With Daniel Lippman K STREET CLAIMS FIRST 118th ALUM: Alston & Bird is bolstering its lobbying roster with a former member of House GOP leadership as the Republican takeover of Washington gets underway, hiring former Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.) as a senior policy adviser. Ferguson left office this year after eight years in Congress, including the past four years as GOP chief deputy whip. — In addition to his role helping corral votes for GOP leadership — a skill even more valuable now that House Republicans can only spare a single defection — Ferguson was also a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and its Tax Subcommittee, which will serve as the nucleus of the conference’s upcoming tax package, and was on the House Budget Committee. — Ferguson is the first full-term member of the 118th Congress to land on K Street, but he almost certainly won’t be the last. Though he’s barred by ethics rules from lobbying his former colleagues on the Hill for a year, Ferguson is free to lobby President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration (or the current Biden administration, if he so wishes) right away. — And if the confirmation process goes according to plan, Trump’s administration will contain a number of Ferguson’s peers, including Mike Waltz as national security adviser, Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the U.N., Marco Rubio as secretary of State and Billy Long as IRS commissioner. — In addition to Ferguson, Alston & Bird has also hired Alex Graf as a special policy adviser in the firm’s health care practice. Graf was most recently deputy assistant secretary for legislation at HHS, where he led engagement on priorities including the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug pricing provisions, and before that was Democratic staff director of the Senate Finance Health Care Subcommittee. ROGERS’ CHIEF HEADS DOWNTOWN: Chris Brinson is joining Williams & Jensen as a principal. Brinson has spent the past 27 years on the Hill, including more than two decades with incoming House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), for whom he most recently was chief of staff. Brinson will lead the firm’s defense portfolio. Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. What’s going on out there? What are the hot inauguration events coming up? Let me know: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. FIRST IN PI — AXADVOCACY ADDS HOUSE GOP CHIEF: Another chief of staff for a member of the new House majority is heading downtown, this time to AxAdvocacy. The firm has hired Jeff Billman, who served as chief of staff to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), as a senior vice president. — Prior to his work for Jackson, Billman was as top aide to members of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, including former Chair Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and former Tax Subcommittee Chair Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) — making Billman the latest in a stream of Hill alumni with ties to the congressional tax-writing panels lured downtown as lawmakers embark on their marathon tax push this year. ANOTHER ONE: That list includes Sarah Rogers Burke, a former deputy chief of staff to Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), who is joining Aquia Group as a principal. Most recently, Burke served as deputy staff director of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, where her contributions were described as “invaluable” by former Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in a statement provided by the firm. — Both McMorris Rodgers and Smith, also in a statement shared by Aquia Group, praised Burke’s talent for cultivating relationships across the aisle. “Her impact on E&C and federal policy will last for years to come,” McMorris Rodgers added. “Sarah was in my corner for a decade, and I can say with confidence you’ll want her in your corner too.” THE NEW CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE: Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Washington’s top-grossing lobbying firm for several years running, is opening an outpost in the Sunshine State, coinciding with the southward shift of the political universe following Trump’s election. Brownstein already has a strategic partnership with top Florida lobbying firm Rubin, Turnbull & Associates, but the Denver-based firm currently has no offices of its own in the southeast. — “As the country’s top lobbying firm, it makes absolute sense to expand our physical presence in Florida given the state’s importance on the national political scene,” Rich Benenson, Brownstein’s managing partner, said in a statement. — Florida native Melissa Kuipers Blake will oversee Brownstein’s new office in Tampa as managing director. She told PI in an interview that the move will further strengthen Brownstein’s alliance with Rubin, Turnbull — her onetime employer. “Moving into Florida is a natural next step as it relates to representing clients, not only from Florida, but from the South, in D.C.,” Blake said. KNOWING PAM BONDI: “Halfway through the first Trump administration, Carnival Corporation, the world’s biggest cruise line, had a problem in Cuba that it wanted the president to fix,”. “So Carnival, a Miami-based company, hired a new lobbyist: Pam Bondi, who developed a close relationship with Donald J. Trump during her two terms as Florida’s attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement official.” — Pam Bondi, the former Ballard Partners lobbyist and Florida attorney general picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department, “would not be the first U.S. attorney general who previously served as a lobbyist,” — Obama AG Eric Holder and former Trump AG Bill Barr both previously worked in government affairs, The New York Times’ Eric Lipton and Kate Kelly write. — But her “open-door approach to companies, which started when she held office in Florida,” has critics worried Bondi will “bring that same transactional philosophy to the Justice Department.” — The pair highlights how, as Florida AG, Bondi was especially receptive to meetings, campaign checks and free travel from “a steady stream of lawyers whose clients … had been targeted by other states for investigations,” and how Bondi flexed her relationship with Trump in order to get her clients’ issues before the president during his first term. — On top of that, the watchdog group Public Citizen is out today with a new analysis of Bondi’s federal lobbying activity comprising 30 different clients over five years — some of which have “controversial business, including conflicts and contracts with the agency Bondi has been nominated to lead.” — The report’s findings “raise serious questions about potential conflicts of interest between Bondi’s clients and her potential role as Attorney General and, by themselves, provide sufficient grounds for Senators to deny her confirmation,” author Jon Golinger writes, adding that senators should at a minimum “insist that Bondi disclose all details about her lobbying for these clients, pledge to recuse herself from any dealings that could benefit them, and commit to not lobbying for them again after serving as Attorney General.” BACK TO SCHOOL: “Leading US colleges which have found themselves in the ‘cross hairs’ of the incoming Trump administration are stepping up lobbying efforts to protect academic freedom and funding,” per Times Higher Education’s Patrick Jack. — “The president-elect – who has vowed to fire ‘radical left accreditors’ and whose running mate, J.D. Vance, has described universities as ‘the enemy’ – will take office on 20 January with an anxious sector watching on.” — “Maurie McInnis, the recently appointed president of Yale University, has announced plans to ramp up the Ivy League school’s activities in Congress – including travelling to Washington often, and opening a new office in the capital. And Harvard University president Alan Garber, another recent appointee, has met with about 40 members of Congress during six trips to Washington so far.” — After elite universities’ failure to contain criticism over antisemitism on campus, the diplomatic approach will be aimed at fending off attacks from the right over issues like academic freedom and diversity as colleges look to avoid having federal aid and funding cut or being hit with massive tax hikes.
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