With Daniel Lippman

HOTELS APPEAL TO TRUMP FOR AID: As the never-ending negotiations over another relief package drag on, the hotel industry is urging President Donald Trump to take executive action to ease the lending standards of the federal government’s troubled loan program for medium-sized businesses. “To date, only a small fraction of $600 billion in available loans have been utilized while the remaining funds — which are so desperately needed by industries like ours — sit idle and go unused,” Chip Rogers, the president and chief executive of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and dozens of hotel and trade group executives wrote today in a letter to Trump.

— “We strongly urge you to use your executive authority to direct the Treasury to encourage the Federal Reserve to amend and expand the Main Street Lending Program,” they went on. “Your engagement is desperately needed to support struggling businesses, stem the impending wave of foreclosures, and save millions of jobs to ensure the health of the entire American economy.”

NEW BUSINESS: Apple has added a former Trump administration official to its stable of outside lobbyists. David Redl left the administration last year after leading the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, which advises the White House on the wireless spectrum, and started the lobbying firm Salt Point Strategies. He quickly signed lobbying clients such as Comcast, Facebook and Rakuten, the Japanese online retailer. Now Redl and Ansley Erdel, a former Republican congressional aide, will lobby for Apple on spectrum and internet policy issues, according to a disclosure filing.

— Apple spends less on Washington lobbying than other tech leviathans, shelling out $3.6 million in the first half of this year compared to Facebook’s $10.1 million and Amazon’s $8.7 million. The company also retains Capitol Tax Partners, Fierce Government Relations, the Franklin Square Group, the Glover Park Group, Hogan Lovells, Invariant and Miller Strategies, according to disclosure filings.

— The student loan servicing giant Navient, meanwhile, has hired Cathy Koch, a former aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who’s now a lobbyist at Washington Council Ernst & Young. She’ll lobby on the Internal Revenue Service’s private debt collection program; a Navient subsidiary, Pioneer, is one of four companies the agency uses to collect unpaid tax debts.

— The program has come under scrutiny from some Democrats. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in January to question how the “flawed” program goes after low-income taxpayers. Paul Hartwick, a Navient spokesperson, wrote in an email to PI that Koch “plans to keep in touch with stakeholders regarding the IRS private debt collection program as we approach a new Congress.” Navient also retains eight other Washington lobbying firms, according to disclosure filings.

Good afternoon, and welcome to PI. Days until Election Day: 19. Tips: [email protected]. Twitter: @theodoricmeyer.

HOW THE PHARMACEUTICAL LOBBY SWAYS STATE CAPITOLS: “Well over one-quarter of all state lawmakers nationwide have accepted money from the pharmaceutical industry since the beginning of 2019,” STAT’s Lev Facher reports. “In several states, taking drug industry cash was more the norm than the exception: In Illinois, more than 79% of the state’s 177 elected lawmakers have cashed such a check. In California, over 85% of lawmakers have taken pharma money. The data reveals the drug industry has poured over $5 million into state legislators’ campaigns in the past two years alone.”

— “STAT’s analysis, conducted in partnership with the National Institute on Money in Politics, provides a first-of-its-kind study of the drug industry’s influence in state capitols. … While $10,000 of drug industry cash is largely symbolic at the federal level, the same sum can significantly influence a campaign for state legislature. Though such contributions are widespread, many politicians increasingly view the donations as symbolic of a deeply flawed system in which corporations carry outsize influence.”

— “‘PAC contributions buy access to politicians too lazy to raise money from real people,’ said Jason Kander, a prominent Democrat who previously served as Missouri’s secretary of state and two terms in the state’s legislature. ‘And after their first campaign, most politicians get lazy.’”

MEANWHILE, IN NEW JERSEY: “The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company has emerged as the primary financial backer of New Jersey’s cannabis legalization effort, donating $800,000 to two campaign committeesformed to back the Nov. 3 ballot question that would amend the state constitution to allow cannabis to be bought and sold for recreational use,” POLITICO New Jersey’s Sam Sutton reports.

— Contributions from the Ohio-based “company represent more than 60 percent of the $1.3 million raised across the three campaign committees formed around the ballot question, according to a new report from the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission. The injection of cash from Scotts Miracle-Gro, which owns a lucrative cannabis-oriented subsidiary called Hawthorne that specializes in hydroponic and indoor production — including products for ‘home hobbyists,’ per its website — comes in the absence of meaningful contributions from New Jersey’s burgeoning cannabis industry operators.”

IF YOU MISSED IT ON WEDNESDAY: A memo written by a hedge fund consultant who attended a February briefing for members of the Hoover Institution’s board in which top Trump administration officials struck a less-than-optimistic tone about coronavirus quickly spread through parts of the investment world,” The New York Times’ Kate Kelly and Mark Mazzetti report. “U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when [President Donald] Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.”

— “Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.”

JOBS REPORT

— Robert Moran has left the Hill to join the Bose Public Affairs Group as a principal. He plans to register as a lobbyist, according to the firm. He was previously the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s education policy director and is also a former lobbyist for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “He has been a key part of virtually every major piece of federal education legislation since the 1990s and helped guide the U.S. Department of Education’s regulatory policy after the last Higher Education Act reauthorization,” Harrison Wadsworth III, a Bose principal, said in a statement. “His knowledge, creativity and experience will provide a tremendous value to our clients and help them prepare for the future.”

— The American Society of Association Executives has promoted Mary Kate Cunningham to senior vice president of public policy. She’s led the trade group’s lobbying efforts since 2018.

New Joint Fundraisers

Campaign Everywhere (Oklahoma Democratic Party, Missouri Democratic State Committee)
Ossoff-Warnock Victory Fund (Jon Ossoff for Senate, Warnock for Georgia, DSCC)

New PACs

Freedom Through Truth (Super PAC)
Shout Out America PAC (Super PAC)

New Lobbying REGISTRATIONS

Capitol Counsel, LLC: C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.
CJ Lake, LLC: Viemed
Greenberg Traurig, LLP: OTG Management, LLC
Joseph Huang-Racalto: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
MWW Group: XpresSpa Group, Inc.
Salt Point Strategies: Apple Inc.
TCK International, LLC: DLA Piper LLP (US) (for Rocket Lab USA Inc.)
TeleMedia Policy Corp.: RS Access, LLC
The Roosevelt Group: RP2 Inc

New Lobbying Terminations

Adams and Reese, LLP: University of North Alabama
Barnett Sivon & Natter, P.C.: National Laws Group (Informal Coalition)
Bernstein Strategy Group: Association of Young Americans
Bernstein Strategy Group: National Summer Learning Association
Bridgeway Advocacy: Commisimpex
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Culinary Institute of America
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Husch Blackwell Strategies on behalf of CoxHealth
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: Olinda Upcountry, LLC
Cassidy & Associates, Inc.: tyntec Inc.
CJ Lake, LLC: The Picard Group
LeMunyon Group, LLC: ServiceMaster
Smith Dawson & Andrews: Globetrotters Tech Solutions
Smith Dawson & Andrews: Kinesis Foundation
Smith Dawson & Andrews: Labelmaster
Smith Dawson & Andrews: Valent USA
Squire Patton Boggs: UnitedHealth Group Inc
The Livingston Group, LLC: Martin Defense Group LLC (Formerly Navatek LLC)

Follow Us