| | | | | |  | | By Caitlin Oprysko | | | With Daniel Lippman BAKER DONELSON HIRES SCHUMER AIDE: Just in time for Senate Democrats to embark on their next reconciliation gambit, Robert Gardner, a former legislative staffer for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer , has joined Baker Donelson's government relations and public policy group. Gardner, who left Schumer's office in 2019 to get his MBA at Dartmouth, will advise the firm's clients on tax, trade, appropriations, budget, infrastructure and sanctions issues. He'll also help them navigate the budget reconciliation process by which Democrats hope to pass their $3.5 trillion social spending bill, the appropriations processes, sanctions legislation, tariff list and trade investigations. MORE TRADE GROUPS REQUIRING VACCINES: After PI reported Tuesday that some of Washington's leading trade associations are getting tougher on vaccines among their staff and guests, or that the Delta variant had delayed their office returns, several others shared their reopening plans, as well. The Retail Industry Leaders Association has pushed back its return by a month, with a longer delay possible. Upon returning to the office, the trade group will require staff to show proof of vaccination or submit to twice-weekly Covid tests, according to its president, Brian Dodge. — The American Petroleum Institute will also require proof of vaccination status, according to a spokesperson, while unvaccinated staff will be required to comply with CDC and local guidance and may be subjected to periodic testing. The oil industry trade association has also delayed its plans for a full return to the office but thus far is not making vaccination a condition of employment. On Tuesday, the Consumer Trade Association, the group behind the marquee tech trade show CES, announced that the 2022 event will require attendees to show proof of vaccination or potentially a positive antibody test as an alternative. — The Consumer Banking Association, meanwhile, had to scramble earlier this month to convert its annual conference, which was set to take place in Orlando this week, to an entirely virtual affair after infection rates in Florida spiked. The trade group's employees have been going into the office with a hybrid model since earlier this summer, a spokesperson said, and are now wearing masks in the office in accordance with D.C. law. CBA is not requiring staff to be vaccinated. Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Send lobbying tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.
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RECONCILIATION AD WARS: The former executive director of the Senate Republicans' campaign arm has launched a new nonprofit group and is readying a multimillion-dollar ad buy targeting Democrats' reconciliation bill. The Common Sense Leadership Fund, a 501(c)4 group, will launch the first part of its ad blitz in New Hampshire and Arizona targeting Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly, who both face tough reelections next year in those respective states. More spots on TV, digital and radio, as well as a House component, will be lined up in the coming days, said Kevin McLaughlin, the group's founder, who served as the NRSC 's executive director last cycle. In an interview, McLaughlin said the campaign will be "very grassroots-centric" and will make the "pretty simple" case "that this $3.5 trillion reconciliation budget is a boondoggle that's gonna lead people to fewer choices and less jobs and higher taxes."
— The ads will cast the bill as "a liberal wishlist of … giveaways to their different special interest entities," McLaughlin said. He added that he hopes to fashion the new nonprofit into a powerful force in time for next year's midterms, with this campaign becoming the first of many. "It seemed to me that there was a lane for more of a focus on digital and grassroots advocacy, issue advocacy, from the conservative side," he said, praising the Senate Leadership Fund, a Mitch McConnell -aligned super PAC, and the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP counterpart and adding that he hopes CSLF can act as a complement. — "If you look at some of the other traditional conservative outside organizations, they haven't been as active in recent election cycles, so there was — there is a bit of a vacuum," he argued. The group, which isn't required to disclose its donors, is funded by "an anonymous concerned citizen," McLaughlin said, though he later would not say whether the group had just one or multiple benefactors. — McLaughlin's group will be joined on the air by several other recently launched campaigns by ideological groups. NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported today that the liberal nonprofit Future Forward USA Action will spend $1.4 million to provide air cover to half a dozen frontline and moderate House Democrats being targeted by a $5 million campaign from American Action Network . AAN, a nonprofit affiliated with the Congressional Leadership Fund, unveiled the 39-district ad blitz last week, which leverages internal polling that the group says shows Americans' top economic concerns revolve around inflation fears. FINTECHS SINGLED OUT FOR TROUBLESOME PPP LOANS: "Fintechs are almost five times more likely than traditional banks to have made 'highly suspicious' loans through the $780 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)," new research out Tuesday found, according to CNN's Matt Egan. "Nine of the top ten PPP lenders with the highest rate of suspicious loans are fintechs — and the remaining one acts like a fintech company, according to the study by researchers at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin." — The study found 1.8 million loans with suspicious characteristics, valued at $76.3 billion in total. It "points to regulatory gaps and due diligence failures that allowed for suspicious lending of taxpayer money intended to help mom-and-pop shops hurt by the pandemic," and found that "the largest three fintech issuers of PPP loans — Cross River, Capital Plus and Harvest — all had 'high and increasing rates' of misreporting and received more than $900 million each in processing fees. The sheer scope of the suspicious lending by the fintechs, the authors wrote, suggests that 'many lenders either encouraged such loans, turned a blind eye to them or had lax oversight procedures.'" — But the industry pushed back on the findings, with Cross River telling CNN that the company had "stepped up to answer the mandate from Congress and in the process, deployed fraud detection standards that far exceeded the continuously evolving SBA program requirements" and helped nearly half a million of the "smallest and most vulnerable businesses in need." Meanwhile Penny Lee, chief executive of the Financial Technology Association , told CNN that her industry had stepped up where traditional lenders had not. "While small businesses suffered, many large, legacy financial institutions refused to provide loans to businesses without existing relationships," she said in a statement. MAKE SURE HE KNOWS YOU'RE RECORDING: The House Oversight Committee is in talks with Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy and hopes to have him speak for the record "soon," according to Morning Energy. "McCoy has responded and we are in discussions with his counsel to arrange an interview soon," a committee aide said. The panel is hauling in McCoy over comments in a surreptitiously recorded video in which he chalked up the oil giant's support of a carbon tax to being merely a PR move and touted how the company leans on dark money and trade groups to cloud the discussion over energy and environmental policy. ME reports that "Republicans are seeking the full video, which was taken as part of a sting on McCoy and released by Greenpeace UK and resulted in the oil giant getting booted from a moderate climate group it helped found. Exxon did not immediately respond to questions on McCoy appearing before the committee." PRESSURE GROWS ON WHITE HOUSE TO EASE TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS: "Lobbyists, lawmakers and border mayors are imploring the Biden administration to ease restrictions on nonessential travel put in place 18 months ago at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic," CNN's Priscilla Alvarez reports. "But officials haven't budged even as other countries gradually open to Americans." — "We've been frozen in time with restrictions for 18 months that have almost nothing to do with what's happening on the ground in these countries," said Stewart Verdery , a lobbyist working on the issue and a former Department of Homeland Security official in the George W. Bush administration. Verdery, the CEO and founder of Monument Advocacy, added that "it's been very hard to get any type of real metrics, road maps, guidelines, anything out of the White House," telling the industry that "it's based on science." "We believe the science says we should be able to reopen," said Tori Emerson Barnes , the top lobbyist at the U.S. Travel Association. | | | — Jordan Wood is now a senior manager of strategic communications at blockchain marketing and communications firm Blokhaus. He previously was director of speechwriting for former Vice President Mike Pence and is a Deb Fischer, Mitch McConnell and Brett Guthrie alum. — Matt Williams is now vice president for state government affairs at McKesson. He most recently was managing director for health care at National Strategies, and is an AbbVie and GE Healthcare alum. — Former Trump administration HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan is joining the Texas Public Policy Foundation as a distinguished senior fellow for the organization's health policy initiative. — Kevin Green has been hired as senior director of public policy and external relations at Somos. Green was most recently a senior telecom policy analyst at the FCC and Verizon's executive director for federal regulatory affairs. — Mark Baird, a retired Air Force brigadier general and most recently Lockheed Martin's director for strategy for space and special programs, has been named president of Vox Space. — Matt Donovan is now vice president of customer engagement and solutions at Raytheon Intelligence & Space . He was previously undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and acting Air Force secretary in the Trump administration. | | | VAN DUYNE MILLER-MEEKS PAC (Reps. Beth Van Duyne, Mariannette Miller-Meeks)
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Van Scoyoc Associates: Guarding Against Pandemics | | | | Be a Policy Pro. POLITICO Pro has a free policy resource center filled with our best practices on building relationships with state and federal representatives, demonstrating ROI, and influencing policy through digital storytelling. Read our free guides today . | | | | | | | New Lobbying Terminations | | Holland & Hart LLP: Ahtna, Inc.
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