Tracking the Trump effect on K Street

Jan 27, 2025

With help from Daniel Lippman

GOLD RUSH: Many of K Street’s biggest players reported increases in lobbying revenues for 2024. But nowhere was this more pronounced than among a handful of firms with close ties to the new administration, which have added new business in droves and padded their bottom lines as companies, industry groups and other organizations look for an in with allies of President Donald Trump.

— Perhaps no firm has reaped more benefits from Trump’s election than Ballard Partners, which is run by longtime Trump friend and fundraiser Brian Ballard. Two key members of Trump’s second administration — chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi — count themselves as alums of the firm.

— And after a lag in business during the Biden administration — despite adding additional Democratic and congressional lobbyists to its staff — Ballard Partners has signed a remarkable 41 new clients since the election, including Paramount Studios, Bayer, Chevron, Harvard University and the crypto firms Blockchain.com and Ripple Labs.

— The firm’s 2024 lobbying revenues increased by 11 percent from a year earlier, to $19.6 million. In the final three months of 2024, Ballard’s lobbying revenues rose by 31 percent compared to the previous quarter. Their Q4 revenues were up 38 percent year-over-year.

— Another major beneficiary of Trump’s win was Miller Strategies, whose founder Jeff Miller served as one of the finance chairs of Trump’s inauguration.

— Miller Strategies has signed 21 new clients since the election, including the Edison Electric Institute, Uber, Ebay and Palantir — growing his client list by a third. The firm pulled in $4 million in the final quarter of 2024, a 37-percent bump from the previous quarter and a 36-percent increase from the same time a year ago.

— Mercury Public Affairs, where Wiles most recently served as co-chair, has signed 16 new clients since the election — a half-dozen of which name Bryan Lanza, a Trump adviser and transition alum, as working on the account.

— Mercury reported $11.8 million in lobbying revenue last year, a more than $4 million increase compared to 2023. The firm’s fourth quarter revenue of $2.6 million was down a little over 7 percent from the previous quarter, but marked a 26-percent increase from the same period in 2023.

— Continental Strategy has also seen a boom in new clients. Trump adviser Carlos Trujillo launched the firm just as Trump was leaving office in 2021 and has staffed up with a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the former deputy political director of Trump’s campaign, while also announcing a promotion for Wiles’ daughter Katie Wiles.

— Since the election, Continental has signed 14 new clients, including Hims & Hers, the Geo Group and Google Cloud. The firm has yet to file all of the fourth quarter lobbying disclosures that were due last week, but already Continental has reported nearly $1.2 million in lobbying revenue for 2024 — a 35-percent jump from 2023 — while its quarterly revenue nearly doubled from $196,000 in Q3 to $373,000 in Q4.

— CGCN Group, an all-Republican firm, has also seen a boost in business. Its staff includes former Trump White House aides Tim Pataki, Ja’Ron Smith and Mike Catanzaro. The firm brought in $9.7 million in lobbying revenue in 2024 — up 28 percent from the previous year — and $2.6 million in the last quarter of 2024 — up 30 percent year-over-year.

— Not every firm with ties to Trump has seen its lobbying revenues climb, though. That’s been the case with Michael Best Strategies, the lobbying arm of the Wisconsin-based law firm run by former White House chief of staff and 2025 inaugural finance co-chair Reince Priebus.

— Though the firm has added five new clients since the election, its lobbying revenue dipped 2.5 percent in 2024, to $4.7 million. The firm’s fourth quarter lobbying revenues were down slightly compared to Q3, and decreased more than 17 percent year-over-year.

— As good as Trump’s election has been for firms on K Street with ties to the new administration, a handful of firms linked to former President Joe Biden have started bleeding business.

— Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of top Biden adviser Steve Ricchetti, saw lobbying revenues surge for his firm Ricchetti Inc. overall last year, as well as in Q4. With Biden on his way out of office, though, Ricchetti’s firm parted ways with six of its clients, while adding no new clients since the election.

— At Putala Strategies, a firm run by Chris Putala, a former aide to Biden from his time on the Senate Judiciary Committee, annual and quarterly lobbying revenues also declined. Like Ricchetti, Putala’s firm has signed no new clients since the election and lost seven clients at the end of last year.

— Another firm that flourished under Biden has seen mixed results. TheGROUP DC, which is home to Biden’s former vice presidential legislative affairs director and plenty of former aides to Democratic heavy hitters, reported a 10-percent increase in lobbying revenues last year, while its Q4 revenues were roughly the same quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. The firm, which has also added a number of Republican lobbyists in recent years, has added four new clients since the election.

Happy Monday and welcome to PI. What’s happening out there? Drop me a line: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko.

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CHARTWELL ADDS NYC REPUBLICAN: Joe Borelli, who resigned last week as Republican leader for the New York City Council, is joining Chartwell Strategy Group as managing director. Borelli, a surrogate in the state for Trump’s campaign, will open Chartwell’s first office in the Empire State.

SOON-SHIONG’S ‘MAGA WHISPERER’: Pharma executive and billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong “has been leaning on a veteran Republican who ran a pro-Trump PAC to shape the future of one of the West Coast’s biggest news organizations,” Semafor’s Max Tani reports.

— Soon-Shiong, who had already instituted a number of Trump-friendly changes at the paper including naming pro-Trump CNN contributor Scott Jennings to a role there, has been getting help from longtime California GOP operative Eric Beach in luring other new voices to the LA Times’ editorial board and an accompanying opinion forum.

— “Beach ran Great America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC that supported the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, and paid a large FEC fine after accepting a contribution from undercover journalists from the Telegraph posing as representatives of a Chinese donor. Beach also worked to elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2000s.”

DRILLING DOWN ON DOGE: Trump’s executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency “makes billionaire Elon Musk subject to conflict-of-interest laws, while also granting him access to a vast trove of federal data with immeasurable value,” Bloomberg’s Gregory Korte writes.

— Trump’s “unprecedented use” of a rare government entity known as a “temporary organization” has also “solved one problem for Musk. It allows him to serve on the cost-cutting entity without triggering public disclosure of his considerable financial holdings, raising new questions about the secrecy surrounding the effort.”

— The temporary organization designation also allows top DOGE officials like Musk “to be paid the maximum salary of a career employee in the senior executive service — about $212,100. … DOGE can also accept volunteer labor — something forbidden in other parts of the federal government unless it’s an emergency,” and it has fewer restrictions and transparency requirements than if it were to have been formed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

MAIL CALL: Ahead of HHS Secretary-designate Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings later this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics is working to push back against “online misinformation” about childhood vaccines. The industry group said it has collected almost 200 stories and dozens of testimonials from pediatricians across the country to share with the senators who will consider Kennedy’s nomination to lead the nation’s health agencies.

— “We’ve heard from our members across the country, in rural communities and urban areas, who work in small practices and who are part of large institutions,” Susan Kressly, the organization’s president, said in a statement, adding that the group also heard from “members who have practiced medicine before certain vaccines were on the market and who are new to the workforce and have seen recent resurgences in vaccine-preventable illness among their patients.”

— “As our elected leaders consider nominees who will shape our nation’s public health landscape, pediatricians are speaking up on behalf of children across the country who rely on vaccines to stay safe and healthy,” Kressly said.

— Meanwhile, our friends at Morning Pulse report that the Stop RFK War Room from left-leaning advocacy group Protect Our Care are out with another ad targeting a new batch of potential swing votes on Kennedy, including Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Curtis (R-Utah), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

SNACK FOOD LOBBYIST HANGS A SHINGLE: Mark Bescher has launched Legacy Public Policy, a consultancy specializing in helping clients navigate the shifting packaging and recycling policy landscape across the country.

— Bescher most recently served as head of government affairs at Mondelēz International, the parent company of Oreos, Ritz, Tate’s Bake Shop and Sour Patch Kids, among others, and is a National Association of Manufacturers, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Unilever alum.

— The firm will work to help clients comply with major new packaging and recycling laws going into effect in states across the country. State action is expected to pick up even more under the Trump administration, which is set to reverse many of the Biden administration’s sustainability policies. Bescher has already brought on three clients: the Consumer Brands Association, SNAC International and the National Confectioners Association.

Jobs report

— Saurabh Sharma is now a special assistant to the president in the Presidential Personnel Office, two people familiar with the matter told Daniel. He most recently was president of American Moment.

— Matt Fuentes is joining Avenue Solutions as a partner. He was previously a senior health policy adviser to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

— Former second gentleman Doug Emhoff is joining Willkie Farr & Gallagher as a partner. He previously was an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University and is a DLA Piper alum.

— Mike Young has been promoted to partner at FP1 Strategies. He was previously a managing director at the firm, and most recently headed up Trump’s field operation in North Carolina.

— Sole Strategies is adding Brandon Russell as national field director and Nicholas Hamson as a field operations assistant. They were previously at MapleBridge Strategies, where Russell was managing partner and Hamson was an account executive.

— Adali Hernandez is now senior director for corporate relations at the National Association of Caregivers. He previously managed corporate affairs at the Trevor Project.

— Tricia McLaughlin is now assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS. She most recently was a PR and political consultant and an ABC News political contributor and is a Vivek Ramaswamy and a Trump State and Treasury alum.

— Jose Leoncio has joined the FIFA World Cup 2026 as a coordinator for the government affairs team. He previously was at the Commerce Department and is a Bob Menendez and Bob Casey alum.

— DeFi Education Fund has hired Jennifer Rosenthal as its chief communications officer. She was previously head of communications at Grayscale Investments.

— Alexa Lopez is now the vice president of strategic communications and public affairs for the National Association of Manufacturers. She was previously the assistant administrator of public affairs at TSA.

— Tom Schultz will be chief of staff at USDA for natural resources and environment. He previously was vice president of resources and government affairs, leading timber procurement, for the Idaho Forest Group.

— William Kimmitt is set to be tapped for the position of under secretary for trade in the Commerce Department, two people briefed on plans and granted anonymity to discuss non-public information told Morning Trade. Kimmitt is currently a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and previously served as counselor to former USTR Robert Lighthizer.

— Jeffrey Kessler is expected to be tapped to lead Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which has authority over export controls. He is a partner at the law firm WilmerHale and served as assistant secretary for enforcement and compliance during the first Trump administration.

— The Chamber of Progress has added Yale student Prince Osaji and Georgetown student Drew Ambrogi as Google public policy fellows.

New Joint Fundraisers

Americans for BBQ 2025 (Reps. Richard Hudson, Tracey Mann, Pete Sessions)

DJM Buckeye Victory Fund (Reps. Jim Jordan, Max Miller, Warren Davidson)

New PACs

Georgia’s Promise (Hybrid PAC)

Sheepdog PAC (Super PAC)

New Lobbying REGISTRATIONS

Ice Miller LLP: Leadership 18

Ice Miller LLP: Mozark Pte Ltd

Stallmer Consulting LLC: Envision Strategy On Behalf Of Vineyard Offshore

Stewart Strategies And Solutions, LLC: Doordash

New Lobbying Terminations

Alycia Farrell: J.A. Green And Company On Behalf Of Primer Ai

Alycia Farrell: Strategic Marketing Innovations (Smi) On Behalf Of Cal Poly Corporation

Alycia Farrell: Strategic Marketing Innovations (Smi) On Behalf Of Stealth Software Technologies

Alycia Farrell: Strategic Marketing Innovations (Smi) On Behalf Of Worcester Polytechnic Inst.

C6 Strategies, LLC (Fka Ms. Dana W. Hudson): Swiftships LLC

Commonwealth Consulting Partners: Accipiter

Commonwealth Consulting Partners: Carnegie Library Of Homestead

Commonwealth Consulting Partners: Mansmann Foundation

Commonwealth Consulting Partners: Pittsburgh Institute Of Aeronautics

Commonwealth Consulting Partners: Visimo

Ipolicy Solutions: Everylife Foundation For Rare Diseases

Mcallister & Quinn, LLC: College Of Mount Saint Vincent

Spirit Rock Consulting: Seminole Tribe Of Florida

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