Dan Mica, president and CEO of the Credit Union National Association, announced last week that he, along with CUNA Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff Richard McBride, will resign effective January 2011.
Mica, who represented Florida's 11th district in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1989, said he was resigning in accordance with advice he once received not to stay in a position for more than 10 years. After leaving Congress, Mica was executive vice president for federal affairs at the American Council of Life Insurance until 1996, when he joined CUNA.
"Now, completely of my own choosing and preference, I am making the change. I fully intend to move on to something else after I depart CUNA. There is much room in my life for additional accomplishments, and I am looking at all opportunities," Mica said in a statement.
While at CUNA, the trade organization for credit unions, Mica lobbied members of Congress to pass various pieces of legislation impacting the industry, including the Credit Union Membership Access Act and the Bankruptcy Abuse Reform Act.
"During his tenure at CUNA -- longer than any other CEO -- Dan has brought CUNA and the credit union movement to the highest levels of respect in Washington and nationwide," Kris Mecham, chairman of CUNA's board of directors, said in a statement.
J Street, the pro-Israel political powerhouse that raised nearly a million dollars in the 2008 election cycle, announced yesterday the appointment of Hadar Susskind as director of policy and strategy. A longtime Washingtonian, Susskind will be leaving his position as vice president and Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to join J Street.
"My goal is to build as broad a base of support as possible for Israel at this politically pivotal moment when there is both great opportunity to make progress in resolving the conflict and a tremendous risk of squandering it," Susskind said in a press release.
In his new role, Susskind will take charge of J Street's government affairs team as well as its political and strategic campaigns, and will coordinate the group's lobbying, political action and grassroots operations. Born in Israel, Susskind is a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces.
A list of candidates JStreetPAC supported in the 2008 election cycle can be seen here.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in his fifth term in the Senate, has established a new leadership political action committee called, appropriately enough, the Mountaineer PAC. In January, Rockefeller became chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. PACs and individuals associated with industries overseen by that committee--telecommunications, media and technology, among others--traditionally have been generous donors to the panel's leaders.
The Mountaineer PAC is based out of the law offices of Perkins Coie, home of Robert Bauer, the heavyweight Democratic lawyer and the chief legal advisor to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign. A few days ago, Rockefeller filed papers with the Federal Election Commission establishing his new PAC.
--Edward T. Pound
A coalition of organized labor and other progressive groups are gearing up to help ram President Obama's budget through Congress this spring.
Organizers are describing the campaign, called "Rebuild and Renew America Now", as the biggest grassroots effort in history. The coalition plans to spend $5-7 million from now through May on TV, print and Web advertising and field organizing.
"Obama's budget is the blueprint for transformational change," said Brad Woodhouse, president of Americans United for Change, in an afternoon conference call. "Powerful interests are lining up against this budget because they are vested in the status quo that was established over the last eight years."
Plenty of powerful interest groups are lining up behind the coalition, too, which includes Big Labor heavyweights AFSCME and SEIU and progressive groups like the League of Conservation Voters and Environment America. This isn't the first dance for Americans United for Change, which is spearheading the effort: The group has also led campaigns against former President Bush's Social Security plan and his veto of SCHIP, and fought to pass Obama's stimulus package.
"There's no question this is a very ambitious budget, and there's also no question that the president is taking on a lot of sacred cows in this town," said AFSCME legislative director Chuck Loveless. "I think the support is going to be there, and I think the great majority of the president's proposals are going to make it through."
-- David Herbert
Lanny Davis, the high-profile lawyer, lobbyist, columnist, commentator and Democratic insider, has a new gig -- he's signed on as a volunteer senior adviser and spokesperson for The Israel Project, the international nonprofit that provides information to the media and the public about the Middle East. Davis also has close ties to incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- he was special counsel to President Clinton from 1996 to 1998 and was a major supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
At TIP, Davis joins another member of the far-flung Clinton network -- strategic communications specialist Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. She founded the 501(c)(3) in 2002 (and is still its president), and has built it into a major player among independent groups that focus on the region. With offices in Washington and Jerusalem, Mizrahi says TIP "does not speak on behalf of the Israeli government" and that Davis will appear on U.S. and international media outlets as a private citizen and "will be speaking independently only for himself."
With the war in Gaza at the top of the news, Davis says, his role is to help get "all the facts out as soon as possible -- to help correct misinformation and misstatements in the media." That's a role he has long projected in domestic politics even as he has continued to represent clients as a partner at the firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.
-- Robert Gettlin
Former Rep. Max Sandlin, a Texas Democrat and one-time chief deputy whip, has been named a partner at Mercury Public Affairs. Along with former Sen. Jim Talent, R-Missouri, Sandlin co-chairs Mercury's government relations-lobbying group in Washington. Sandlin was initially named co-chair of the lobbying group in November 2006.
In the House, Sandlin represented the First Congressional District in Texas for four terms, but was defeated for re-election in November 2004. He was chief deputy whip to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the current speaker, when she served earlier as Democratic whip. Sandlin also served on the Ways and Means, Transportation and Infrastructure and Financial Services committees.
Mercury is an arm of Omnicom Group, a global marketing and corporate communications company. Mercury's partners include Terry Nelson, a top strategist to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year and national political director for Bush-Cheney 2004. Another Mercury partner, Steve Schmidt, served as a senior adviser to McCain's recent presidential campaign.
-- Edward T. Pound
In a twist on family ties on K Street, retiring Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., will be joining Capitol Counsel, a lobbying firm founded by veteran tax lobbyist John D. Raffaelli, whose first cousin is McCrery's wife, Johnette, according to sources. McCrery, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, was pursued by bigger lobbying shops, including Patton Boggs, Navigators, and Washington Council Ernst & Young, but should fit in well at Capitol Counsel given his background in tax matters. The firm's clients include Home Depot and the Real Estate Roundtable, as well as several drug companies and health care clients. Raffaelli declined to comment.
-- Peter H. Stone and Bara Vaida
Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, announced today she will resign after 27 years in the position.
Claybrook will step down Jan. 31 but said she will help Public Citizen transition to its new leadership. The group has retained consultant Ted Ford Webb of Boston to conduct a nationwide search for a new president, according to the statement.
"As the winds of change sweep the nation and Washington, D.C., with promises for new policies to help the public, it is a good time for me to move on to other adventures," Claybrook said in her statement.
Claybrook highlighted several of Public Citizen's accomplishments during her tenure, such as making airbags standard equipment in all vehicles and helping to bring about campaign finance reform.
Before serving as president of Public Citizen, Claybrook led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the Carter administration. Before that, she founded and ran Congress Watch, Public Citizen's congressional watchdog division.
-- Amy Harder
Dismissing rumors that he might be in contention to head the Department of Labor, Dick Gephardt, former longtime leader of the House Democrats (and now a lobbyist), says he hasn't been approached by the Obama transition and isn't joining the president-elect's cabinet in any capacity. "I want [Obama] to have a great cabinet and succeed beyond any expectations. I'll help from the outside," Gephardt tells National Journal.
Here is Julie Kosterlitz's piece from our current issue:
Since retiring in 2005 from Congress, where he represented Missouri's 3rd Congressional District for 28 years and led House Democrats for the last 14 of those, Dick Gephardt has all but dropped out of politics -- and he has never looked back. He is enjoying his second career as a lobbyist and labor-relations consultant, both at his own firm, the Gephardt Group -- where his team includes his son and one of his daughters -- and as a "strategic adviser" to lobbying giant DLA Piper.
"It really was time to turn the page and do something completely different" at a less grueling pace, Gephardt says. He and his wife, Jane, spend much of the summer at their home in California wine country, where he has taken up golf, and he makes side trips to West Coast clients. Gephardt periodically visits the Gephardt Institute for Public Service at Washington University in St. Louis that he founded and raises money for.
Gephardt, who was a White House contender in the 1988 and 2004 elections, stayed on the periphery of this year's race. As a superdelegate to the national convention, Gephardt backed Hillary Rodham Clinton during the primaries but supported Barack Obama "every way I could" afterward. Gephardt dismisses speculation that he's a contender for Labor secretary or another Cabinet post, and says he hasn't been approached. "I want [Obama] to have a great Cabinet and succeed beyond any expectations. I'll help from the outside."
-- Julie Kosterlitz
Chicago attorney Christina Tchen has been tapped to run the White House Office of Public Liaison. Tchen is a partner in the corporate litigation practice at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, where she "has broad litigation experience at all levels of the state and federal courts, and has represented clients in various types of lawsuits and arbitrations," according to her biography. Her bio also notes that she is co-chair of the American Bar Association's Minority Trial Lawyer Task Force. Go here.
The Office of Public Liaison is responsible for connecting the president and policy advisers to the interest groups that care about various public policy issues. Obama is putting the offices of public liaison and intergovernmental affairs under the control of Chicago friend Valerie Jarrett, whom he named last month to be one of his three senior advisers, with the coveted "assistant to the president" title that carries the highest salary level among White House staff. Cecelia Munoz, who will direct the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, will report to Jarrett, as will Tchen. Munoz has been senior VP for the National Council of La Raza's office of research, advocacy, and legislation.
-- Bara Vaida and Alexis Simendinger
Fred Humphries, currently a managing director at Microsoft, has been promoted to the company's top lobby slot. He will replace Jack Krumholtz as managing director of federal government affairs. See Microsoft Release.pdf.
Jack Krumholtz is leaving Microsoft after 14 years. A spokeswoman for the company said he is not ready to announce his next career step and wants to take a couple months off before moving into a new position. When we asked Krumholtz if he is considering a job in the new administration, he said he hasn't ruled it out.
Krumholtz opened the Microsoft federal government affairs office in Washington in March 1995 and served as a one-man shop for a year working out of the company's Chevy Chase sales office. Given the distance from Capitol Hill, Krumholtz, 47, spent most of his time in his Jeep on conference calls and writing and checking emails on the side of the road, said the company. During that time, he became known as "Jack in his Jeep."
During his time at Microsoft, Krumholtz oversaw the growth of the Washington office from one person to more than 20 people. Krumholtz led industry efforts on high-skilled immigration reform, H-1B visa issues, efforts to secure export control relief for encryption technologies, the passage of CAFTA, and digital TV issues. He was also involved in negotiations resulting in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Krumholtz, a Democrat, worked as an attorney in private practice. He earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Stay tuned for word on Krumholtz's successor at Microsoft ...
-- Winter Casey
