Lobbyists

Lobbyists target newly elected Democrats

After a midterm campaign in which prominent progressives refused to take corporate donations, lobbyists are trying to get a jump-start on buddying up to the new majority.

By THEODORIC MEYER and MARIANNE LEVINE

Democrats campaigned to win back the House. Now lobbyists are campaigning to win over newly elected Democrats.

Lobbyists are hosting mixers with the new members. Companies and lobbying firms are looking to scoop up former Hill staffers with connections to House leadership and the Congressional Black Caucus, which is expected to be one of the most powerful blocs in the Democratic House.

And K Street types are introducing clients to freshmen lawmakers, including those who may nab spots on powerful panels such as the Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Ways and Means, Justice, and Oversight and Government Reform committees.

“We are taking the tack that the most important thing is the new members who are going to be on those committees,” Scott Eckart, a Democratic lobbyist, said in a text message. “Those are the ones we are trying to introduce clients to.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has yet to officially secure the speaker’s gavel, and it’s still unclear which newly elected members of Congress will land key committee slots or other positions of power in next year’s Democratic House. But after a midterm campaign in which prominent progressives refused to take corporate donations — and with Democrats weighing new ethics and lobbying rules in 2019 — lobbyists are trying to get a jump-start on buddying up to members of the new majority.

Amazon announced Wednesday that it had hired two former chiefs of staff to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.).

Samsung, Lyft, Spotify and Diageo, the liquor company that makes Captain Morgan rum and Smirnoff vodka, hosted a mixer the week after Election Day that drew half a dozen newly elected Democrats, according to a person who attended. Pelosi and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who was elected House majority leader on Wednesday, and congressional staffers showed up, too.

The Blue Dog Coalition, meanwhile, which represents moderate Democrats, hosted a similar reception Tuesday afternoon for the seven newly elected members of Congress who are joining the group, according to an invitation received by lobbyists and obtained by POLITICO.

The number of new Democratic members who have forsworn accepting corporate PAC contributions — which would climb to 41 if T.J. Cox is confirmed to have beaten Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), according to End Citizens United PAC — has made some corporations nervous. Lobbyists have tried to reassure their clients that not all the newly elected Democrats consider themselves part of the progressive wing of the party.

“When you look at those new members, there are a lot of moderate members, too,” said David Castagnetti, a partner at the lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. “They’re not all hostile toward business.”

Some lobbyists began wooing Democratic candidates long before the election, hosting fundraisers and aiding in get-out-the-vote efforts.

Oscar Ramirez, a Democratic lobbyist who started his own firm with two partners earlier this year, said he and his partners had helped at least half a dozen House candidates who were elected this month. He’s now offering advice to them on which staffers to hire and which committees to try to join.

“We’ve had relationships with some of these new members now for over a year,” Ramirez said. “We were helping them get elected.”

Lobbyists are closely tracking who Democrats are hiring to staff their offices and committees: “Who’s going to be the staff director? Who’s going to be the deputy staff director?” as one lobbyist put it.

While more than a quarter of the House Democratic majority will be made up of newly elected members — 61 in total — the leadership and committee chairmen are all veteran lawmakers who are known quantities on K Street.

With Pelosi poised to return to the speakership, the small but influential network of lobbyists with ties to her is in high demand.

There were 19 former Pelosi staffers who were active registered lobbyists in 2018, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, representing corporate clients including American Airlines, Facebook, General Electric, Nike and Wells Fargo.

While the number of Pelosi alumni who lobby remains relatively small, considering her decades in Washington, it has grown since she relinquished the speaker’s gavel in 2011. They include Nadeam Elshami, a former Pelosi chief of staff who’s a lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Dean Aguillen, a former director of member services for Pelosi who’s now a lobbyist at Ogilvy Government Relations; Arshi Siddiqui, a former senior policy adviser to Pelosi now at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Catlin O’Neill, who now works in Facebook’s Washington office; Anne MacMillan at Invariant; Alexandra Veitch, who’s a lobbyist for Tesla; Mike Sheehy, a lobbyist at Signal Group; and Tom Manatos, who lobbies for Spotify.

But while lobbyists who once worked for Pelosi may understand how she makes decisions, they don’t necessarily have more access to her, according to interviews with people familiar with her relationship with K Street.

Brian Wolff, a former Pelosi staffer who is now executive vice president of public policy and external affairs at the Edison Electric Institute, said he’d never personally lobbied Pelosi.

“I can tell you, I have never been in a meeting in her office, in the nine-and-a-half years that I have been departed from her staff,” he said. “I’ve never taken or have ever gone in on official business.”

When a former chief of staff brought a client to Pelosi’s office years ago, she took the meeting, according to another person familiar with Pelosi’s K Street network. But after the former chief of staff left, “she made it well known to her current staff at the time that she didn’t want to help anyone make money off the connection to her or her name,” the person said.

Former Pelosi staffers on K Street host an annual fundraiser for her, the most recent of which was held in July at Rosa Mexicana in Washington. More than a dozen Pelosi alumni were listed as hosts on an invitation obtained by POLITICO.

But the money raised is relatively insignificant compared to the tens of millions of dollars Pelosi raises for Democrats each cycle.

“It’s small potatoes compared to what she raised on a normal day,” said one person familiar with her relationship with K Street.