With Ari Hawkins, Daniel Lippman FIRST IN PI — NARRATIVE ADDS FINANCIAL EXPERT: Bryan Bashur has joined strategic communications firm Narrative Strategies as a director. Bashur was most recently director of financial services policy at Grover Norquist’s anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform and served as executive director of Shareholder Advocacy Forum , an ATR project advocating for more access to capital for investors. Before that, Bashur spent four years working for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). SIDDIQUI HANGS A SHINGLE: Democratic tax lobbyist Arshi Siddiqui has left Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld after 14 years at the firm to launch her own lobbying shop, Bellwether Government Affairs. — In an interview, Siddiqui said she’s aiming to offer services “very tailored to today's needs in the marketplace, for clients who really want a thoughtful and holistic approach to their D.C. presence,” in a break with what Siddiqui feels is K Street’s increasing prioritization of metrics like firm growth and revenue over all else. — “I love what I do … in terms of really moving the dial, like moving things forward,” she told PI. “There's so many different types of lobbying,” she added, “but the corner of the market that I really want to double down on is clients who … really want something that's not a cookie-cutter approach.” — Before joining Akin, Siddiqui spent almost seven years as a senior policy adviser for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi , which broadened her portfolio at the firm beyond her tax expertise — which was already in high demand, with next year’s tax debate poised to be “more intense than than we've ever seen before,” Siddiqui said. That, combined with Siddiqui’s business philosophy, made it a no-brainer to strike out on her own, she told PI. — Though Siddiqui won’t be focusing solely on tax, she’s not the first tax policy expert from Akin to hang a shingle ahead of the looming tax cliff: Brendan Dunn , who helped then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell craft the 2017 tax bill at the center of next year’s negotiations, left Akin in May to do so. (Akin has since hired one of the bill’s main architects, former House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady.) Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. T-minus six days until the election. What’s happening out there? Let me know: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. BROUILLETTE’S BUMPY TENURE: “Dan Brouillette’s tenure at the helm of the powerful Edison Electric Institute came to an abrupt end because the former Trump Energy secretary created internal discord at the utility lobby group and left top company executives dissatisfied,” our Zack Colman and Catherine Morehouse report. — “Brouillette resigned as CEO Monday after nearly 10 months in the role as acrimony spread among people in the investor-owned utility sector over his leadership, according to six people who were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive issues.” — “Those people said Brouillette never settled into his role, failed to hire key staff and struggled to coordinate with the group’s member companies, which include the biggest power producers in the nation.” — “Brouillette replaced long-time EEI leader Tom Kuhn as the group was adopting a more adversarial stance against regulations promulgated by the Biden administration to fight climate change.” The industry continues to face several urgent legislative and regulatory matters that could come to a head in the coming weeks, making his sudden departure all the more notable. FIRST IN PI — BILLINGS JOINS LSG: Erin Billings is heading to strategic comms and public affairs shop LSG, where she’ll be a partner. She’s spent the seven years at Democratic polling and public affairs firm Global Strategy Group, most recently as a partner, and is also a Podesta Group, BGR Group and CQ Roll Call alum. — Billings is the fourth new partner addition for LSG this year, which, despite laying off eight staffers as part of a restructuring back in May, has added more than two dozen people to its headcount in 2024, founding partner David Barnhart told PI. The growth has been fueled by what Barnhart said were “big investments” in the corporate brand and reputation space as well as data and analytics. S-3 GROUP MERGES WITH WEST FRONT: S-3 Group and West Front Strategies , a pair of lobbying firms heavy on experience in congressional leadership, are joining forces under S-3 Group’s umbrella. The merger will allow West Front Strategies to tap into S-3 Group’s growing public affairs offering as well as its expertise in appropriations — which, combined with leadership, has become the driver of much of the action on the Hill. — “It's becoming a situation, for better or worse, where it's one of the only games in town that gets done,” S-3 founder John Scofield said of annual spending fights. “Sometimes it's a little messy — it's not exactly Schoolhouse Rock — but they produce a product every year.” — At the same time, the team at West Front Strategies has a “stellar reputation” as well as some “additional reach and breadth” in both chambers of Congress, “which we were looking to augment,” Scofield told PI. BEZOS’ D.C. ERA: Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’ non-endorsement decision last week didn’t occur in a vacuum. In fact, though Bezos has insisted the decision was not related to any of the Amazon founder’s business interests, the Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker, Aaron C. Davis, Josh Dawsey and Christian Davenport report that those “interests in Washington have expanded” in recent years, “with the federal government now contracting billions not just to Amazon’s cloud-computing subsidiary but also to Blue Origin,” his space exploration company. — Bezos routinely found himself at the center of Trump’s ire while he was president, and the billionaire’s lieutenants are eager to avoid the same fate should Trump win again next week, according to the Post. Bezos himself called Trump to offer praise after the assassination attempt on the former president in July. — Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sought to make nice with Trump in a phone call just after Trump formally became the GOP nominee, during which Trump reportedly suggested Amazon contribute to his campaign “because it would be in the company’s best interests.” Jassy didn’t agree to the offer, but “the call itself reflected signs of new engagement between Trump and key figures in the business empire overseen by Bezos, who remains executive chairman of Amazon.” APROPOS OF NOTHING: Companies that contributed to GOP candidates during the Trump administration were more likely to receive exemptions from tariffs on Chinese goods, according to a summary of research set to be published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. — “Our findings reveal that politicians not only use exemptions to reward their supporters, but also withhold exemptions to punish supporters of their opponents,” said Jesus Salas, associate professor of finance at Lehigh University, one of the study's economists. — Tariffs that Trump slapped on steel and aluminum under Section 232, which were under the purview of Commerce, appeared to be less vulnerable to political influence, however. “Exemptions for the steel and aluminum tariffs were administered with greater transparency under the watch of a Commerce Department Inspector General and with Congressional oversight,” the summary adds. DEMS’ MAN IN THE DOCKET: “In his three-decade career, [political attorney Marc] Elias has arguably done more than any single person outside government to shape the Democratic Party and the rules under which all campaigns and elections in the United States are conducted,” The New York Times’ Ken Vogel writes of the vaunted legal attack dog enlisted by Vice President Kamala Harris for the period after the election. — “His efforts have earned him an enthusiastic fan base among Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, who see him as a heroic bulwark against democratic backsliding, and have celebrated his wins, including two significant Supreme Court rulings last year.” — But “critics on the right say he has packaged his bare-knuckle partisanship as a high-minded pursuit of democratic values. Detractors on the left fault him for empowering the ultrarich to exercise disproportionate political influence, and for pushing aggressive initiatives that have backfired at times, playing into the hands of the Republicans he strives to thwart.”
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