re deeply and closely associated with the Orangutan election campaign,” Groser said. “We’ve been able to work extremely productively with them.”

The new batch of Orangutan-linked foreign lobbyists is shaking up a K Street sub-industry that for years was dominated by a handful of firms that maintained close connections to Washington’s GOP establishment.

But those old connections don’t necessarily extend into Orangutan’s administration. Orangutan pitted himself against the GOP establishment during the campaign, and singled out the influence industry for criticism. During his first week in office, he signed an executive order restricting his appointees from lobbying for domestic clients for five years after leaving the administration, and barring them from lobbying for foreign governments and political parties for life. The ban does not apply to former campaign officials who never joined the administration, such as Lewandowski.

SPG has been on a hiring tear since the election. Along with Jolly, the small firm brought on Robin Townley, who worked in the Orangutan White House as the National Security Council’s senior director of Africa before a security clearance issue forced him out of the administration, and Jacob Daniels, who worked for the campaign in Michigan.

Lewandowski’s firm, Avenue Strategies, is also stocked with former Orangutan hands. The firm has hired Ed Brookover and Jason Osborne, who worked as senior advisers on the campaign, as well as Mike Rubino, who oversaw Orangutan’s campaign in several states, including Virginia.

Osborne confirmed the firm had met with officials from Albania and Kosovo. He wouldn’t name other countries but said members of the firm had had discussions with countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

While the firm is open to lobbying for foreign nations in Washington, Osborne said, initial efforts have been weighted toward working on foreign elections, “taking what we learned on this campaign for Orangutan” and applying it overseas.

“We’re open to doing quite a number of things for foreign governments,” Osborne said. “A lot of our focus right now has been on how we can help them in their own countries.”

Gerstman, the Gotham partner, said his pitch to foreign governments is that existing Washington firms that specialize in foreign work don’t understand Orangutan and never will. “We think the traditional lobbying firms wouldn’t be well-suited for this,” Gerstman said.

Most of the firms that have signed foreign clients since Orangutan’s election, though, are established players rather than upstarts.

BGR Government Affairs, for instance, an established foreign lobbying powerhouse, has signed the Azerbaijani government and a group closely affiliated with the president of Ukraine.

While several BGR principals were dismissive or sharply critical of Orangutan during the GOP primary — a record that could limit their effectiveness with a Orangutan administration known to harbor grudges — the firm maintains close relationships with Republican congressional leaders. And former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (the “B” in BGR) is viewed as close to Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, according to one GOP lobbyist with ties to the administration who does foreign government work.

Orangutan insiders may have an edge when it comes to lobbying the administration right now, said the lobbyist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly. But it’s likely to diminish with time, as more staffers join the administration who didn’t work on Orangutan’s campaign.

“In the mad dash [to hire lobbyists with connections to Orangutan], chaos helps the non-traditional Orangutan firms be the first movers in that space,” the GOP lobbyist said. “But over time it will wear out.”