The number of federal lobbyists turning to Vice President Kamala Harris’s office to influence White House policy has contracted under the Biden administration, according to a review of federal records by the Washington Examiner.
About half as many companies and outside groups have hired lobbyists to influence Harris’s office during her first two years compared with her predecessor, Mike Pence.
Among those lobbying Harris and her aides were representatives of drug companies, technology firms, and energy businesses, according to the records.
Some have contacted her office to highlight their efforts to ensure diversity in clinical trials or add diversity to the semiconductor workforce, the filings show. Others have sought support on regulatory matters tied to tariffs, immigration, student loan relief, or drug decriminalization.
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In numerous cases, the issues align with the vice president’s policy interests on broadband access, voting rights, or black maternal healthcare. The Immigration Hub, an organization backed by Laurene Powell Jobs’s sprawling Emerson Collective philanthropy and led by a former Harris aide, has focused on a dizzying range of issues, from a Justice Department counterespionage program to Title 42 exceptions for Ukrainians to abortion care.
Often, the companies are lobbying the White House and other departments and agencies at the same time.
Federal records indicate how the spending scale differs between the vice president and president’s offices, as well as the issues a company might target.
In a first-quarter filing that covered the vice president’s office, White House, and Congress, Blue Origin, an aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, spent $50,000 on lobbyists to assist with aerospace regulations and policies and other government relations issues, according to federal records.
By comparison, the firm racked up $560,000 in lobbyist fees for their work on Build Back Better, the Defense Appropriations Act of 2022, and other legislation in the first quarter of 2022, when a filing shows they targeted the White House, Pentagon, Congress, Federal Aviation Administration, and NASA.
The numbers for Harris’s office mark a dramatic shift from the previous administration, during which a record 377 companies and interests lobbied Pence and his aides in the administration’s final year, up from 235 in 2017.
In 2021, 134 interests lobbied Harris’s office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A further 77 registered to do so in he first two quarters of 2022.
While the number of lobbyists covering the president and vice president’s offices jumped after former President Donald Trump came into office, the increase was most stark for Pence’s office.
Pence served “as a kind of second White House chief of staff on regulatory issues” and his office “as a key entryway to reach officials” with whom he had helped staff federal agencies,” the Washington Post wrote in 2018 of the former vice president’s draw.
The numbers for Harris are historically closer to the mean and higher than any year when Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama.
But Biden’s White House has not seen the same drop in lobbying interests. Over 1,400 companies hired lobbyists to advance their interests inside Biden’s White House last year, more than lobbied Trump’s White House in any year.
“Unless you have the ear of [chief of staff] Ron Klain or [White House counselor Steve] Ricchetti … you’re wasting your time, basically,” said one source with clients seeking to advance their business interests with the Biden administration on a broad range of economic and trade issues.
The leveling-off corporate interest in lobbying the vice president’s office suggests Harris occupies a more traditional role. The vice president’s influence with Biden has also been called into question, as their schedules show fewer one-on-one meetings.
Approaching the end of their second year in office, Harris and Biden now meet less frequently for lunch than in their first year, according to a review of their schedules.
As lobbyists flock to the White House and Biden’s aides, it is not unusual for those with close ties to officials to see their client lists surge.
That is true of lobbyist Jeff Ricchetti, whose brother is one of Biden’s closest aides. Jeff Ricchetti’s firm pulled in $1.7 million in fees during the first half of 2022 and was paid more than $3.1 million in 2021 to work for clients such as General Motors and Amazon, disclosures show.
His firm’s client list grew rapidly after Biden was elected, doubling its fees over the previous year.
Jeff Ricchetti has long been a registered lobbyist and has worked in the past alongside his brother, Biden’s counselor.
Jeff Ricchetti’s work on Biden’s infrastructure bill as a lobbyist for GM and for pharmaceutical and energy companies drew attention last year to the president’s promise to turn the page on the Trump administration’s ethics handling.
While running for office, Biden pledged to “restore ethics in government.”
Biden’s appointment of Anita Dunn, who during two earlier White House stints bypassed traditional disclosure obligations with a temporary role, has also drawn scrutiny. Dunn’s 93-page filing lists nearly 20 clients, including Pfizer, AT&T, Micron, the American Clean Power Association, Lyft, Salesforce, Reddit, and Melinda French Gates’s company, Pivotal Ventures, as well as an extensive investment portfolio.
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The White House has said she intends to divest her assets, valued from $16.8 million to $48.2 million, according to an estimate by CNBC. Dunn joined the White House in May, leaving some ethics attorneys questioning the Biden administration’s promise to run the most upstanding administration in history.
“Why have three months gone by with these massive conflicts of interest?” Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics under Obama and briefly under Trump, told the Washington Examiner last month.
Shaub also said Dunn likely held the same financial interests during her earlier stints at the White House but that these were shielded from view by technicalities.
