LegiStorm

A retired congressman has made his federal lobbying debut on behalf of the city where he was once mayor.

Ex-Rep. Charlie Luken (D-Ohio), who served a single term in Congress from 1991-1993, recently registered as a federal lobbyist for the city of Cincinnati. He's operating through Calfee, Halter & Griswold, where he works as senior counsel.

The law firm is representing Cincinnati on low-income housing issues, according to a previous disclosure. Luken served as the city's mayor for seven years prior to his election to Congress and again from 1999-2005.

A veteran-turned-veterans' advocate has joined the Senate.

Kayda Keleher, a retired Marine, is now a legislative assistant handling Sen. Tammy Duckworth's (D-Ill.) health portfolio. Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot, was severely wounded in the Iraq War.

Keleher comes from the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, where she spent the last three years as associate legislative director. She did not register as a federal lobbyist on behalf of the organization.

Half of Congress's ten most-educated staff rosters belong to freshman members. Of those with the ten lowest education levels, three are freshman offices.

While the top spot belongs to veteran Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), whose staff boasts at least seven masters degrees and two Harvard law degrees, the next most-educated office belongs to freshman Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), whose small staff has at least five masters degrees and one law degree.

The other ten best-educated offices, on average, belong to freshman Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jesús García (D-Ill.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), as well as Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Freshmen make up about 23 percent of all current member offices.

But not all of the freshman class prioritized education levels in their hiring decisions, instead emphasizing military service and other life and career experiences and training. Three freshman members — Reps. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Lance Gooden (R-Texas) — make up the staff lists with some of the lowest average education levels.

To measure education levels, LegiStorm gives a score to each office based on educational level attained and quality of the school attended. For educational level, PhDs count more than master’s degrees, which in turn count more than bachelor’s degrees, for example. For school quality, LegiStorm used the U.S. News and World Report rankings, with bonus points going to students who attended a top 100, top 50 or top 10 school.

LegiStorm's education-analysis tool compares only publicly available formal education records and may be skewed by a number of factors, including the proportion of entry-level versus senior-level staff, geographic distribution of high-ranked schools, and whether staffers choose to make their up-to-date education information publicly available.

Rep. Tom O'Halleran's (D-Ariz.) new legislative director spent her last four years as a lobbyist.

Sally Adams most recently worked as vice president at Crossroads Strategies, where her heavy-hitting lobbying clients included Google and Dropbox. Before that, she was a federal policy assocate at Sixkiller Consulting.

Adams handles a wide range of issues for O'Halleran's office, including trade, health care, immigration and homeland security.

An energy expert has traded his seven years of Hill experience for his first lobbying job.

Mac McKinney comes from the office of Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), where he spent the last couple of years as an adviser on energy policy. Before that, he worked for then-Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.).

McKinney is now with Edison International, a California-based public-utility holding company, with whom he registered as a lobbyist earlier this month.