Hooray for K Street!
by David Atkins
This brings warm fuzzies to my heart:
K Street is getting its mojo back.
After a disastrous first quarter of falling revenue, most lobby firms saw an uptick in the spring and early summer as Congress made moves on issues like immigration and tax reform.
While the revenue at most shops remains down when compared to this point last year, lobbyists said they are seeing the “green shoots” of a recovery that could blossom this fall.
“This town is slowly coming back,” said Smitty Davis, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Washington’s No. 2 lobbying firm by revenue.
Akin Gump, which took in $8.6 million in the second quarter, is one of the rare firms where profits rose by every metric: Revenue jumped 9 percent over the first three months of the year, and 11 percent when compared to the second quarter of 2012.
Lobbyists attributed the bounce back from the winter months — a slow period that many described as “hangover” from the fiscal-cliff fight — to a growing sense that collaborative legislating is again possible in Congress.
“A lot of clients had taken a step back” in 2012 as legislating gave way to campaign messaging, said Kevin O’Neill, the deputy chairman of Patton Boggs’s public policy department.
Now, with movement on issues like immigration, tax reform and the online sales tax, “you’re starting to see some bipartisan compromise,” O’Neill said, adding that the nature of those efforts are more likely to engage the business community.
Could it be that the desperation in Washington for bipartisanship and just passing bills regardless of their merits could have something to do with the army of lobbyists who want to get paid for corrupting the process?
Nah…
.