LegiStorm

Women make up a growing proportion of registered lobbyists — but they're still ringing in Women's History Month as a K Street minority.

According to LegiStorm data, women made up about 39% percent of last year's registered federal lobbyists and foreign agents. That percentage has trended upward since at least 2000 (the first year that reliable lobbying data is available), when women made up about 33% of all lobbyists.

The total number of female lobbyists has also grown over the years, from about 4,000 in 2000 to over 5,000 last year.

Last fall's House speaker crisis has not caused a significant increase in members to announce their departures compared to the previous election cycle, according to LegiStorm data.

So far, 48 representatives have voluntarily left the 118th Congress or announced that they are not running for reelection to the House. Of those, five members (10% of those 48) resigned before the term's end. Another 17 (35%) are running for Senate or another office, and the remaining 26 are retiring (54%).

Those numbers are similar to this point in the 117th Congress: By Feb. 26, 2022, 47 representatives had resigned or announced their plans to leave. Eight members (17%) had resigned from the 117th Congress at that time. 14 more (30%) had announced their plans to run for other office, and 25 (53%) had announced retirement plans. Another 14 representatives announced their plans to leave Congress after Feb. 26.

Former Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) is the latest ex-member to make his first pass through the revolving door.

Pittenger is lobbying on behalf of quantum-computing firm Quantinuum, per a recent filing. His work began at the beginning of the month and focuses on unspecified "quantum computing" issues.

Pittenger, who served in the House from 2013-2019, is well past the one-year "cooling-off" period required of former members from the time they leave Congress before they are permitted to lobby the House or Senate. Although the rule does not extend to lobbying the executive branch, members-turned-lobbyists frequently begin their lobbying work about a year after leaving office.

A former House staffer and trade expert is now quenching her thirst with Coca-Cola.

Katie Morley is now director for federal and diplomatic relations at the Coca-Cola Co. Last year, the beverage giant spent nearly $4 million to lobby the federal government on a host of issues ranging from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, to plastics recycling, to trade with China.

Morley was most recently Rep. Adrian Smith's (R-Neb.) senior legislative assistant and top trade adviser. Smith chairs the Ways and Means Committee's Trade Subcommittee and sits on the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) is retiring, but that isn't stopping him from hiring one of the only lobbyists his office has ever employed.

Stephen Newton has joined Romney's office from government-affairs firm Porterfield, Fettig & Sears. His big-name lobbying clients there included Nasdaq, M&T Bank, AirBnB and the American Bankers Association. He is now Romney's deputy chief of staff for policy.

This is not Newton's first position on the Hill, or even with Romney: He was one the senator's first hires when Romney took office in 2019. Newton is also an alumnus of Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee.

While this isn't Romney's first time employing Newton, it does reflect a departure from the senator's normal hiring patterns. In five years as a senator, Romney has added only two other registered federal lobbyists to his staff. Only one former Romney staffer has gone on to become a lobbyist after leaving the office.