LegiStorm

The pandemic has made lobbyists out of two Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appointees who left the agency in August.

Kyle McGowan, formerly CDC chief of staff, and Amanda Campbell, formerly deputy chief, started their inaugural lobbying work through Ascendant Strategic Partners, the firm they left the agency to jointly found. In August, McGowen told Politico that he'd stayed with the agency longer than planned due to the pandemic, which the CDC has been criticized for its handling of.

McGowan and Campbell are lobbying on unspecified COVID-19 health-care and Medicare/Medicaid issues for the Nomad Group, a New Jersey-based tech and environmental consulting firm. Neither had ever registered as a lobbyist before.

Both previously worked for ex-Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and moved to the Department of Health and Human Services when Price became HHS secretary in 2017. They joined the CDC in 2018.

After working as a senior congressional aide and a lobbyist, one Democratic staffer's career is picking up steam with the Federal Railroad Administration.

Jon Black is now a supervisory government-affairs specialist with the Department of Transportation agency. He comes from the office of Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), where he was a senior policy adviser.

In between two separate stints with Bishop's office, Black has also worked as a director at McBee, which has since rebranded itself as Signal Group. He lobbied for a range of clients, many transportation related.

Facebook's augmented reality/virtual reality team has gotten a makeover, picking up both a new name and a former Senate staff director.

Derron Parks is now public-policy manager to Facebook Reality Labs, which the tech behemoth rebranded in late August.

(Confusingly, Facebook renamed its former Oculus Research division to Facebook Reality Labs in 2018. The new Facebook Reality Labs now encompasses the company's entire AR/VR team and now includes Facebook's Oculus, which makes VR headsets.)

Parks comes from Federal Street Strategies, where he was a senior strategist. The Georgetown Law grad previously served as Democratic staff director to Sen. Claire McCaskill's (D-Mo.) Special Committee on Aging and has also worked for the senator's personal office.

Parks has also held gigs with Samsung Electronics and DaVita, a kidney dialysis company. He registered as a lobbyist for both.

Ex-Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and his one-time girlfriend quietly registered as first-time lobbyists for work they began a year ago.

Kirk and Dodie McCracken started work last October on behalf of MP Materials. The rare-earth-materials mining company hired the pair to lobby on "rare earth materials supply chain and critical supply chain issues," according to a disclosure filed last week. The filing does not indicate whether or not the contract is still active.

McCracken made headlines in 2012, when the senator's ex-wife accused Kirk of hiding $143,000 in campaign payments to McCracken, then his girlfriend. The FEC later decided that the payments did not run afoul of the law, according to the Chicago Tribune. In addition to her apparent campaign work, McCracken served as district director and press secretary to then-Rep. Kirk from 2001-2003.

She and the senator are working through Kirk Global Advisors, which Kirk established after losing his 2016 reelection bid. McCracken's role with the firm, as well as her current relationship to Kirk, are unclear.

At the beginning of a young staffer's congressional career, the pay differences between chambers is modest. But that disparity grows as staffers rise through the ranks, according to LegiStorm data.

Senate staff assistants make two percent more than their House counterparts - a median of $37,142 vs. $36,342. For those promoted to legislative correspondent, that difference grows to four percent - $42,882 vs. $41,250.

A Senate chief of staff makes a median salary of $170,472, 13 percent more than the $150,412 that a House chief makes. The maximum pay for a congressional staffer is $173,900.

Senate chief counsels make 35% more than their House counterparts ($120,087 vs. $88,442), while legislative directors make a whopping 72 percent more in the Senate ($145,714 vs. $84,397).

The pay differences are indicative of the different political stakes in the House and the Senate. With fewer members each representing entire states, the Senate has staffs that are larger, more specialized and who have more influence on the legislative agenda compared to the House.