With Daniel Lippman TESLA HIRES AKIN GUMP: Tesla has brought on a cadre of Democratic lobbyists from one of D.C.’s top lobbying shops after the EV giant’s government relations footprint was gutted over the past year and amid Tesla CEO Elon Musk's political lurch to the right. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld began lobbying for Tesla last week on issues related to battery storage and international market access, according to a disclosure filing. — Brian Pomper, a former trade adviser with the Senate Finance Committee; Virgil Miller, a former House Energy and Commerce and John Dingell (D-Mich.) aide; Scott Parven, a veteran trade lobbyist; and Josh Teitelbaum, a former deputy assistant Commerce secretary in the Obama administration, will work on the account for Akin. — Tesla has seen an exodus of public policy staffers this year as part of layoffs ordered by Musk due to a slowdown in the EV industry. The departures included top U.S lobbyist Hasan Nazar and vice president of policy and business development Rohan Patel. Of Tesla’s four in-house lobbyists at the start of 2024, only one remains with the company: Kevin Rambosk, who started at Tesla last October. — The automaker has also cut down on its outside lobbying roster. After spending a record $1.1 million on lobbying in 2023, Tesla’s lobbying expenditures plummeted from $280,000 in the first quarter of 2024 to $160,000 in the second quarter of the year. Tesla parted ways with three of its outside lobbying firms over the past year, disclosures show: Ernst & Young, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Pioneer Public Affairs. Before retaining Akin, Tesla’s only outside firm for several months had been Cassidy & Associates. — Meanwhile Musk has been increasingly open about his political evolution, lambasting Democrats and endorsing former President Donald Trump earlier this summer. He has also launched a super PAC that has spent more than $60 million since the spring on independent expenditures and field operations to support Trump and other GOP congressional candidates. Happy Monday and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. CHAMBER ASKS BIDEN TO INTERVENE IN PORT LABOR TALKS: U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Suzanne Clark called on President Joe Biden to stage an eleventh-hour intervention in order to avert a potentially devastating strike by workers more than a dozen ports along the East and Gulf coasts that is slated to begin at midnight absent an agreement between the dockworkers’ union and the companies who manage the ports. — “Americans experienced the pain of delays and shortages of goods during the pandemic-era supply chain backlogs in 2021. It would be unconscionable to allow a contract dispute to inflict such a shock to our economy,” Clark wrote in a letter to Biden this afternoon, calling on the president to invoke a 1947 labor law, the Taft-Hartley Act, to head off a work stoppage. “You have the authority to keep contract negotiations going while keeping the ports open,” she pleaded. — Biden and Congress stepped in to keep more than 100,000 rail workers from walking off the job in 2022, citing the potential for a rail strike to cause “economic catastrophe.” Though business groups have warned a port strike could cause massive economic upheaval ahead of both the presidential election and the winter holidays — and pointed to Biden’s involvement in negotiating labor agreements between West Coast dockworkers and delivery drivers — Biden told reporters on Sunday that unilaterally moving to stop a strike would be a nonstarter. MONUMENT LOBBYIST HEADS TO HOMEBUILDERS GROUP: Ken Wingert is decamping from Monument Advocacy, where he leads the firm’s financial services practice, to join the National Association of Home Builders as the trade group’s chief advocacy officer. — Wingert began his lobbying career with the Associated Builders and Contractors before spending the next 13 years with the National Association of Realtors. Before joining Monument Advocacy, Wingert served as head of government relations for real estate site Zillow. — At NAHB, Wingert will lead not only the association’s federal and state lobbying teams but also its federal PAC — which doled out more than $3.6 million during the 2022 midterms — and its regulatory, housing finance and legal advocacy efforts. PLANTING THEIR STEAK: “If Washington is the swamp, its steakhouses are the alligator pits,” Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman writes in a deep dive on the state of D.C.’s steakhouse scene, a place “where alliances are forged, lawmakers are lobbied, and gobs of money are raised” — by Republicans in particular. — “The data actually supports partisan perceptions. Campaign-finance reports reveal that Republicans overwhelmingly outspend Democrats at every major steakhouse in the city, including Charlie Palmer Steak; Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab; Rare Steakhouse; the Palm; and Bobby Van’s. At the Capital Grille, Republicans have outspent Democrats nearly 13 to 1 so far this election cycle, with bills totaling more than $762,000.” WHO’S BANKROLLING LARRY HOGAN?: “A conservative super PAC funded by Trump skeptics and backers alike jumped into the Maryland Senate race in the past week, airing three political ads with strikingly different tones — all aimed at swaying voters to support Republican Larry Hogan in the increasingly expensive and unexpectedly close contest that could determine which party controls that chamber,” The Washington Post’s Katie Shepherd reports in a look at the super PAC’s funders. — “Maryland’s Future, a deep-pocketed super PAC backing Hogan, the state’s popular former governor, reserved $18.3 million in airtime during the last six weeks of the race. The super PAC has singularly outspent [Democratic opponent Angela] Alsobrooks and her allies so far, though the Democrats have not booked airtime in advance and will probably spend significantly more in the coming weeks.” — The super PAC “entered the late-summer sprint toward Election Day with nearly $16 million in the bank from conservative donors as of June 30. The group was seeded with a $10 million donation from Kenneth C. Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has eschewed donating to Donald Trump and emerged as one of the top GOP donors nationally in the 2024 election cycle.” — “About two dozen other GOP donors had collectively given nearly $6 million more to the PAC by June 30,” a group that includes Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman, investment banker Warren Stephens, philanthropist Craig Duchossois and real estate titan Harlan Crow. TECH’S BIG AI WIN: “Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a sweeping California bill meant to impose safety vetting requirements for powerful AI models, siding with much of Silicon Valley and leading congressional Democrats in the most high-profile fight in the Legislature this year,” our Lara Korte and Jeremy B. White report. — “Newsom said in a veto message that the legislation ‘does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data.’” — “California’s battle took on outsize dimensions because the bill would have set a de facto national standard for the technology. Newsom has faced fierce lobbying from the state’s economic and political powers, including Hollywood actors, prominent tech companies and investors, as well as influential House members like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.” — “The tech-friendly governor has for months warned against stymying California’s burgeoning AI industry and undermining the state’s economic competitiveness, but he has also said California must lead on responsible regulation.”
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