(Bloomberg Government) -- JD Vance cuts the profile of an outsider’s insider on Capitol Hill and K Street.
Donald Trump, who picked the Ohio Republican senator as his running mate, and GOP insiders view Vance as the future of their party. They don’t necessarily agree on whether that’s a good thing.
Lobbying interests and lawmakers are beginning to grapple with what Vance portends for the party’s stance on signature policy issues, including priorities for corporations. It’s a mixed bag.
“Vance’s selection is disconcerting for most K Street lobbyists,” said Republican lobbyist Sam Geduldig, a partner at the CGCN Group, a firm with Ohio roots that represents financial services and corporate clients. “Lobbyists are starting to realize they’re on the outside looking at a party that has fundamentally changed. This selection is the nail in the coffin in the old way of thinking.”
Geduldig, who has donated to Vance, said the newly minted VP pick is viewed as someone who not only understands Trump’s vision for a transformed GOP but would carry it into the future.
With only two years in the Senate, Vance has cultivated a small network of lobbyist donors, even as he often digs into his party’s populist currents, like Trump. He’s worked to woo political donor pals from Silicon Valley, like fellow venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and is friendly to the cryptocurrency industry but has been a skeptic of Big Tech. A former Marine, Vance has defense industry denizens and many GOP lawmakers on alert given his opposition to supplemental funding to aid Ukraine’s war against Russia.
In the 2022 election cycle, Vance raised nearly $200,000 from federal lobbyists, according to a compilation by OpenSecrets.org.
His K Street donors include lobbyists at CGCN Group, BGR Group, Harbinger Strategies, Navigators Global, and the Chartwell Strategy Group, according to lobbying disclosure and campaign finance filings. At a fundraising event at BGR, the firm’s founder Haley Barbour, once governor of Mississippi and a former party chairman, introduced Vance, according to a person who attended and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The political action committees of well-known companies and lobbying firms donated to Vance’s Senate campaign in May and June as his vice presidential stock was on the rise, according to federal campaign disclosures filed late Monday night.
AT&T Corp., Boeing Co., ExxonMobil Corp., US Bancorp, Toyota Motor North America Inc., Greenberg Traurig, and Holland & Knight were among the new VP pick’s donors during the second quarter fundraising period.
John Feehery, a lobbyist and delegate to the convention from D.C., said Vance has “good and responsive staff” plus, alluding to the VP pick’s sometime opposition to business, “an outlook that creates a lot of business for K Street.”
K&L Gates lobbyist Amy Carnevale, who is in Milwaukee this week as chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party, said Vance “will have strong appeal to the next generation of Americans.”
With Vance as vice president, Trump “will be able to work effectively with Congress” on his legislative agenda, she said.
Conservatives v. Business
Vance, in the Senate, has nurtured concrete ties to conservative interest groups, which are sometimes at odds with business interests, especially on trade policy.
Vance chief of staff Jacob Reses and James Braid, another high-level Vance Senate aide, previously worked at Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Kevin Roberts, the foundation’s president and architect of a controversial policy blueprint for a second Trump presidency known as Project 2025, was holding a news conference in Milwaukee on Monday when Trump announced his pick. Roberts did not try to mask his glee, saying among Trump’s reported candidates for the No. 2 job Vance “was someone that privately we were really rooting for.”
“He understands the moment we’re in in this country, which is that we have a limited amount of time to implement great policy on behalf of forgotten Americans,” Roberts said of Vance.
Tax and technology policy offer an interesting study in Vance’s sometimes nuanced views toward lobbies.
Vance has taken a populist tone on corporate tax policy, saying on his website that he favors raising taxes on companies “that ship jobs overseas.”
Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech industry group, said Vance has been critical of Big Tech, but has been “very open minded” about crypto and blockchain.
Vance has aligned himself with the agenda of Lina Khan, who as chair of the Federal Trade Commission in the Biden administration has put tech giants on notice, but Vance has criticized the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, for being too harsh on crypto.
“If Trump were to become president, I don’t think any of the federal antitrust agencies would change much about their strategies toward Big Tech,” Kovacevich said. “A Trump SEC would be friendlier to crypto than Gensler.”
Short tenure
Vance’s fellow GOP senators downplayed the freshman’s limited tenure. Vance would technically serve as president of the Senate if he ascends to the vice presidency.
The largely ceremonial role typically involves little actual legislating with the exception of casting tie-breaking votes.
“He doesn’t actually need a lot of legislative experience,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who Vance once worked for as a law clerk. “But he can take advantage of the relationships he’s developed to help the president.”
Vance has shown a willingness to cross the aisle on some matters, often against corporate lobbying efforts.
Vance sides with retailers, and against banks, on legislation to limit credit card fees.
A key bipartisan push for Vance has been legislation (S. 576) to add regulations on the freight railroad industry after the major Norfolk Southern train derailment in his state last year drew national attention to rail safety and a visit to East Palestine from Trump.
The measure, which Vance worked on with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.), stalled after advancing out of committee last year, where it has faced opposition from the railroad lobby and corporate-friendly Republicans.
Vance is closest with similarly junior senators who are more likely to share Trump’s populist agenda than establishment legislators.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), another freshman, said he and Vance agree that the GOP is “a multi-ethnic, working-class party and we should be speaking those issues to voters and making sure that we’re advocating on behalf of working families.”
Olivia Gyapong in Washington, Chris Cioffi and Lillianna Byington in Washington also contributed to this story.
To contact the reporters on this story: Kate Ackley at kackley@bloombergindustry.com; Zach C. Cohen in Milwaukee at zcohen@bloombergindustry.com
To contact the editors responsible for this story: George Cahlink at gcahlink@bloombergindustry.com; Bennett Roth at broth@bgov.com
(Updates starting in the ninth paragraph to reflect corporate donors to Vance from new FEC filings.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
