LegiStorm

A co-founder of the Congressional Chicken Caucus recently traveled to Cuba to learn how that island nation farms tobacco, grapefruit and sugar.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) flew from Memphis to Miami and then to Havana for a visit April 5-9 at the expense of the Washington Office on Latin America, which paid $2,746 for the trip.

"As a Congressman from an agricultural district, Cuba represents a big market opportunity for producers," Crawford wrote in his trip report, filed Friday. "The trip promotes learning about opportunity for increased trade and building key relationships."

Crawford was joined by Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.) and congressional staffers Edward Verill, Luke Letlow and Christopher Jones. The trip included a Havana cigar factory tour and presentations by University of Havana agriculture and economics professors.

In addition to the tobacco that goes into its famed cigars, Cuba is noted for its sugar exports (it once was the world's largest exporter) and for tropical fruits. Like Cuba, Arkansas is a leading producer of rice and is the nation's largest poultry producer and one of its largest for growing cotton.

A former Florida congressman who railed against Obamacare has registered to lobby on behalf of long-term care hospitals.

Steve Southerland, senior vice president at Capitol Hill Consulting Group, will represent AMG Integrated Healthcare Management to lobby Congress to lift a moratorium that prohibits long-term care hospitals from adding beds and to alter the current payment system for expensive Medicare patients. The contract, filed Thursday, was for $30,000.

Southerland, a Republican who represented part of Florida's panhandle, was defeated in 2015 by Democrat Gwen Graham, the daughter of former Florida Gov. and Sen. Bob Graham.  She portrayed Southerland as misogynistic after he held a 2014 men's-only fundraiser with an invitation that instructed attendees to "tell the misses not to wait up" because "the after dinner whiskey and cigars will be smooth & the issues to discuss are many." Southerland's defense to claims he was anti-women got him into deeper hot water. "I live with five women. That's all I'm saying," he said. "I live with five women. Listen: Has Gwen Graham ever been to a lingerie shower? Ask her. And how many men were there?"

Southerland, who served in Congress from 2011-15, joined Capitol Hill Consulting Group in April 2015, but this is his first time filing as a lobbyist. He was joined on the filing by colleagues David Jory and Brian Sutter, a former staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee's Health Subcommittee.

The firm's client, AMG, owns long-term acute care hospitals that "provide a continued acute level of care for patients suffering complex medical conditions such as: respiratory failure, ventilator dependence, complicated infections, chronic non-healing wounds, cardiac complications and surgical complications." 

A nonprofit recently sent to Kiev congressional aides who work for House members who advocate that the U.S. arm Ukraine in its war against pro-Russian separatists.

The American Center for a European Ukraine paid for the U.S. delegation, which included Deborah Weigel, legislative director for Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.). The lawmaker joined a bipartisan coalition of representatives last year in demanding that President Obama send to Ukraine lethal aid, including light anti-armor missiles.

Weigel visited Ukraine from March 28 through April 2 and attended several seminars aimed at furthering the center's mission to pull Ukraine fully into Europe and away from Russia, according to Weigel's trip report, filed Tuesday. The American Center for a European Ukraine is headquartered in Washington. Ribble chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats Subcommittee.

Ukraine's parliament today approved Volodymyr Groysman as prime minister in that country's largest political shakeup since the 2014 uprising that ushered in a pro-Western government. Ukraine has been mired in political deadlock that has delayed foreign loans worth billions of dollars from propping up Ukraine's economy, which has been decimated by its war with Russian-backed separatists.

Other House staffers who made the Ukraine trip were Ryan Canfield, legislative director for Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.); Maria Bowie, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.); and Carly Frame, legislative assistant to Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.). They had not filed their trip reports as of Thursday. Rogers, Cole and Boyle also have called on the U.S. to send lethal aid to Ukraine.

The seminars the delegation attended included "Defending truth: Information war with Russia" and "The corruption fight." 

"Ukraine has been a special point of focus for Congress since the EuroMaidan Revolution and now the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine," the center wrote in a pre-trip filing. "Both the Foreign Affairs Committee and Appropriations Committee ... are heavily involved in dealing with Ukraine. These individuals were invited to be part of the delegation as their work deals directly with Ukraine and the [Kiev] trip will be an excellent opportunity to be educated firsthand about the situation on the ground and to make valuable contacts."

A wedding planner, marketing guru and founder of TEDxMaui, a spinoff of a global nonprofit that brings together inspiring speakers from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design, is now the Maui field representative for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).

Kaie McMillan ran TEDxMaui for five years and produced three "successful" conferences that cultivated Maui's intellectual community and spread the perspective of the Hawaiian Islands to the global stage. Two of those conferences gained an Internet audience of potentially millions at TED.com.

TED is an international set of conferences run by the nonprofit Sapling Foundation under the slogan "Ideas Worth Spreading." Attendees pay thousands of dollars to listen to inspiring talks, which have been viewed more than 1 billion times on the Internet. The speakers have included Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Bill Gates, Bono and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

McMillan bills herself as a "marketing and special events consultant with a knack for creating uplifting experiences through food, art and music." She recently spent two months as a field organizer for presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ahead of the Democratic Primary in Hawaii. Her new boss, Gabbard, resigned in February as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Sanders over front-runner Hillary Clinton. 

Former Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-Fla.) and his lobbying firm Mack Strategies is going to bat for the bondholders who stand to lose their investments if Puerto Rico defaults on its massive debt.

The lobbying firm disclosed that it is working "to advance the importance of upholding the Puerto Rico constitution" on behalf of "G.O. Bondholders of Puerto Rico," although it doesn't get more specific about who those bondholders might be. The Puerto Rican constitution makes reference to guaranteeing debt.

Investors who have almost $5 billion of Puerto Rico general-obligation bonds recently disclosed a plan to stave off a July 1 loan default by offering up $750 million in new debt.

Mack, who served in the House from 2005-13, has been chief executive officer of Mack Strategies since 2014.  He is the great-grandson of the late Hall of Famer Connie Mack, the manager and owner of baseball's Philadelphia Athletics during the first half of the 20th century and the longest-serving manager in Major League Baseball history.

Mack Strategies' clients include American Task Force Argentina and Las Vegas Sands Corp.