LegiStorm

A Democratic Senate staffer has launched a new career with SpaceX.

Joe Petrzelka joined the aerospace giant from the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), where he was a legislative assistant. He's also worked for then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Petrzelka is now a global government-affairs manager for SpaceX, which many experts now predict will surpass the value of fellow Elon Musk behemoth Tesla. SpaceX has disclosed spending nearly $2.3 million on its federal lobbying program in the last year.

A former health-care lobbyist is back to the Hill, one of several moves in Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) tumultuous office.

Ruth McDonald is now a senior policy adviser handling the senator's health-care portfolio. She was most recently vice president of Waxman Strategies and lobbied on health-care issues. McDonald has also worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and for Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

The hire is one of several recent moves in the Klobuchar's office, which has the highest staff turnover rate in recent Senate history. Klobuchar recently lost chief of staff Lindsey Kerr to the Messina Group, a political consulting firm. Doug Calidas, preciously Klobuchar's legislative director, has taken Kerr's place. Another Klobuchar staffer, April Jones, left for Apple's public-affairs team this month.

One of America's least-liked former governors is now trying his hand at influencing Washington policy.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) recently registered as a first-time lobbyist through regional law firm Spilman Thomas and Battle. He's part of a Spilman team working on unspecified issues for the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit that supports philanthropists' public-interest projects.

Corbett, who was wildly unpopular among constituents in the latter half of his 2011-2015 term, was the state's first incumbent governor to lose his reelection bid in more than 160 years. He joined Spilman as counsel in 2018.

Retired Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), former chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, has signed on as a foreign agent to Mexico.

Greenberg Traurig recently disclosed Frelinghuysen's addition to the law firm's existing contract with the Secretariat of Economy, Mexico's econonic department. Frelinghuysen's work involves tracking implementation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and outreach to U.S. government officials, media and "other opinion leaders" on U.S.-Mexico relations.

Frelinghuysen, who served in Congress from 1995–2019, joined Greenberg Traurig last year and counts Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba among his lobbying clients.

As Big Tech finds itself under increased congressional scrutiny, Senate Republicans have scored a big hire from Facebook's public-policy team.

Halie Craig has joined the Senate Banking Committee as she is a policy adviser under ranking member Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). She spent the last couple years at Facebook, most recently as a public-policy associate manager for actor and behavioral policy. Craig worked for Toomey's personal office and for the Senate Rules Committee before her time at the tech giant.

Congress's ongoing pressure to rein in Big Tech was only heightened by last week's Senate whistleblower testimony against Facebook. Some predict a yearslong struggle to regulate Big Tech, due in part to the number of talented congressional staffers that the industry has lured through the revolving door.