LegiStorm

A legislative assistant to Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) has entered the lobbying world.

Juan Rangel is now a senior associate at boutique consulting firm D&P Creative Strategies, where he'll focus on Capitol Hill advocacy. D&P's heavy-hitting lobbying clients include Comcast and Microsoft.

Before Rangel joined Sánchez's office in 2016, he worked for the National Immigration Law Center.

A longtime aide to Rep. André D. Carson (D-Ind.) has steered his way to Rolls-Royce.

Nathan Bennett joined the engineering firm's North American subsidiary this month as vice president of government affairs. He had worked for Carson since 2008, most recently as deputy chief of staff and legislative director.

Carson is friendly with the engineering firm, which says that builds "more [Rolls-Royce] products" in Carson's hometown of Indianapolis "than anywhere else in the world."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this piece inaccurately conflated Rolls-Royce plc and Rolls-Royce North America with Rolls-Royce Motors. Rolls-Royce plc and Rolls-Royce North America are no longer affiliated with Rolls-Royce Motors.

Two Democratic representatives are on track to overspend their 2019 office budgets if they keep up their spending, according to a new LegiStorm breakdown of member expenses.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who is running for president, tops the ranks with 26.85 percent spent. The average representative spent 19.26 percent of his or her annual budget during that same time period. Gabbard's expenses include 7.45 percent of her entire annual budget already spent on printing costs and franked mail to constituents. The average member has spent less than 0.25 percent of their budgets on mass mailings.

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) follows Gabbard with 25.45 percent of her budget gone, thanks mainly to her office's high travel expenses. Official expense books do not detail where Wilson's office traveled to rack up nearly $28,000 in taxpayer travel expenses in just three months. But the spending includes roughly $15,000 on commercial transportation, $5,000 on lodging, $3,000 on car rentals and $1,500 on taxis, parking and tolls.

Among congressional staffers, online-focused jobs are at an all-time high.

As of February, the House and Senate employ a combined 128 staffers whose official job titles include the word "digital," "new media," "online," "web," "cyber" or "social media." That's an increase of 58 percent in just two years, when titles with those words accounted for 81 jobs. Numbers come from a LegiStorm breakdown of the most recent public salary disclosures. They do not include administrative offices such as the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms.

"Digital" titles, such as digital communications director and digital media adviser, make up the bulk of those jobs. "Digital" titles first appeared in salary records in 2011 and have grown in popularity ever since.

Meanwhile, "new media" jobs have dropped from an all-time high of 48 titles in February 2012 to only 3 this year. "Online" and "web" titles have also fallen out of favor in recent years.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-N.Y.) new chief of staff, a seasoned lobbyist, is no stranger to her office.

Before Maloney's 1992 election to Congress, Andrew Lowenthal worked as chief of staff to her NYC City Council office and later became the first legislative director in her congressional office. He's also worked for retired Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and the Senate Banking Committee.

Lowenthal comes from Reorg, a financial media and analysis firm, where he worked as a senior policy analyst. Before that, he spent a combined 15 years working as a lobbyist at Porterfield, Fettig & Sears, Van Scoyoc Associates and Freddic Mac. He also served as chief of staff at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.