LegiStorm

North America's biggest hotel chain has added a GOP Senate staffer to its Washington team.

Carol Fowler joined Marriott International this month as manager of federal-government affairs. Marriott spends about $1.1 million a year on its federal lobbying work, which most recently included work on the Equality Act and hotel-industry pandemic relief funding.

Fowler spent the last nine years with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who's indicated he may retire at the end of this term. Fowler was most recently his senior policy adviser on commerce, transportation and defense.

The change in presidential administrations brought with it big changes to K Street, which saw its highest client turnover in years.

Since January, federal lobbyists have signed 1,948 new clients — a 15 percent increase over the 1,685 new contracts signed during the the same time period last year. This year's new contracts also represent an 18 percent increase over the first months of Donald Trump's presidency and the highest number of new registrations since 2010.

But this year also marks a 31 percent increase in contract terminations, with many of the same firms that gained dozens of new clients also losing pre-existing relationships. K&L Gates has signed 26 new clients since January, but also lost contracts with 16 existing clients. Ballard Partners, which has been reinventing itself as a bipartisan firm after years of strong connections to the Trump administration, has brought on 19 new clients and lost 10.

Some firms (like Strategic Marketing Innovations, which gained 24 clients and lost only two), weathered the transition very well. But not all firms have been so lucky. Several, including Ice Miller Strategies and the unrelated Miller Strategies have each disclosed no new contracts while losing 20 clients apiece.

A Senate staffer who's worked on both sides of the aisle has headed to the private sector to work on education policy.

Rebecca Howard is now a policy adviser at the Learning Policy Institute. The nonprofit works on state and federal education issues but has not disclosed any federal lobbying work.

Howard most recently worked as legislative assistant handling education and labor issues for Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), whose office she had just joined in March. She's also worked for former Sens. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

The SolarWinds cyber-attack has made a first-time lobbyist out of retired Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

Chambliss is part of a DLA Piper team helping the IT management company to "provide information to policymakers and cooperate with hearing and oversight regarding the cyberattack on SolarWinds," per his disclosure filed yesterday. The Russian hack compromised a host of federal government agencies, as well as FireEye and Microsoft. Microsoft president Brad Smith has described the cyber-attack as the world's "largest and most sophisticated" to date.

DLA Piper signed SolarWinds shortly after the December attack but did not originally include Chambliss. His name on the contract replaced ex-Rep. Charles Dent (R-Pa.), who departed DLA Piper in January.

Chambliss has also registered as a DLA Piper lobbyist for the Atlantic Coast Conference, a National Collegiate Athletic Association conference, and is lobbying on sports issues.

Ballard Partners, which rose to power as one of the top lobbying firms of the Trump administration, has signed at least a dozen new clients since President Biden's inauguration. One in particular represents a sharp departure from the firm's usual clientele - Naomi Campbell.

Firm president Brian Ballard began work for the supermodel last week, according to a recent disclosure. He's lobbying on unspecified visa issues for Campbell, who is a U.K. citizen.

Ballard Partners branched out into federal lobbying in 2017 and quickly rose to prominence as one of Trumpworld's most influential lobbying groups. While it's not yet clear how many existing clients Ballard Partners lost to the change in administrations, the firm has signed at least a dozen new lobbying clients since Biden took office and has added a number of well-connected Democrats to its team.