Caught Our Eye items are posted daily. LegiStorm Pro subscribers have access to all posts a few hours before other users, and are also able to search the full Caught Our Eye archive. Log in as a LegiStorm Pro user or learn more about subscribing.
Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Feb. 5, 2021
One of Rep. Dina Titus's (D-Nev.) longest-serving staffers has left the Hill for a boutique lobbying firm.
Erica Riordan is now a government-affairs manager at Atlas Crossing, which lobbies mainly on transportation and aviation issues.
She was most recently an LA to Titus, where she handled the congresswoman's Foreign Affairs Committee work, among other issues. Riordan has also worked for Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.).
Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Feb. 4, 2021
A GOP staffer has traded his extensive Middle East policy experience for a job with the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Oren Adaki is now associate director for policy and government affairs to AIPAC, which spent north of $2.6 million on federal lobbying last year. He comes from the office of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), where he was legislative director. Wilson has traveled to Israel twice on AIPAC's dime.
Adaki has also served as staff director to the now-defunct House Foreign Affairs Committee's Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee and worked as a research analyst and Arabic specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative-leaning think tank. He holds a master's in Middle East studies from Columbia.
Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Feb. 1, 2021
The 117th Congress is the most racially diverse in House history - and the freshman class's hiring represents that.
Freshman representatives of both parties have hired a higher proportion of non-white staffers than have their longer-serving peers, according to LegiStorm data. Staffers to Democratic freshman members are 47 percent non-white, compared to 35 percent of all Democratic House staffers. Among GOP freshman members, 11 percent of staffers are non-white, versus eight percent among all Republican representatives.
Non-white and non-Hispanic Americans make up about 40 percent of the U.S. population.
Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Jan. 29, 2021
After working for three New Jersey Democrats, a House staffer has moved to CVS Health.
Yujin Lee joined the health-care company this month as director of federal government affairs. CVS Health, which lobbies on behalf of CVS Pharmacy and other subsidiaries, pumped more than $10.1 million into its federal lobbying program last year.
Lee was most recently legislative director to Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and has also worked for Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and ex-Rep. Rush Holt, also N.J. Democrats.
Posted by Keturah Hetrick on Jan. 28, 2021
Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-Okla.) legislative director has returned to the K Street firm where he first worked as a lobbyist.
Andrew Forbes, now a senior vice president at Cassidy and Associates, previously spent seven years with the lobbying firm before joining Inhofe's office in 2017. He registered as a lobbyist for dozens of wide-ranging organizations, including Microsoft, MGM Resorts and Oxfam.
Forbes has also worked for ex-Rep. Ric Keller (R-Fla.) and for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
We spend a large part of our days looking at data. Documents often come in by the dozens and hundreds. And while most are boring - how interesting can staring at a phone directory or salary records be, for example? - we find daily reasons for interest, amusement or even concern packed in the documents. So we are launching a new running feature that we call "Caught our Eye."
Longer than tweets but shorter than most blog posts, Caught our Eye items will bring back the interest in reviewing documents and researching people. Some items might bring hard, breaking news. Others will raise eyebrows and lead some into further inquiry. Others might be good for a joke or two around the water cooler. All will enlighten about the people or workings of Capitol Hill.
Caught our Eye items will be published each morning for LegiStorm Pro subscribers. Non-Pro site users will be able to receive the news items a few hours later. In addition to having immediate access to the news, LegiStorm Pro users will have a handy way to search and browse all past items.
