40 current and former Mitch McConnell staffers are in Revolving Door lobbyist database, K St. hustling GOP to pick up what they can if only for 2 years-Carney, Wash. Examiner

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11/8/14, "Senate flip generates a boom for Republicans on K Street," Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner

"The Republican rout on Election Day didn’t only shake up Capitol Hill, it has caused a realignment on K Street. Republicans — current staffers, former members, and especially anyone with ties to the incoming majority leader and chairmen of powerful committees — are now in high demand. 
 
Republican firms are hiring new staff and picking up new clients while liberal and bipartisan firms beef up their Republican bench. All in all, it’s a “robust, effervescent job market for Republicans,” in the words of Sam Geduldig, partner in the GOP firm Clark, Geduldig, Cranford & Nielsen.

The luckiest group may be the crowd surrounding the presumptive new Senate majority leader. “Mitch McConnell and the other leadership have a large following” on K Street already, points out Ivan Adler, a lobbyist headhunter at the McCormick Group, “and those folks will certainly be the biggest winners.”

If you’re a Republican lobbyist with a close tie to McConnell or to the incoming chairmen of the “money committees” — Finance, Banking, Commerce, and Appropriations — your value has just gone up.

Forty former and current McConnell staffers are in the Revolving Door database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the largest number for any sitting U.S. senator. McConnell’s most prominent alumni on K Street might be former chiefs of staff Hunter Bates and Billy Piper.

Piper works at K Street firm Fierce Isakowitz & Blalock, where his clients include manufacturers, airlines, banks, technology firms and energy companies. Bates lobbies at Republic Consulting, where his clients include the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Expect these impressive client lists to grow.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., will likely be the next Banking Committee chairman, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., will take the Appropriations gavel, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, will take over the tax-writing Finance Committee. These three men also have plenty of former aides on K Street — aides who will now be in higher demand.

To some extent, the GOP takeover increases the value of all Republican lobbyists. Former GOP Senate aide Steven Irizarry was promoted Wednesday to managing partner at the bipartisan firm Roberti & White.

For firms already employing GOP staffers, the power change means more clients. This pop in clients won’t show up in public records immediately—firms have six weeks to file new registrations. But Geduldig said on the Thursday after the election, “I got two new opportunities [for clients] today. It feels good.”
 
K Street is also snapping Republicans up off Capitol Hill. For instance, Cesar Conda, chief of staff for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (before moving on to the senator’s political action committee), announced Thursday he was returning to his old K Street lobbying firm, Navigators Global. Lobbyists at other firms said they plan to make their Republican hires in the coming weeks.

Not all Republican offices are getting visits from headhunters, though. Staffers for the famously combative Sen. Ted Cruz swear to me that K Street isn’t looking to poach from Cruz’s office. Cruz’s biggest fights have pitted him against the business lobby, and he is not seen as a terribly persuadable lawmaker.

Improving the labor market even more for Republicans, many GOP lobbyists will return to Capitol Hill to fill the offices of newly elected members (there will be nine more GOP senators, after all) as well as committee staff — and majority staffs are larger than minority staffs."... 




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