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11/8/14, "Senate flip generates a boom for Republicans on K Street," Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner
"The Republican rout on Election Day didn’t only shake up Capitol
Hill, it has caused a realignment on K Street. Republicans — current
staffers, former members, and especially anyone with ties to the
incoming majority leader and chairmen of powerful committees — are now
in high demand.
Republican firms are hiring new staff and picking up new clients
while liberal and bipartisan firms beef up their Republican bench. All
in all, it’s a “robust, effervescent job market for Republicans,” in the
words of Sam Geduldig, partner in the GOP firm Clark, Geduldig,
Cranford & Nielsen.
The luckiest group may be the crowd surrounding the presumptive new
Senate majority leader. “Mitch McConnell and the other leadership have a
large following” on K Street already, points out Ivan Adler, a lobbyist
headhunter at the McCormick Group, “and those folks will certainly be
the biggest winners.”
If you’re a Republican lobbyist with a
close tie to McConnell or to the incoming chairmen of the “money
committees” — Finance, Banking, Commerce, and Appropriations — your
value has just gone up.
Forty former and current McConnell staffers are in the Revolving Door database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the largest
number for any sitting U.S. senator. McConnell’s most prominent alumni
on K Street might be former chiefs of staff Hunter Bates and Billy
Piper.
Piper works at K Street firm Fierce Isakowitz & Blalock, where
his clients include manufacturers, airlines, banks, technology firms and
energy companies. Bates lobbies at Republic Consulting, where his
clients include the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the
Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Expect these impressive client lists to grow.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., will likely be the next Banking
Committee chairman, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., will take the
Appropriations gavel, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, will take over the
tax-writing Finance Committee. These three men also have plenty of
former aides on K Street — aides who will now be in higher demand.
To some extent, the GOP takeover increases the value of all
Republican lobbyists. Former GOP Senate aide Steven Irizarry was
promoted Wednesday to managing partner at the bipartisan firm Roberti
& White.
For firms already employing GOP staffers, the power change means more
clients. This pop in clients won’t show up in public records
immediately—firms have six weeks to file new registrations. But Geduldig
said on the Thursday after the election, “I got two new opportunities
[for clients] today. It feels good.”
K Street is also snapping Republicans up off Capitol Hill. For
instance, Cesar Conda, chief of staff for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
(before moving on to the senator’s political action committee),
announced Thursday he was returning to his old K Street lobbying firm,
Navigators Global. Lobbyists at other firms said they plan to make their
Republican hires in the coming weeks.
Not all Republican offices are getting visits from headhunters,
though. Staffers for the famously combative Sen. Ted Cruz swear to me
that K Street isn’t looking to poach from Cruz’s office. Cruz’s biggest
fights have pitted him against the business lobby, and he is not seen as
a terribly persuadable lawmaker.
Improving the labor market even more for Republicans, many GOP
lobbyists will return to Capitol Hill to fill the offices of newly
elected members (there will be nine more GOP senators, after all) as
well as committee staff — and majority staffs are larger than minority
staffs."...
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