Alcohol distributor’s lobbying spending soared amid FTC pressure

Jun 04, 2024

Presented by Wells Fargo

With help from Daniel Lippman

ALCOHOL DISTRIBUTOR BOOSTED LOBBYING AMID ANTITRUST CRACKDOWN: Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, the country’s largest alcohol distributor, boosted its federal lobbying expenditures by more than 500 percent at the beginning of this year ahead of a potential FTC lawsuit over its business practices, according to a PI analysis.

— Our Josh Sisco reported on Monday that “FTC staff investigating Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits have recommended a lawsuit” in recent weeks invoking the Robinson-Patman Act, a nearly century-old law aimed at blocking suppliers from offering better pricing to some retail customers over others.

— Enforcement of the law has been dormant for decades, but the Biden administration has sought to revive its use, and a coalition of food and small business groups has rallied around the strategy as well.

— The Miami-based distributor has only one lobbying firm on retainer, Florida-based Ballard Partners. According to a disclosure filing, Southern Glazer’s paid the firm $310,000 during the first three months of 2024 to lobby the House and Senate on President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order on competition policy.

— That marked the company’s highest-ever spending in a single quarter and represented a sixfold increase from the $50,000 Southern Glazer’s spent in each of the six previous quarters.

— Biden’s July 2021 order tasked federal agencies with looking into antitrust concerns across a range of sectors, including potentially “unlawful trade practices in the beer, wine, and spirits markets, such as certain exclusionary, discriminatory, or anti-competitive distribution practices, that hinder smaller and independent businesses or new entrants from distributing their products.”

— In the immediate aftermath, Southern Glazer’s quarterly lobbying expenditures surged from less than $5,000 in the previous quarter to $90,000. From the end of 2021 to the middle of 2022, Southern Glazer’s paid Ballard Partners and Forbes Tate Partners around $180,000 per quarter, before its spending dropped to $50,000 in Q3 2022, disclosures show.

Happy Tuesday and welcome to PI, where our hearts go out to the family and loved ones of our late former colleague and newsletter warrior Ben White. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko.

FIRST IN PI — CHAO, HEITKAMP ADVISING HR STARTUP: HR and payroll fintech Deel has tapped several Washington power players for the startup’s first advisory board as the company beefs up its presence in D.C.

— The advisory board features Elaine Chao, the former Transportation and Labor secretary who’s also married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.); former acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris; and Charlotte Corley, the former banking and consumer finance commissioner for Mississippi.

— Deel’s platform exploded in popularity during the pandemic, but its rise ran into trouble in Washington, where last year a group of House Democrats urged the Labor Department to investigate whether Deel had been intentionally misclassifying employees as contractors, allegations it denied. Deel hired its first lobbyists last summer and has dropped $280,000 on federal advocacy since then as it looked to win over lawmakers.

— “An industry first in HR tech, the Advisory Board will help Deel excel in an increasingly complex labor and regulatory environment, implement those learnings into our products and partnerships, and help build awareness for our compliance reputation within the HR ecosystem,” Nick Catino, Deel’s global head of public policy, wrote in a note to staffers that was obtained by PI, arguing the company “can’t achieve our ambitions unless we work closely with the policymakers and regulators who shape employment policy.”

ANNALS OF DARK MONEY: “[I]n the summer of 2020, when a blandly named entity called the Impetus Fund received a $64 million donation from a single anonymous source, it touched off a guessing game with broad political implications” throughout Washington, reports CBS News’ Daniel Klaidman, in the latest effort to unravel the mystery.

— “That single anonymous donation, routed through a series of accounts, eventually would be used to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Critics say it has come to illustrate an increasingly opaque system of funding elections that in 2024 could reach a scale that dwarfs all previous election cycles.”

— “Most speculate the money originated with a single, super-wealthy Biden supporter. But it could also have come from a privately held company or a shell corporation, an increasingly common tactic used by well-heeled donors seeking to add layers of anonymity to their political largesse. It remains a $64 million mystery — and while legal, it’s one that critics say underscores what’s wrong with today’s campaign finance system.”

FIRST IN PI — ANNALS OF DARK MONEY CONT.: A top liberal dark money group, Our American Future Action, last year raised more than $12 million to spend on labor and progressive priorities including Working America, a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, Daniel reports.

— The organization also funded other economic and healthcare groups, including worker-focused legal organization A Better Balance and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The fund’s 990 also revealed that the organization had hired Democratic operatives Hayley Dierker and Rosa Mendoza as directors, joining Brennan Bilberry, Rebecca Pearcey and Kathleen Nee.

— Our American Future Foundation, a companion nonprofit, raised over $11 million in 2023, giving $4 million to the action fund as allowed under IRS rules and an undisclosed amount to public-interest group Maryland PIRG and the Southwest Women’s Law Center, which advocates for women’s economic and reproductive rights. A spokesperson declined to comment on who donated to both groups.

FLYING IN: National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies members from Iowa, Virginia, Maine, Maryland and Tennessee are on the Hill this week as part of the group’s staggered fly-in series. NAMIC members will focus on issues like insurance regulation, data privacy, auto right to repair and legal system abuse.

— The National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders, part of a national network of more than 200 nonprofit organizations aimed at building economic opportunity for Latino communities, is also in town to push for legislation to provide housing relief for the Latino community by addressing housing shortages and to mitigate the effects of inflation and increased interest rates.

— Health business leaders were on the Hill today for the Healthcare Leadership Council’s first meeting under new president and CEO Maria Ghazal. Executives from companies including Johnson & Johnson, Mount Sinai Health System, Epic, Premier and Leidos met with House and Senate leaders to discuss issues like cybersecurity resilience, artificial intelligence and Medicare Advantage.

— IBM is meeting hundreds of lawmakers today and tomorrow to discuss their tech policy agenda, our friends at Morning Tech report. The company will be lobbying for a handful of bills addressing everything from nonconsensual deepfake porn, unauthorized digital replicas and the use of AI to generate deceptive content about federal election candidates.

— AUVSI, which represents the autonomous vehicle and drone industries, is on the Hill today to discuss domestic manufacturing, defense appropriations and the Pentagon’s Replicator drone program, cybersecurity and supply chain security.

— Medical tech trade group AdvaMed will be on the Hill this week as well, with nearly four dozen CEOs and senior executives slated to meet tomorrow with offices on the House and Senate side as well as the executive branch. The fly-in will also include a showcase tomorrow night of devices manufactured by AdvaMed members.

A NEW GIG FOR MENENDEZ’S CHIEF: “Bob Menendez’s chief of staff, Jason Tuber, is leaving this month to take a private sector job, ending a stint of nearly nineteen years with the senior U.S. Senator from New Jersey,” per David Wildstein of the New Jersey Globe.

— Tuber, whose exit comes amid Menendez’s federal corruption and foreign agent trial, is joining the government affairs team of fruit snack-purveyor PIM Brands, the New Jersey conglomerate whose brands include Welch’s, Sour Jacks and Sun-Maid chocolate raisins, Wildstein reports.

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Jobs Report

— Dori Salcido is joining Precision Strategies as a partner. Salcido previously founded her own communications firm and is a White House Covid-19 Response Team and HHS alum. Precision also promoted Deirdre Murphy Ramsey and Erin Lindsay to partners at the firm.

— Ken Preede is joining Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein as the principal of the law firm’s new federal lobbying arm, Parker Poe Federal Strategies. Preede was most recently vice president of government relations for the Commonwealth Care Alliance.

— JD Mazuera Arias is now a lead for the global government affairs and policy team at Kyndryl. He previously was a senior government affairs assistant at the Century Foundation.

— Josh New is joining SeedAI as director of policy. He previously was a technology policy executive at IBM.

— Kyle Hutzler has joined JPMorgan Chase as its first-ever executive director for Asia Pacific policy and strategic competitiveness. He most recently was an engagement manager with McKinsey.

— Karen Milne is re-joining Wilkinson Barker Knauer as a partner in the Washington office. She was most recently senior vice president for U.S. regulatory at TelevisaUnivision.

— Lauren Collins is joining the Alliance for Automotive Innovation as director of safety policy. Collins most recently was a lead transportation systems engineer at the MITRE Corporation.

— Noah Cavicchi is now a principal on Precision Strategies’ communications team. He previously was public affairs and advocacy manager at Locust Street Group.

— Peter Coneski is joining K&L Gates’ health care and FDA practice as the firm’s first senior scientific adviser. Coneski was previously a scientist at Keller and Heckman.

— Daniel Nasaw is launching Park View Group, a comms and content consultancy in the AI, cybersecurity and defense-tech spaces. He previously was national security news editor at the Wall Street Journal and is also a veteran of BBC and The Guardian.

— Greg Schuckman has been named administrator in charge for California State University’s Office of Federal Relations. Schuckman previously served as assistant vice president for federal relations for the University of Central Florida.

— Joe Quinn is now the executive director of the Center for Strategic Industrial Materials at SAFE. He was previously vice president.

— Taylor Hulsey is now director of public relations at Pivot PR. He previously was communications director for Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.).

— Hannah Anderson is joining the America First Policy Institute as director of the Center for a Healthy America. She previously was health policy adviser for the Senate HELP GOP.

— Allie Owen is now national development director for LPAC. She will continue to be finance director for Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, raising money for the Florida abortion referendum.

— Sean Buck will be president of the National Training & Simulation Association. He previously was superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.

A message from Wells Fargo:

New Joint Fundraisers

Delaney Victory Fund (April McClain Delaney for Congress, Democratic State Central Committee Of Maryland)

New PACs

AMERICAN SASQUATCH FUND (PAC)

Congressional Anti-Trump PAC (PAC)

Conservative Climate Action PAC (PAC)

Fair Wisconsin Federal PAC (Super PAC)

National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers Political Action Committee (NAMAD PAC) (PAC)

New Lobbying REGISTRATIONS

Aquia Group, LLC: Bell Legal Group

Dcm Group LLC: San Diego Food Bank

Horizons Global Solutions LLC: Artesion Inc

Horizons Global Solutions LLC: Elusys Theraputics

Horizons Global Solutions LLC: Siren Care Inc

K Lynch LLC: Pacific Seafood Processors Association

Meeks, Butera & Israel Pllc: The Spaceport Company

Mz Advising, LLC: Divergent Technologies, Inc

The Smith-Free Group, LLC: Regional Women’s Health Group, LLC

Womble Bond Dickinson US LLP: Tmeic Corporation Americas

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