05-18-2002

PEOPLE: People for May 18, 2002

Around the Agencies


"What September 11 taught everyone was just how high the stakes
are," says Jeffrey A. Taylor, the newest counsel for crime and
national security to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. Taylor remembers
where he was that day: He was working "on loan" from the Justice
Department as an adviser to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, on the Judiciary
Committee. Soon he was neck deep in national security issues-an
interesting development in a career that had previously been focused on
drug trafficking. Taylor, 37, said he knew at a young age that he wanted
to become a criminal prosecutor. Harvard law school classes only cemented
that goal, as did, he jokes, "the few years I worked for a
firm." In 1995, he became an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego,
working in the Narcotics Enforcement Section. He investigated more than 50
narcotics cases. Then beginning in 1999, Taylor supervised Hatch's
Judiciary Committee crime-unit staff. He returned to San Diego in January
2002 "only to turn around and come back" to Ashcroft's office
this month to replace Dan Levin, now FBI Director Robert Mueller's chief
of staff. Drug rings and terrorist groups are similar in certain ways,
Taylor says. "They can be tightly knit, clandestine organizations,
and some of the trick is infiltrating them."


Laura L. Cox says she found "an unconventional way to celebrate"
her 33rd birthday-she started a job in the Bush administration. Cox will
lobby Congress as the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for
banking and finance in the legislative affairs shop. She'll tackle topics
ranging from terrorism insurance to accounting standards. Cox, who hails
from Rising Star, Texas, says she caught the politics bug after "my
grandmother entered me into an internship contest" with her hometown
legislator, Rep. Charles W. Stenholm, D-Texas. Cox got the nod for a
summer stint in Washington, and after college graduation she joined
Stenholm's office as a staff assistant and deputy press secretary. She
then directed communications for Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., a senior
member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and for the
late Senate Republican Conference Secretary Paul Coverdell, R-Ga. In 2000,
Cox became a vice president at Instinet, an electronic brokerage company,
where she did communications work and tried her hand at lobbying. "At
Instinet, I was hired to wear a number of hats," she says. "It's
a little unusual to come to a legislative position from [a communications]
background, but it happens."


Political Stripes


"I'm an anomaly in Washington. I'm completely focused on [policy in]
the states," says Kristina Wilfore, the new executive director of the
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center. The mission of the center, launched in
1998, is "to defeat right-wing ballot initiatives and come up with a
strategy to promote progressive initiatives.... The assumption is that,
yes, the Right has dominated the initiative process," says Wilfore.
She is no stranger to the cause: She spent two years as communications
director at the Center for Policy Alternatives, which also focuses on
left-wing causes in the states. Wilfore, 28, previously directed
communications at the Seattle-based Economic Opportunity Institute and the
University of Washington's public affairs school. Upcoming ballot
initiatives involve affirmative action and same-sex marriage. And since
most deadlines for collecting signatures to get initiatives onto state
ballots fall in June and July, Wilfore explains, "what happens in the
next six weeks will be really important." The challenge, she says, is
not in changing the referendum system but in getting the left wing to work
with it. "The reality is that the process exists in 24 states, and
it's not going to go away anytime soon."


Techno-File


Antiques and electronics are just a few of the things one can find at
eBay, the popular Internet auction site. But what Marc-Anthony Signorino
found there was a job, and after a little more than two years-during which
he helped chief lobbyist Tod Cohen open eBay's Washington office-he is
leaving to join AeA, the nation's largest high-tech trade association.
"I had worked with [AeA] closely on issues like Internet
privacy," he says-he plans to follow the issue at AeA. Signorino, 32,
spent a decade helping to manage Forum Provisions, his family's
Boston-based food distribution business, where he dealt with federal
regulators every day. In 1999, he joined eBay and began taking night
classes at Georgetown University Law Center. He passed the bar earlier
this month. Now, as AeA's counsel for technology policy, Signorino will
keep his eye on the anti-piracy bill sponsored by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings,
D-S.C. "The standard today for protecting digital works might be
state of the art, but when a bill is enacted into law, six months from now
it could be old hat," he says. "It could stifle innovation and
ultimately hurt the public."


Interest Groups


Admired by insiders as one of Washington's experts on military pay and
benefits, Col. Paul Arcari has already retired twice: from the Air Force
in 1985 and from The Retired Officers Association in April 2001. But now
he's bringing his 34 years of experience in military personnel matters to
the National Military Family Association, where he'll be vice president
for government relations. For Acari, the scrappy, well-respected but
underfunded Family Association is a major change of pace from TROA, one of
Washington's most potent and well-heeled veterans' groups. "You don't
have a big staff. If you want something, you either have to do it yourself
or get a volunteer," Arcari says. "Yet it's the only association
that really goes out on a limb to protect the benefits of the active-duty
soldier [and] families." Arcari, 69, will work part time for the
military family group while continuing his pro bono work for military
retirees in Maryland.


"If we're going to enjoy civil rights for everybody, we need to
challenge ourselves to create the best educational system and legislative
system," says David Tseng, who will fight for lesbian and gay rights
as the new executive director of the Washington-based Parents, Families
and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Tseng, 43, has spent his career on the
East and West coasts as a benefits and pension policy specialist. During
the Clinton era, Tseng worked first as a Labor Department benefits policy
adviser, then as San Francisco's chief assistant treasurer, and finally as
a White House senior policy adviser and National Economic Council staff
director. Most recently, he worked as a consultant in Washington and San
Francisco. As executive director, Tseng plans to emphasize diversity and
safety in schools. And his benefits know-how will come in handy as he
promotes PFLAG's mission. "If your benefits are stopped or you have a
sick child at home, [the gay rights movement] does become personal,"
he says.


Corporate Life


Transportation policy expert Taylor Bowlden is 3M's newest lobbyist. As
the federal government affairs manager for the corporation's
traffic-control materials division, Bowlden, 42, will follow legislation
related to highways and road safety. What does 3M make for highways? The
most recognizable product, Bowlden says, is "the thing that makes
highway signs and the stripes on the road and the barrels and cones in a
construction zone reflective. We make the element that makes them
visible." Bowlden comes from the American Highway Users Alliance,
where he spent nearly a decade as chief lobbyist. Before that, he spent 10
years as an aide to then-Sen. Steven Symms, R-Idaho, ultimately becoming
his legislative director. Bowlden was a transportation novice when he
first joined Symms, and was assigned to the senator's work on the
Environment and Public Works Committee's highway panel. "I believe we
had our first markup of the [1985] highway bill in the subcommittee a week
after I began my assignment," he recalls. "It wasn't much time
to learn the ropes."


Lobby Shops


After more than seven years on Capitol Hill, David Oliveira is heading
north to his home state to join Cassidy New England, the Boston-based
office of Cassidy & Associates. He will serve as a senior vice
president and general counsel. "There is explosive growth and a lot
of emerging opportunities in the New England region," he says.
Massachusetts has never been far from Oliveira's mind. After earning a law
degree, he came to Washington to "take a hands-on approach" to
public service and soon landed in the office of Rep. John W. Olver,
D-Mass. Oliveira worked with Olver for four years, ultimately becoming his
legislative director. In 1999, Oliveira moved to the Senate side as staff
counsel for another Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Edward Kennedy. Now the
34-year-old Oliveira plans to focus on appropriations and transportation
and, if he's lucky, catch "the next Red Sox World Series." In
other Cassidy news, Geoff Gonella and Camp Kaufman have left the firm to
start their own lobby shop, Gonella Kaufman.


Most people get by with a little help from their friends. Eric Rizzo, the
new director of the Farmers Insurance Group's Washington government
affairs office, is no exception. The 30-year-old Maine native came to the
nation's capital from Boston for a change of pace-and because a friend
happened to have a room available. "I didn't know what I wanted to
do," he recalls. That changed when Rizzo met Taylor Caswell, who was
the legislative director for then-Rep. Bill Zeliff, R-N.H. Caswell hired
Rizzo as a staff assistant in Zeliff's office in 1996. Rizzo next did a
stint as legislative assistant for Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. In 1998,
the then-Independent Insurance Agents of America recruited Rizzo to be its
grassroots manager and to lobby on topics such as small-business liability
and the estate tax. After taking a year off to lobby for the National
Ocean Industries Association, Rizzo jumped back into the insurance policy
world when he met Caswell for lunch "randomly, just to catch
up." For the second time, Caswell-who left Farmers Insurance to
return to his home state of New Hampshire-recruited Rizzo for a
job.


HILL PEOPLE


It's never too late: At a life stage when many Capitol Hill staffers are
moving on to lucrative private-sector jobs, Marla Viorst is doing it the
other way around. Viorst, 33, has jumped from the private sector to the
Hill as the new press secretary to Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. "I had
always felt [working on the Hill] was something I was interested in,"
says the former managing director at public affairs giant Hill &
Knowlton, "but I thought I had passed my opportunity up." After
Viorst floated the idea of public service to her Hill & Knowlton
colleagues, one of her bosses, Jeff Trammell, introduced her to Capps.
Viorst soon decided to take the plunge. "Lois is a fabulous member
who works on things I care about," she says, "and it's a very
family friendly office." With a 15-month-old daughter, Olivia, at
home, Viorst says she was reassured to learn that Capps's chief of staff
also has two young daughters. Looking back on her career shift, Viorst
says, "A lot of pieces had to fall together just right."


Peg McGlinch has wrapped up graduate school and returned to her first
love, public policy, as the new legislative counsel to Senate Majority
Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev. "I'm glad I did it," she says of her new
degrees, "but four years is such a long time to spend away from what
you enjoy doing." Plus, she adds with a laugh, "nobody enjoys
law school." McGlinch, 29, spent two years as an environmental aide
to then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and afterward enrolled in a
joint law and master of public policy program at Harvard University-but
she apparently still had too much time on her hands. How else does one
explain her decision to run a congressional campaign in Cincinnati during
her last year of grad school? McGlinch grew up in Minnesota, where she
started working in state politics while still in college. After
graduation, she did a brief environmental stint with the General
Accounting Office before landing the position with Moynihan, where, she
says, "I started to feel like I was practicing law without a license,
and I thought I'd better go back to school."


Erin Heath

National Journal