Many posts have discussed "shadow lobbying," "unlobbying," or "non-lobbying lobbying." Bruce Alpert writes at The New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Former Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is joining the Washington lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman, the firm will announce later Tuesday (May 26).
Landrieu said she will join Van Ness Feldman as a senior policy advisor, working closely with another recent hire, former Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the former top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
Former senators are barred from lobbying their former colleagues for two years after the end of their congressional careers. For Landrieu, that means she can't lobby colleagues until January, 2017. But she can lobby members of the executive branch, and is free to provide Van Ness Feldman clients with strategic advice. .Alex Lazar writes at Open Secrets:
CRP’s revolving door data, which we will continue to update, shows that 42 of the 75 who left Capitol Hill at the end of the last Congress or sometime during that two-year term are currently employed — 18 of them by lobbying firms or law firms that also lobby.
They include, among others, former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), who lost his bid for re-election and is now a “strategic advisor” at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck; Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), one of only two incumbent GOP House members to lose his seat in the 2014 Republican wave and now a senior adviser at Kelley, Drye & Warren; and Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who were both poached by powerhouse firm Squire Patton Boggs. Matheson retired, while Kingston lost his bid for a Senate seat to David Perdue (R).
In an interview with OpenSecrets Blog, Matheson described his current role as “building client relationships and offering strategic advice” during the cooling-off period when he can’t directly lobby Congress (that’s one year for former House members, two years for former senators) — while also noting that he “can still interact with executive branch agencies.”
