With help from Daniel Lippman NON-REVENUE SPORT COACHES LOBBY UP: Advocacy groups representing youth and college coaches for more than half a dozen Olympic sports have brought on FGS Global as they face a new threat following a potential landmark legal settlement in the world of college sports. — The American Baseball Coaches Association, American Volleyball Coaches Association, College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America, Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association, Intercollegiate Tennis Association, National Field Hockey Coaches Association, U.S. Track & Field And Cross Country Coaches Association and National Wrestling Coaches Association retained FGS earlier this month to lobby on federal name, image and likeness legislation “that protects Olympic sports programs and broad-based sports sponsorship,” according to disclosure filings. — At the beginning of October, a federal judge in California gave preliminary approval to a proposed settlement in an antitrust case, House v. NCAA , that would allow universities to opt into landscape-altering revenue-sharing agreements with their student athletes. — That would allow student athletes to receive a cut of their athletic departments’ earnings from things like TV deals, ticket sales and sponsorships. But that could threaten funding for smaller sports that, unlike football or basketball, do not generate millions in revenues for their schools and in many cases are money losers, athletic directors and sports governing bodies like the NCAA argue. — The settlement has prompted fears that in order to comply with revenue-sharing agreements, which larger conferences would need to compete for talent, funding for so-called non-revenue sports could result in the elimination of those programs — thus cutting off a crucial pipeline for U.S. Olympic talent. — How to avoid such a prospect has been a key point of contention in negotiations over federal legislation to set rules of the road for NIL compensation, which has been a massive lobbying priority for the NCAA, athletic conferences and universities for several years now. The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee has reported lobbying on the revenue-sharing issue as well. — One of the Olympic sport associations’ new lobbyists at FGS, Colleen Bell, is a former legislative director for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the Democrats leading those discussions on the Hill. Megan Moore, Brian Gaston and Rob Mejia will also work on the accounts for FGS. Happy Thursday and welcome to PI. Send lobbying tips and only-in-D.C. Halloween costume sightings: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. CORNERSTONE ADDS TAX HELP: Cornerstone Government Affairs is adding some more tax lobbying expertise ahead of next year’s showdown over expiring provisions of the 2017 GOP tax law. Ron Storhaug is set to join the firm’s tax lobbying practice from Treasury, where he was deputy assistant secretary for tax and budget issues in the department’s legislative affairs office. — There, he served as an adviser and liaison to the Hill on a litany of major initiatives, including the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, bipartisan infrastructure law and the OECD international tax negotiations. — Before joining the Biden administration, Storhaug spent more than a dozen years on the Hill. He served most recently as Sen. Ben Cardin ’s (D-Md.) senior tax and economic policy adviser while Cardin served as head of the Small Business Committee, and also worked for Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and former Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) as well as for Deloitte. — Storhaug said in an interview that he plans to be working “pretty heavily” on the tax debate as it unfolds, but also expects to lobby on trade, financial services and small business issues for clients. STEIL SUBPOENAS ACTBLUE: House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) has slapped Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue with a subpoena for documents on its donor verification policies, Steil announced Wednesday. It’s the latest volley in Steil’s fight with the platform, which hired its first federal lobbyist last month amid a torrent of Republican probes in the lead-up to next week’s election. — In a letter accompanying the subpoena Steil said that his panel, which has been investigating ActBlue since last year, “has concerns that foreign actors may be exploiting existing U.S. donors by making straw donations without the knowledge of either those individuals or your platform.” ActBlue told the committee last year that it did not require donors to provide the three-digit CVV code on the backs of their cards. — ActBlue has begun phasing in a CVV requirement, but Republicans, including Steil and several state attorneys general, have accused the platform of having lax verification requirements — though they have yet to provide any evidence of illicit foreign activity on ActBlue. — The committee is demanding ActBlue turn over any documents and communications related to ActBlue’s donor verification policies “and the potential for foreign actors, primarily from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and China, to use ActBlue to launder illicit money into U.S. political campaigns” by Nov. 6, the day after the election. — “ActBlue has received Chairman Steil’s latest inquiry and will respond to address the continued inaccuracies and misrepresentations about our platform, which have increased in the lead up to the election,” an ActBlue spokesperson told PI. “We rigorously protect donors’ security and maintain strict anti-fraud compliance practices. We have zero tolerance for fraud on our platform.” ActBlue has also launched a website pushing back on what it’s denounced as a disinformation campaign. FIRST IN PI — TRUMP’S CONVICT CASH: The campaign of Donald Trump, who has accused the Biden-Harris administration of a poor federal response to Hurricane Helene, last week accepted thousands of dollars from a former mayor who was convicted of federal corruption charges by misusing FEMA money intended for Hurricane Katrina relief, Daniel reports. — Stan Wright, who served as mayor of Bayou La Batre, Alabama for 13 years, donated $6,600 to Trump’s campaign on Oct. 22, according to FEC records. In 2013, Wright was convicted on four federal charges in a case of conspiracy, attempted theft and retaliation. — The Justice Department charges related to a scheme in which he used a small part of the town’s $15 million FEMA grant to buy a property that he had recently given to his daughter, who then quickly sold the property and sent her parents a number of checks adding up to the value of the land. — Wright also retaliated against a police captain who was cooperating with the FBI. Wright was sentenced to 15 months in prison, of which he served almost a year, and faced $37,000 in fines and back payments along with probation. In a brief interview with PI, Wright said, “the same bunch that was after Donald Trump was after me,” calling them “a bunch of Democrats.” — “I feel like Donald Trump’s the best pick, he’s a businessman, he’s not a politician, and there is no doubt that this country was better off four years ago than today,” said Wright, the owner of a wholesale oyster business. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request to comment. ‘GRAY MONEY’ IS THE NEW DARK: “The final days of a high-stakes election are often a time of political mischief,” The New York Times’ Teddy Schleifer and Ken Vogel write, and across the country, Harris and Trump supporters “are taking advantage of a patchwork of lax laws that allow partisans to funnel millions of dollars through daisy chains of opaque entities into hard-hitting campaign tactics, all to try to sway the tiny slice of swing-state voters who could make the difference.” — “Campaign operatives and donors have long deployed creative accounting to mask the flow of money into politics.” But 15 years out from the Citizens United decision, “it has become particularly difficult to follow the big-money flow in the weeks before Election Day. … If done effectively, operatives can hide the provenance of this money until after the election is called — or perhaps forever.” ICYMI — FOR YOUR RADAR: “A federal appeals court narrowed the tax rule that has let conservative and liberal groups pour billions of dollars into political campaigns without disclosing their donors, and the case could restrict the flow of so-called dark money into politics,” The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin and Maggie Severns report. — “The unanimous opinion from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came this week in a healthcare case that didn’t directly address politically active organizations. But the decision — from a conservative court — sets a tighter legal standard for tax-exempt status that the advocates for political donor transparency have long sought.” LUTHER LOWE’S NEXT FIGHT: “When California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill regulating artificial intelligence companies last month, many people in Silicon Valley rejoiced. Some of them also quietly thanked a man 3,000 miles away in Washington — Luther Lowe, the head of public policy for Y Combinator,” per Bloomberg’s Sarah McBride. — “Young tech companies usually can’t afford high-power lobbyists, but in hiring Lowe a little over a year ago, startup incubator Y Combinator recognized that most of them could use help in government.” — “Lowe views his mission as fighting for ‘little tech,’ a phrase popularized by YC Chief Executive Officer Garry Tan , and now broadly adopted by venture capitalists. … The fight against Senate Bill 1047 was one of the most high-profile startup policy fights in recent memory.”
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