With Daniel Lippman
GOOGLE LOBBYIST HANGS A SHINGLE: Stewart Jeffries, an in-house lobbyist at Google for more than a decade, is launching his own government affairs shop, Jeffries Strategies. Jeffries joined Google in 2011 as the tech giant’s first competition policy counsel amid an FTC probe into its business practices, and later led the company’s outreach to House and Senate Republican leadership, committees and personal offices.
— He previously served as the chief antitrust counsel for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. In an interview Jeffries attributed the decision to strike out on his own in part to the heightened focus on antitrust and competition issues in Washington these days, telling PI that he’s eager to take the skills and expertise he picked up at Google and in his previous roles and offer them to a broader range of clients.
— “Obviously, the antitrust regulators at both the FTC and DOJ are taking or looking at taking an aggressive stance, and on the Hill there’s a lot more interest in those topics,” he said. Jeffries pointed to recent action on the Hill aimed at reining in the meat and shipping industries, and that’s of course in addition to antitrust bills targeting his former employer.
— But “one of the advantages of competition as an issue to have expertise in is that, while Google and the other large tech companies are sort of at the eye of the storm currently, the existing laws are actually industry-neutral,” he said. That means “there are a lot of different spaces where this comes into play.”
— Jeffries will continue to lobby for Google through the new firm, but he noted that besides competition and tech policy, he lobbied on other issues there that will continue to be salient for clients outside of Silicon Valley — including taxes, trade, privacy and copyright. “Certainly tech issues are my bread and butter,” he said, but at Google, he’d been able to work with “pretty much every committee at some point or another” and was looking to expand upon that.
Good afternoon and welcome to PI. What’s going on out there? My inbox is wide open for your hot tips, gossip and more: [email protected]. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.
DOWNTOWN MOBILIZES, AGAIN, TO BEAT BACK RECONCILIATION PACKAGE: With Democrats racing against the clock to strike a deal on a slimmed-down reconciliation bill, nearly 200 trade associations are reviving their warnings against tax hikes that would help offset the cost of an eventual package.
— In a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, the trade groups took aim specifically at two tax provisions Democrats are eyeing for the bill. One would expand a 3.8 percent surcharge on investment income known as the net investment income tax. The tax currently applies only to unearned income, but lawmakers want to extend it to active income as well, POLITICO’sBrian Faler reported last week.
— Though the groups write that they don’t think using the provision to shore up Medicare will pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, they don’t appear to want to take a chance, arguing that “based on Treasury data, we estimate up to 1 million small and family-owned businesses, representing over half of all pass-through business activity, would be at risk of having their rates increased under this policy. This small business tax hike would hurt the ability of businesses that survived the worst global pandemic in a century to remain viable in the coming months.”
— The trade groups also protested reports that Democrats are weighing a limit on loss deductions by small businesses, which the groups say “would hurt [small businesses] in the next downturn,” an especially risky move “with the economy on the brink of a recession.”
— In a separate letter on Monday, National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons pleaded with President Joe Biden and Hill leaders to get a move on in passing the China competitiveness bill. Timmons squeezed in a swipe at Democrats’ reconciliation plans, writing that raising taxes “undermines manufacturers’ competitiveness” in a similar way that failing to pass the China bill might.
LOCKHEED POACHES ONE FROM RAYTHEON: Lockheed Martin has shuffled around its lobbying operation and poached John Dolan from Raytheon to be its new vice president for Air Force and Joint Strike Fighter government affairs. Dolan, a retired Air Force three-star, was Raytheon’s vice president of strategy, campaign and analysis.
— The defense giant also announced that retired Vice Adm. Joe Rixey will be vice president for Navy and Marine Corps, former Pentagon official Kathryn Wheelbarger will be vice president for global program support, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jim Keffer will be a vice president heading up future concepts, and Erum Jilani will be the new Indo-Pacific programs director.
MORE FROM THE UBER FILES: In the latest revelations from a cache of more than 124,000 internal documents leaked by a former Uber lobbyist, The Guardian’s Felicity Lawrence reports the company paid six-figure sums to high-profile academics to publish research on the rideshare company’s economic model.
— “Using techniques common in party political campaigns, Uber targeted academics and thinktanks to help it construct a positive narrative, namely that it created well-paid jobs that drivers liked, delivered cheap transport to consumers and boosted productivity. Documents show how its lobbyists planned to use academic research as part of a production line of political ammunition that could be fed to politicians and the media.”
— “The aim was to use the research to increase pressure for changing the rules Uber was evading. While Uber’s involvement in reports was mentioned, leaked files expose how it wanted to use academics’ work and their reputations to further its aims, and how much it was prepared to pay them.”
IF YOU MISSED IT MONDAY: The Washington Post’sManuel Roig-Franzia profiled Daniel Vajdich, the Yorktown Solutions lobbyist who’s come to be known as Kyiv’s man in Washington after leading Ukraine’s fight against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before Russia’s invasion earlier this year.
— “When he started his firm in late 2015, Vajdich said, he wouldn’t hire former members of Congress or ambassadors, and eventually instituted a ban on campaign contributions by his team — a departure from a Washington ritual in which lobbyists spending several nights a week double- and triple-booked to hand out checks at political fundraisers. ‘When I started this, it was just a theory,’ Vajdich says of his self-imposed bans. The theory became a selling point.”
— And though Russia’s war in Ukraine has effectively put the kibosh on Nord Stream 2, while sending the project’s former high-powered lobbyists fleeing, “Vajdich sees more U.S. congressional fights ahead. He suspects European supporters of Nord Stream 2, particularly in Germany, will take another run at putting the pipeline into service. It currently is just lying there without ever having been used.”
— “And he’s recently embarked on a new battle with the same adversaries, this time representing Ukrainian titanium industries in their fight against corporate interests who want to block sanctions against Russian titanium interests.”
— Andy Lock is now a principal at Monument Advocacy. He previously was a senior policy staffer for the House Homeland Security Committee.
— Mercina Tillemann Perez is now vice president for Circle Impact at Circle. She most recently was COO of the Global Blockchain Business Council.
— The Council of Federal Home Loan Banks has named Ryan Donovan its new president and CEO. Donovan most recently served as executive vice president and chief advocacy officer at the Credit Union National Association. He’ll succeed John von Seggern, who retired at the end of June.
— Samantha Helton has joined 3M’s U.S. government affairs team. She was most recently director of government relations at Walgreens and is a Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) alum.
— Anne Gordon has joined the National Foreign Trade Council as vice president for international tax policy. She most recently served as tax counsel to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
— The National Association of Broadcasters has promoted Nicole Gustafson and Josh Pollack to senior vice president for government relations, Laura Kaufman to senior vice president and corporate counsel for legal and regulatory affairs and John Clark to senior vice president for emerging technology and executive director of NAB’s PILOT initiative.
— B.J. Martino will be the new president and CEO of GOP polling firm Tarrance Group. He’s currently a partner at the firm.
— Robert Williams is joining the NTIA as deputy director of intergovernmental affairs. He currently is senior political director at Stateside.
— Mary Cordes is now manager of federal government affairs at Chemours. She previously was federal government affairs manager at Oxy Petroleum Corp.
— Sophia Campbell is now a research analyst at HR&A Advisors. She most recently was a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution.
— Stephanie Addison has joined the American Securities Association as vice president of public affairs. Addison was most recently senior communications director for the Farm Credit Council, and worked previously for former Texas GOP Reps. Randy Neugebauer and Jeb Hensarling.
— Ved Price is the new executive director of the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. He follows Mary Gould, who served as the Alliance’s founding director since 2017. Price previously served as the Alliance’s development and program coordinator from 2020-2021.
— Carmen Scurato is FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s new legal adviser for consumer and public safety issues. She was previously associate legal director and senior counsel covering telecommunications, privacy and technology issues at Free Press.
— Melissa Mann and Daizo Kosa are the two newest board members at USTelecom | The Broadband Association. Mann is a vice president for government affairs and public policy at Lumen Technologies, while Kosa is a general manager and chief corporate representative for NTT.
— John B. Morris Jr. is the new principal on U.S. internet policy and advocacy at the Internet Society. He was previously a senior nonresident fellow with the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution.
— Tim Perry is now a senior media strategist for the New York based media strategy firm Stu Loeser & Co., he’ll be based in D.C. He most recently was a White House reporter at CBS News.
— Jason Rosenberg is joining Block as head of corporate affairs. He most recently was managing director and head of U.S. government relations at JPMorgan Chase.
None.
CONSERVATIVE AMERICANS PAC (Super PAC)
PACtheBench (Hybrid PAC)
Silencer Central PAC (PAC)
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