LegiStorm

An aide to Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) has left for the lobbying world.

Keenan Hale has joined GrayRobinson as a government affairs consultant. The law firm is on track to bring in more than $3 million in federal lobbying income this year.

Hale had worked for Green's office since 2015, most recently as a legislative assistant.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has added a health-care lobbyist to his team.

Caitlin Wilson is now a legislative assistant handling the senator's health, labor and education portfolios. She comes from Cardinal Health, where she spent the last year as a government relations manager.

Wilson previously worked as legislative director to ex-Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and as a lobbyist at the American Continental Group.

After more than a decade on the Hill, a former chief of staff has found a new home at the nation's top housing agency.

Abby Gunderson-Schwarz joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development this month as legislative affairs director. She most recently served as chief of staff to Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), whose office she left in the spring.

Gunderson-Schwarz had worked on the Hill since 2008, previously working for now-retired Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.).

A longtime GOP congressional aide has taken to K Street.

Julia Angelotti is now vice president and director of legislative strategy at government-relations firm Merchant McIntyre, where she's already registered as a lobbyist on transportation issues for the government of Churchill County, Nev.

Angelotti most recently served as legislative director and deputy chief of staff to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Before joining Stefanik's office, she worked for Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and retired Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.).

Travel by Republicans has made up more than two-thirds of all privately sponsored congressional trips in 2019, thanks largely to one sponsor.

So far this year, Republicans members of Congress and their staffers have accepted a combined 791 trips worth more than $1.77 million, according to LegiStorm data. Democrats have taken only 392 trips, worth $1.13 million, in the same time period.

The Congressional Institute, currently the largest sponsor by number of trips, has spent more than $357,000 on retreats for 407 congressional Republicans so far in 2019.

The American Israel Education Foundation, a sister organization to the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group, has so far sponsored the most by total cost, dropping more than $407,000 on travel to Israel for a bipartisan group of 29 staffers.

The Congressional Institute, AIEF and other interest groups spend such large sums on international travel in the hopes of making and influencing congressional allies, who get immersed for days in issues from the organization's point of view.