LegiStorm

An aide to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has moved to the environmental-advocacy world.

Kaila Hood starts this week with the League of Conservation Voters, where she's now government-affairs advocate. Her work will focus on public lands, water and other conservation issues. Last year, LCV spent $630,000 on its federal lobbying work, including a team of about a dozen in-house lobbyists - approximately double the program's expenses and size from just five years ago.

Hood got her staffing start working in the district for Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and was most recently Blumenauer's senior legislative assistant handling energy, environment and other legislative issues. LCV gave Blumenauer a perfect score on its most-recent voting-record scorecard. The LCV Action Fund regularly donates small sums to his reelection campaign.

Freshman Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) has added hired a second lobbyist to her staff.

John Pappas is now Salinas's policy adviser on energy, financial services and taxation, among other issues. He comes from Monument Advocacy, where he was a government-relations director. His lobbying clients there included Shell Oil and Starbucks.

Salinas hired her first lobbyist-turned-staffer, Kelly Nickel, at the start of the term. Nickel is a former lobbyist for Myriad Genetics, Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting and the American Counseling Association and is now Salinas's legislative director.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin's (R-Okla.) newest hire comes straight from Big Pharma's top lobbying team.

Natalie Burkhalter spent the last four years as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, where she was most recently deputy vice president. PhRMA maintains an in-house team of 20-to-30 lobbyists and spent more than $28 million on its federal lobbying program last year.

Burkhalter is now Mullin's legislative director. Before leaving for PhRMA, she was staff director to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's Children and Families Subcommittee under Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky). She has also worked for Paul's personal office and for then-Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.).

A longtime association lobbyist has found a new home with the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Seth Waugh is now workforce policy director under Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). He came from the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, where he was political director and vice president for government relations. His work with the trade group won him a spot on The Hill's 2022 "Top Lobbyists" list.

Waugh has also worked as a lobbyist for the Portland Cement Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States and the National Association for Biomedical Research. Before moving to the private sector, he worked for then-Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio).

Fresh from Palantir Technologies's government-affairs team, a lobbyist has returned to Senate Republicans.

Sarah Schmidt is now health-policy director to Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). She was most recently a vice president and head of government affairs at Palantir, the big-data-analytics giant co-founded by Peter Thiel. She briefly registered as a Palantir lobbyist working on health-care and government issues.

Schmidt previously worked as a lobbyist and senior director at Aetna and CVS Health. Before leaving for the private sector, she handled health-care portfolios for Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and then-Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).