LegiStorm

The country's biggest biotechnology group has hired a Senate aide to its lobbying team.

Thomas Brunet is now the Biotechnology Innovation Organization's director of federal government relations and has already registered as a lobbyist on a host of legislative issues. He comes from the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), where he most recently served as senior counsel for domestic policy.

BIO is one of the largest health-related lobbying firms and last year reported just shy of $10 million in federal lobbying expenses.

Retired Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) inaugural lobbying work includes hot-button issues from pipeline construction to trade with China.

So far, Akin Gump has disclosed that Smith is lobbying for Pfizer on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, U.S. trade relationship with China, and U.S.-European Union negotiation; mine-permitting and operation issues for the Alaska-based Pebble Limited Partnership mining operation; pipeline-construction issues for New York-based Otis Eastern Service; and livestock issues for Texas agriculture and technology company HerdX.

Smith was a member of Congress from 1987 until the end of last term, when he retired from Congress and joined Akin Gump as senior counsel.

If he walks like a lobbyist and talks like a lobbyist, Karl Rove is probably a lobbyist. And now, he's submitted the official disclosures to prove it.

Less than a month after a Rivada Networks spokesperson told Politico that Rove "is not our lobbyist," the former White House adviser disclosed that he is indeed working as an official lobbyist for the telecom company. Rove is also an invester and adviser to the group, whose board members include Jeb Bush.

As Politico previously reported, Rove is working on congressional outreach related to the Trump Administration's plan for 5G wireless networks. Rivada, which is backed by billionaire Trump ally Peter Thiel, owns dozens of patents necessary for open 5G access and could potentially reap great financial benefit from a wholesale 5G network. 

According to Rove's disclosure, which he filed last week through his long-standing Karl Rove and Co. firm, he began working for Rivada in early January.

A lobbyist and congressional diversity advocate has returned to the Hill.

Noel Perez joins the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee as outreach director. He comes from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Education Fund, where he worked as policy and program manager and lobbied on budget and census issues. Perez also served as NALEO's lead to Staff Up Congress, a joint campaign with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies that aims to increase racial diversity among Hill staffers.

Before joining NALEO in 2017, Perez worked for the House Democratic Caucus and for ex-Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.).

Racial diversity among congressional aides is at an all-time high.

In the 116th Congress, 22 percent of House staffers and 17 percent of Senate staffers are non-white, according to a LegiStorm data. Last term, non-white staffers made up 18 and 16 percent of House and Senate staff rosters, respectively.

Among Democratic aides, about one in three House staffers and one in four Senate staffers are non-white. GOP staffers are about 6 percent non-white in the House and 7 percent in the Senate.

Those numbers have gradually increased in both chambers since 2001, when LegiStorm's complete data on congressional staff begins. Then, non-white staffers made up only 14 percent of the House and 8 percent of the Senate.

Although the overall increase in non-white staffers is partly due to this term's larger number of Democratic members, who tend to hire more people of color than do their GOP counterparts, the trend also holds true within the Republican Party.