With Daniel Lippman and Jessica Piper WHO BOEING LOST: Boeing parted ways with more than half of its outside lobbying firms as the aviation giant pulls back political spending due to a strike-induced cash crunch. Since the end of September, nine different firms filed termination paperwork, according to disclosures that trickled in ahead of Monday’s reporting deadline: Avoq, The Lugar Group, Monument Advocacy, the Gephardt Group, Mehlman Consulting, West Front Strategies, Norm Dicks and Associates, Stapleton & Associates and Etherton and Associates. — Daniel reported last month that Boeing had temporarily stopped paying the vast majority of its lobbying firms and would cut back its political donations in order to conserve money after thousands of workers from the planemaker’s commercial production facilities walked off the job Sept. 13. Boeing declined to comment on which of the lobbying terminations filed this month are temporary and related to the strike and which, if any, are indefinite. — Boeing still has nearly half a dozen outside firms on retainer: S-3 Group, Empire Consulting Group, Squire Patton Boggs, Doerrer Group and Team Hallahan. Even a temporary hit to Boeing’s lobbying operations comes as the company faces fresh scrutiny over its safety practices and quality controls. — Boeing’s government affairs team has undergone a rebuild since its last Washington crisis, and more than a few of the firms whose contracts recently ended had lobbied for the company for more than a decade. — Around the start of this year, Boeing parted ways with two of its other longtime outside lobbying shops, Cornerstone Government Affairs and Washington Council Ernst & Young. In all, Boeing has paid the 11 firms it recently parted ways with more than $24 million for their lobbying services over the terms of their contracts, according to a PI analysis of disclosure filings. Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. Send lobbying tips, gossip and unsubstantiated rumors: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. FIRST IN PI — A HOMESTRETCH HIKE: Donald Trump’s top super PAC MAGA Inc. greatly increased payments to polling firm Fabrizio, Lee and Associates after the super PAC named firm partner David Lee as its new executive director in August, Daniel reports. — Lee, who has worked as a pollster for more than two decades and helped elect dozens of Republican senators, was named executive director of the super PAC in mid-August after its founder Taylor Budowich left to join the Trump campaign’s senior leadership team. — Monthly payments to Lee’s firm increased more than three-fold since he took control of the group: In August, MAGA Inc. paid Fabrizio, Lee and Associates $1.46 million in polling expenses, and in September, it paid the firm $880,000, according to new FEC records. — That’s a major increase from what the super PAC paid the firm in the first seven months of the year, where monthly payments averaged $200,000, according to a PI analysis of FEC records. — MAGA Inc. said in mid-August that it was going to spend $100 million on TV and digital ads between then and Labor Day. More recently, it was reported that it is putting $10 million down to target Black and Hispanic voters in swing states. MAGA Inc. spokesperson Kaelan Dorr said in a statement that the increased spending on polling coincided with the switch-up in the Democratic Party to install Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential nominee. — “We’ve spent $250+ million dollars since the candidate change to win this election for Donald J Trump — to suggest we should have done so without doing increased research on our opponent and on our messaging is completely ridiculous,” he added. Fabrizio, Lee and Associates didn’t respond to a request for comment. — For comparison, the pro-Harris Future Forward PAC spent roughly $642,000 on “polling and surveys” total in the month of August on and $813,000 in September, according to a PI review of its FEC filings from the past two months. The super PAC also spent about $308,000 in August and $514,000 in September on “research and survey consulting.” — The “research and survey consulting” work was for Open Labs, while the “polling and surveys” was for Global Strategy Group, Breakthrough Campaigns, RG Strategies and David Binder Research. CRESANTI HEADS TO CGCN: Former International Franchise Association chief Robert Cresanti has joined GOP lobbying and public affairs firm CGCN Group as a partner. Cresanti helmed the franchise industry group for seven years before stepping down in 2021 and since then served as executive director and head of Accenture’s global government relations network in between stints at his own consultancy. — Cresanti is also a longtime tech policy hand who worked on the issue on the Hill as well as for BSA | The Software Alliance and SAP. He also served as chief privacy officer at the Commerce Department during the George W. Bush administration. — In addition to Cresanti, CGCN has also hired Ben Kenney away from Coherus BioSciences to be a senior adviser and Zoe Waller as the firm’s head of D.C. operations. CGCN has also promoted Keri McGill to senior associate and brought on Kevin Norton as a senior associate back in August. EYEBROW RAISER: “A conservative research firm is collecting information that could be used to discredit officials involved in a multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies” and it won’t say why, POLITICO’s E&E News’ Corbin Hiar reports. — “Argus Insight has made at least 10 public records requests for documents related to a lawsuit filed last year by county leaders in Oregon that accuses Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, McKinsey & Co. and hundreds of other defendants of being responsible for a dayslong heat wave in 2021 that killed 69 people.” — “It's unclear who hired Argus to work on the sweeping climate case,” and the firm declined to reveal that information. “But one of the Virginia-based firm's three partners is also employed by the conservative public affairs firm CRC Advisors, whose clients have included the oil giant Chevron and groups funded by the fossil fuel industry.” — “Argus' known clients are conservative political organizations, among them Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee.” Another partner at Argus “defended his firm's use of public records laws” and rebuffed the accusation that Argus is engaging in an intimidation campaign. ‘STOP THE STEAL’ GROWS UP: When Trump “refused to concede the 2020 election, he and his allies led a chaotic effort to overturn the results, spreading conspiracy theories, filing dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits and encouraging ‘Stop the Steal’ protests that culminated in the assault on the Capitol,” the The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Ballhaus and Mariah Timms write. — But “next month will likely play out differently if Trump loses again. The former president and his allies have spent the last four years laying the groundwork for a more organized, better funded and far broader effort to contest the outcome—a Stop the Steal 2.0—if the vote doesn’t go his way.” — “A secretive network of GOP donors and conservative billionaires have fueled the effort, giving more than $140 million to nearly 50 loosely connected groups that work on what they call election integrity. … Among the donors are organizations linked to Wisconsin billionaires Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Hobby Lobby founder David Green.” ACTBLUE’S LATEST WOE: “House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are seeking classified briefings from three federal agencies over potential foreign interference in campaign donations, marking a new phase in their investigation of Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue,” our friends over at Morning Cybersecurity report. — “In letters sent to Treasury, FBI and ODNI last week, the Wisconsin Republicans requested information about what they describe as possible exploitation of online donation systems by foreign actors. Their specific concern is unauthorized ‘straw donations’ made through legit U.S. donor information.” — A slew of recent Republican probes like Steil’s have homed in on ActBlue’s lack of a requirement that donors provide the three-digit CVV codes on the back of their cards to promote unspecified allegations of fraud on the platform. Steil announced in September he had referred the findings of his committee’s ActBlue probe to five Republican state attorneys general and called on the FEC to undertake an emergency rulemaking to require CVV verification for online donors. — In addition to last week’s request, Steil also introduced legislation that would bar political committees from accepting contributions if a CVV code was not provided and would also bar donations made using gift cards, pre-paid credit or debit cards or gift certificates. As PI reported, ActBlue hired lobbyists for the first time last month to work on Steil’s bill, which awaits a vote on the House floor. LUTNICK UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: Our Rachael Bade and Jasper Goodman report that Trump transition chair and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick “is facing accusations from some Trump insiders that he is improperly mixing his business interests with his duties standing up a potential administration.” — Lutnick’s allies have dismissed the accusations as a smear campaign carried out by former Trump officials upset with his moves to distance the transition from Project 2025, but “the concerns were described by two people close to Trump, who said they have risen all the way to the ex-president himself.” — “The most serious accusations involve Lutnick taking meetings on Capitol Hill in his role as transition co-chair, then allegedly using the opportunity to talk about matters impacting his investment firm … including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business.”
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