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Lobbying firms that flourished under former President Donald Trump are hemorrhaging corporate clients now that Joe Biden occupies the White House.
Trump campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp.” But his election spawned a cottage industry of lobbyists many of whom had not lobbied in Washington before 2017 selling access to the president. After Trump’s defeat, every one of those lobbying firms saw their earnings decline in the first three months of 2021, and some shuttered entirely.
Matthew Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and a close Trump ally, experienced a massive drop in lobbying revenue. Schlapp’s firm, Cove Strategies, received $180,000 from four clients in the first quarter 2021, according to lobbying filings released Tuesday. That’s down from $420,000 during the same period last year, and $1.1 million in the final three months of 2020, when a client paid Schlapp $750,000 to lobby Trump for a pardon. Two com
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The 2022 election cycle is already making its way into the history books, with candidates reporting unprecedented fundraising hauls only three months in.
In both House and Senate races dating back to 1999, four of the five largest fundraising hauls through the first three months of an election cycle came this year. The extraordinarily early influx of donations indicates that record-breaking political fundraising from the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election is here to stay.
In his first fundraising period as majority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) raised an astonishing $8.3 million from January through March, easily the largest first-quarter total ever for a congressional candidate. That figure was buoyed by wealthy donors eager to show their support: only 2 percent of Schumer’s haul came from small donors giving $200 or less. As one of the most powerful figures in Washington who could face a primary challenge next year, Schumer is a p
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First-year senators who helped Democrats secure their razor-thin Senate majority and will be key to holding onto it are raising big money as they prepare for tough 2022 reelection battles.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) raised $5.7 million from early January through March, his campaign told the Atlanta Journal Constitution Thursday. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) raised nearly $4.4 million during the first quarter of 2021, the Associated Press reported.
That’s even more than the freshman Democrats raised shortly after they launched their Senate campaigns in the extraordinarily expensive 2020 cycle. Kelly raised $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2019, an unprecedented haul at the time. Warnock raised $1.5 million during the first two months of his Senate campaign in 2020. He raised three times that amount from Jan. 26 to March 31 of this year, according to a Federal Election Commission filing released Thursday.
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