LegiStorm

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) has lost one of his longest-serving staffers to Congress's newest member.

Dylan Sodaro started this week as Rep. Gabe Amo's (D-R.I.) chief of staff. Amo, who was sworn in to Congress on Monday, holds the seat that former Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) vacated in May.

Sodaro had worked for Pascrell for nearly a decade, working his way up to deputy chief of staff and legislative director. During Pascrell's 26-year House tenure, only a handful of staffers served the congressman's office longer than Sodaro. He is also an alumnus of Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.).

Ruth Ward joined Johnson's office from Family Policy Alliance, where she was a government affairs director. FPA is the advocacy arm of fundamentalist evangelical organization Focus on the Family.

Ward was FPA's sole registered federal lobbyist. She most recently lobbied on the Protecting Minors from Medical Malpractice Act, End Taxpayer Funding of Gender Experimentation Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's proposed rule to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, according to the organization's most recent disclosure.

Ward, a Louisiana native, worked as Johnson's operations director and policy adviser until moving to FPA a year ago. She is now chief of staff in Johnson's personal office.

A top staffer for Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) has moved to the U.S. subsidiary of a Japanese drugmaker. 

Aaron Bill is now associate director for government affairs and public policy at Daiichi Sankyo Inc. He most recently served as legislative director and health counsel for Buchanan and previously worked for Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Reps. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) and Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), among many Republicans during his combined decade-plus career on the Hill.

Bill's wife followed a similar path. After serving as chief of staff for Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), Teresa Buckley Bill moved to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in 2017. She is now senior director for government affairs at Gilead Sciences Inc.

Despite a felony guilty plea, right-wing trickster and conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman just had his most lucrative lobbying period since the Obama administration - if you can believe his reporting.

Burkman's lobbying firm, J.M. Burkman & Associates, disclosed at least $493,000 in income from 40 clients during the third quarter, according to the firm's disclosures. That's the firm's highest federal lobbying income since 2015, when J.M. Burkman & Associates brought in $555,000 in Q1.

In Q3, $330,000 - two-thirds of the firm's reported income - came from a single client, PJM Power Ventures. According to filings, Burkman has brought in a total of $430,000 from PJM Power Ventures since signing the organization as a lobbying client in March.

In a disclosure from earlier this year, J.M. Burkman & Associates described PJM Power Ventures as "a solar company," though the New York address listed for the entity does not appear to exist. No trace of a company with that name seems to exist on the internet outside of Burkman's lobbying filings. It is unclear if PJM Power Ventures is related in any way to energy-transmission company PJM Interconnection, whose CEO is a Biden appointee to an energy advisory panel.

The firm's purported work for PJM Power Ventures focuses on Department of Energy issues and congressional solar power issues, per a filing from last month.

Burkman and fellow lobbyist Jacob Wohl pleaded guilty last year to felony telecommunications fraud for their part in a robocall voter-suppression scheme against Black voters. Both Burkman and Wohl are also known for their attempts to frame Robert Mueller, Pete Buttigieg and Anthony Fauci for sexual assault.

In March, a federal judge ruled against the pair in a New York lawsuit related to the robocall scheme. Criminal charges in Michigan are pending. The Federal Communications Commission fined the pair more than $5 million in June.

Amid his guilty plea in 2022 Q4, Burkman's firm made $148,000 in lobbying revenue. In 2020 Q1, before the robocall incident, J.M. Burkman & Associates made $154,000.

Amid the Louisiana delegation's ascent to the one of the most powerful in Congress, a staffer with deep ties to the state has moved to power-distribution holding company Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Blake Schindler was most recently Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-La.) policy adviser on energy and the environment, among other legislative issues. Schindler had worked for Cassidy since 2014, when the now-senator was still a representative. Schindler, himself a Louisiana native, is also an alumnus of former Sen. David Vitter (R-La.).

Schindler's long-standing Louisiana ties may prove beneficial in his new role as a director at BHE. With Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) as the House's top two, the state has taken on a greater significance in both chambers.