LegiStorm

Former Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) is officially a foreign agent, thanks to Cambodia's growing D.C. presence.

Brownstein Hyatt recently added Pryor to its contract with the government of Cambodia, which began in 2019. The work is for unspecified "government relations services and strategic counsel on matters before the U.S. government." Pryor, whose Senate career ran from 2003-2015, joined the law firm about a year ago.

Cambodia has been shelling out big on its Washington representation, last month adding contracts with Qorvis and Tricuro on top of its existing relationships with both Brownstein Hyatt and PacRim Bridges.

Ex-Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) has registered as a first-time lobbyist on behalf of part of his former congressional district.

He's part of a McKeon Group team lobbying for Louisiana's Bossier Parish, part of the district that Fleming represented in Congress. The work focuses on defense and education issues, according to a recent disclosure. Fleming served in Congress from 2009 to 2017 and joined the McKeon Group last spring.

McKeon is only the eighth ex-member to pass through the revolving door this year. By this time in 2020, 17 former members had registered as lobbyists. Members have a mandatory "cooling-off" period that requires them to wait one year before doing any lobbying work, so it's normal to see fewer new lobbying registrations from ex-members in the year following an election.

A Democratic Senate staffer has launched a new career with SpaceX.

Joe Petrzelka joined the aerospace giant from the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), where he was a legislative assistant. He's also worked for then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Petrzelka is now a global government-affairs manager for SpaceX, which many experts now predict will surpass the value of fellow Elon Musk behemoth Tesla. SpaceX has disclosed spending nearly $2.3 million on its federal lobbying program in the last year.

A former health-care lobbyist is back to the Hill, one of several moves in Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) tumultuous office.

Ruth McDonald is now a senior policy adviser handling the senator's health-care portfolio. She was most recently vice president of Waxman Strategies and lobbied on health-care issues. McDonald has also worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and for Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

The hire is one of several recent moves in the Klobuchar's office, which has the highest staff turnover rate in recent Senate history. Klobuchar recently lost chief of staff Lindsey Kerr to the Messina Group, a political consulting firm. Doug Calidas, preciously Klobuchar's legislative director, has taken Kerr's place. Another Klobuchar staffer, April Jones, left for Apple's public-affairs team this month.

One of America's least-liked former governors is now trying his hand at influencing Washington policy.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) recently registered as a first-time lobbyist through regional law firm Spilman Thomas and Battle. He's part of a Spilman team working on unspecified issues for the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit that supports philanthropists' public-interest projects.

Corbett, who was wildly unpopular among constituents in the latter half of his 2011-2015 term, was the state's first incumbent governor to lose his reelection bid in more than 160 years. He joined Spilman as counsel in 2018.