11-02-2002

POLITICS: People for November 2, 2002

At the Bar


After 16 years as a legal counsel for Congress, Charles Tiefer knows the
ins and outs of congressional procedure. Now the Baltimore law professor
is taking his expertise to Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, where
he'll be the firm's newest counsel. "It's a dynamic place," says
Tiefer, who plans to focus on legislative work and government contracting.
Tiefer got his start as the Senate's assistant legal counsel in 1979 and
helped the legal offices adjust to the post-Watergate environment. He
recalls looking on the bookshelves for textbooks and finding that
"the law of Congress was largely a mystery." That inspired the
first of his three books, Congressional Practice and Procedure. Tiefer
moved to the House as solicitor and deputy general counsel in 1984 and
remained with the House until 1995, when he joined the faculty at the
University of Baltimore. Tiefer, 48, has seen his share of congressional
evolution: "When I came in the late `70s, Congress did active
investigations, but mostly of federal agencies," he recalls.
"The hearings of Enron and WorldCom and ImClone hearken back to the
golden ages of congressional investigation."


After five years with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Jim Wootton is
departing to become a partner with Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. But he
isn't disembarking entirely: He's retaining the title he has had for the
past three years, president of the Institute for Legal Reform, while
giving up the administrative duties that go with the title. Wootton, 53,
says that Mayer, Brown first offered him a partnership in fall 1999, as a
result of his work on Y2K legislation with another firm partner, Mark
Gitenstein. But, he says, "I decided I would help build the institute
for a period of time before I considered moving into private
practice." Lest the new combination of private practice and the
institute's presidency leave him with spare time, he's in the process of
turning his family's Virginia farm back into a cattle operation. "I
love spending time on my farm and on my tractor," he says.
"Fortunately, I don't have to depend on farming for my
income."


Lobby Shops


The White House's key liaison to the business community is heading to K
Street. Kirk Blalock, currently special assistant to the president and
deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, will join the
lobbying firm Fierce & Isakowitz as senior vice president shortly
after the election. Blalock, 32, is one of the highest-ranking Bush White
House officials to leave for the private sector. "One of the dangers
of anybody at the Office of Public Liaison is to go native and forget
where your paycheck comes from," says one business lobbyist.
"The ones that really do a successful job never forget to be an
honest broker. Kirk is really good at it." Before joining the White
House, Blalock served as director of external affairs for Philip Morris;
as special assistant to then-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley
Barbour; and as special assistant to then-Education Secretary Lamar
Alexander. The hiring of Blalock increases the number of lobbyists at the
firm to six, including its Republican name partners Donald Fierce and Mark
Isakowitz.


Corporate Life


New Jersey manufacturer Honeywell has scored a coup in its search for a
new top lobbyist. Earlier this week, Timothy Keating-the former managing
partner of lobbying firm Timmons and Co.-joined the company as senior vice
president of government relations. He will head the $24 billion
corporation's Washington office. "The company wants to make sure the
decision makers see what Honeywell has to offer," Keating said.
Honeywell is the world's largest supplier of aircraft engines and is
already a major government contractor. Keating, 41, was a top
legislative-affairs aide to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Before
that, he served the House Democratic leadership for five years as
assistant manager of the House Democratic cloakroom. He was the top
Democratic lobbyist at the American Council of Life Insurers before
joining Timmons in 1998. At Timmons, he lobbied for a broad array of
clients, including Anheuser-Busch, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and the
National Rifle Association. Keating said that executive search firm
Korn/Ferry International had recruited him for the Honeywell post.


Interest Groups


The Alliance of American Insurers has a new federal public-affairs
director. Joseph A. Manero, who comes from the American Road &
Transportation Builders Association, said the new post "allows me to
concentrate on media relations, which is really my first love in
politics." Manero has been a political junkie since his early days;
as an undergrad at the University of Texas, he edited a political
newspaper and went on to work on dozens of campaigns in Texas before
opening his own political consulting business in 1998. In early 2001,
Manero and his wife decided to take the plunge and relocate to Washington,
where Manero soon became the political and public-affairs manager for the
road-builders association. The insurance issues are fairly new to the
33-year-old Manero, but he says he'll most likely focus on hot topics such
as terrorism insurance and tort reform.


Physicians for Social Responsibility, a national organization of doctors
that seeks to prevent nuclear war, has brought on two new staffers. Ira
Shorr, a 20-year veteran of the anti-nuclear-weapons movement, is the
group's new national field director. He is tasked with coordinating PSR's
network of medical professionals. "I think they have a special role
as citizens in education for the need to reduce nuclear weapons," he
told National Journal. Shorr, 54, first got involved in the cause while
working as a talk-show host in Tallahassee, Fla. He soon formed the
Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice to address the issue. Then, in
1986, he moved to Washington and spent eight years working for the
anti-nuke group Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy and its successor,
Peace Action. Subsequently, Shorr spent two years as senior producer of
America's Defense Monitor, a weekly PBS program; most recently, in early
2000, he directed Back from the Brink, a coalition working to get nuclear
weapons off high-alert status. Also new to PSR is communications director
James Snyder, a former aide to Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, D-N.Y., and Rep.
George Miller, D-Calif.


HILL PEOPLE


From the classroom to Congress-that's the path Brandi Ballou took to her
latest job as the new legislative assistant for military issues in the
office of Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif. After earning
an English lit degree from Texas A&M University, Ballou spent a year
and a half as a missionary in Argentina. It was there, she said, that she
developed an interest in public service and policy. But Ballou, 29, did
not head straight for the Hill. After she returned from South America, she
moved to Washington and ended up teaching at the Fairfax Brewster School
in Bailey's Crossroads, Va. "I thought it was important to get a
little bit of experience in the classroom, because education policy was
what I wanted to do at the time," she says. But after Ballou snagged
a spot as McKeon's staff assistant, she became fascinated with the
office's military work; when the L.A. job opened up, she went for it.
McKeon is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and his
district includes the Air Force plant producing the Joint Strike
Fighter.


Erin Heath

National Journal