03-09-2002

PEOPLE: People for March 9, 2002

Interest Groups


"It's fun to be working with people on both sides of the aisle,"
says David B. Williams. And that's what Williams says he plans to do as
the new director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc., the political
arm of the family-planning organization. Williams, 51, has a long history
of interest in reproductive rights. After covering Massachusetts state
government as a broadcast journalist, he began to dabble in campaign
politics in the mid-1980s. In 1986, voters shot down an
anti-abortion-rights ballot initiative, and soon afterward, Williams
became a board member and media adviser to the Massachusetts chapter of
the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. "That
was the beginning of my relationship with the movement," he recalls.
In 1994, Williams met Massachusetts Democrat John F. Tierney at a New
Year's party; Williams later became Tierney's campaign manager in his bid
for a U.S. House seat. Tierney lost that election but won in 1996, and
Williams joined him in Washington as chief of staff. Williams also worked
for then-Rep. Michael Forbes, D-N.Y., and, most recently, for the House
Government Reform Committee. He will report to Vice President for Public
Policy Susanne Martinez, who joined the Action Fund in November.


The Christian Coalition of America has a new top lobbyist in Jim Backlin,
who has left the office of Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, R-Md., after seven
years as chief of staff. Backlin has already jumped into the fray on
campaign finance: The coalition opposes current legislation because it
would limit the ability of organizations to run ads near election time.
"The Christian Coalition put out 70 million voter guides in 2000,
including 3 million Hispanic-language voter guides in Florida," he
said. "We feel [the bill] is unconstitutional." Backlin, 59, is
no stranger to the coalition: From 1987 to `88 he worked on the
presidential campaign of the group's founder, Pat Robertson. Backlin
served in the Veterans Administration under President Reagan. Following
the Robertson campaign, Backlin worked for the House Republican Study
Committee until 1994 and then landed on Bartlett's staff. In addition to
working on the campaign finance issue, Backlin has been fighting for a
human cloning ban and for the Bush Administration's judicial
nominees.


At the Bar


As an assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General since 1993, lawyer Beth
Brinkmann argued before the Supreme Court 18 times-the most arguments
presented by a woman in the past three decades, according to her new
employer-yet she never lost her reverence for the Court. "Every time
you go up there, it is amazing, and an honor and privilege being there.
You also feel very patriotic-at least I do," said Brinkmann, who has
just become of counsel at the Washington office of Morrison &
Foerster. Brinkmann, 43, will continue to do appellate work, representing
clients before the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit. "The expertise in the Solicitor General's office is
getting into complex areas of law quickly and really bringing an appellate
perspective to it. That is the value-added that I can bring, that
appellate expertise of distilling the issues," she said. The Yale Law
School graduate also clerked in 1986 for the late Supreme Court Justice
Harry A. Blackmun, was an assistant federal public defender in Washington,
and worked for four years as an associate at Turner & Brorby in San
Francisco.


Media People


After 24 years as a Wall Street Journal reporter, Jerry Seib is the new
head of the daily's Washington bureau. Seib, 46, began his Journal career
in Dallas. Two years later, he moved to Washington and, except for a
three-year stint in Cairo, he has been working in the nation's capital
ever since. Reflecting on his 1985 trek to the Middle East with his wife,
then-Journal reporter Barbara Rosewicz, he says: "We didn't go
looking for it. [The editors] came and offered it to us. We gulped really
hard and said, `Yeah, we'll do that.' " After the initial culture
shock, Seib says he enjoyed reporting in the Middle East-until he was
taken prisoner by the Iranian government while covering the Iran-Iraq War
in 1987. "They declared that I was an Israeli spy," he recalls,
and it took some "heroic" work by Journal staffers to gain his
release a week later. Seib is proudest of his work as the lead reporter
during the Persian Gulf War, and of his columns following September 11.
The deputy Washington bureau chief since 1997, Seib replaces Alan Murray,
who now heads the Washington bureau at CNBC. Seib says The Journal's
bureau will continue to adjust its Washington coverage to post-9/11
realities.


Journalist Jon Bowen has-you guessed it-arrived as the new editor of
Arrive, Amtrak's onboard lifestyle magazine, which is based in Arlington,
Va., and distributed on Northeast Corridor trains, including the popular
Washington-to-New York route. Bowen, 36, was formerly a freelance writer
and has had his byline in publications as diverse as The Washington Post,
Runner's World, and Salon.com. He's covered topics ranging from tattoos to
the Tao of office cubicles. Bowen was previously an account executive with
public relations firm Z Comm, the custom publisher of Arrive. In addition
to writing features for Arrive, which is published every other month,
Bowen hopes to grow the magazine's readership and to sustain the interest
of what he describes as the corridor's highly educated travelers in
high-tech gizmos, hip hotels, restaurants, travel, and luxury items. Asked
why he decided to become a wordsmith after college, Bowen joked,
"Because I can't do math."


Political Stripes


Republican political consultant Katie Cook has struck out on her own and
opened a voter-contact company, Direct Line Politics, in Alexandria, Va.
Cook, 42, said she made a spontaneous decision to leave her political
consulting firm, the Lukens Cook Company, where she spent 12 years. With a
background in fundraising, she said, "I figured if I can get people
to write checks, I can probably get them to vote, too." Cook said she
got "sucked in" to the direct-mail and fundraising world after
working on political campaigns in Virginia. In 1983, fundraising
strategist Walter Lukens hired Cook as his assistant at Ann Stone &
Associates, and seven years later, Cook followed Lukens to his firm, the
Lukens Company. In 1998, the name of the firm was changed to reflect
Cook's status as a shareholder. At Lukens, one of Cook's most memorable
feats was assisting the 1996 re-election effort of Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H.
She conceived the mass mailing of a handwritten letter from Smith's wife,
Mary Jo, which Cook said played well with female voters. Now, Cook is
working with Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sen. John W. Warner,
R-Va.


Lobby Shops


Mike Strachn says the part of his engineering training that stayed with
him when he jumped into the policy arena was "a logical approach to
problem-solving, more than anything else." Strachn spent 23 years as
an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers before taking a job on
Capitol Hill. Now he's making another switch, this time to the private
sector, to become the newest senior vice president at Cassidy &
Associates Inc. At the Corps, Strachn explained, "I ended up-not by
design, but just by circumstance-working on legislative issues."
Strachn served as the Corps' legislative liaison before joining in 1994
what was then called the Public Works and Transportation Committee. He
signed on as a senior professional staff member on the Water Resources and
Environment Subcommittee and worked his way up to deputy chief of staff at
the full committee. When Strachn, 53, decided to do policy work outside of
government, the Cassidy firm topped his list of workplaces.


Seven months from now, observant Hill staffers tuning in to Comedy Central
may recognize a familiar face: former Hill aide Aaron Chang. Chang, who
has a new job as the chief operating officer for the Carmen Group Inc.,
took a break to film an episode in Los Angeles of the game show Win Ben
Stein's Money. Although Chang is mum about whether he got to dip into
Stein's game-show earnings, he is happy to talk about his gig at Carmen.
"I was brought on to help steer the firm in terms of daily operations
and budget and strategic planning," he said. Chang came from the
staff of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., where he served for
nearly three years as director of advance. He is joined by a bevy of new
hires at the Washington lobby shop, including Marketing Director Richard
Masterson, who comes from the New York City-based ad agency Ogilvy &
Mather. In addition, longtime Federal Transit Administration engineer
Douglas A. Kerr is a senior associate; former Washington state public
defender Susan Pai is general counsel; and Frank Pugliese, who recently
retired as a Federal Supply Service commissioner, is a new managing
associate.


The data-storage giant EMC Corporation is doubling its presence in
Washington by adding three new government-relations managers, all from
Capitol Hill, to the lobby shop it opened a year ago. Cord Sterling has
spent the past seven years as the lead professional staff member on the
Senate Armed Services Committee's Readiness and Management Support
Subcommittee. Craig Metz joins EMC after eight years as the chief of staff
to the late Rep. Floyd Spence, R-S.C., who passed away in August 2001. And
Dave LesStrang comes from the House Appropriations Committee, where he
served most recently as an appropriations associate on the subcommittee
dealing with foreign operations. He was also a legislative director and
deputy chief of staff for Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. "The company has
seen the utility of having a single voice in Washington," said EMC
Director of Government Affairs Timur Eads. The office is immersed in
topics such as export control law, the alternative minimum tax, and
privacy.


Consulting Game


During the workday, Randy Ihara dedicates himself to his job as the new
vice president of public affairs for Issue Dynamics Inc., a Washington
consulting firm. But he's also dedicated to his hobbies, and he resorts to
what he calls "spare, spare, spare" time to work on a novel
about three generations of Japanese-Americans. "Hearing my mother and
father talk about the internment sparked the idea of the story," he
says, referring to the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War
II. Ihara spends his "spare" time serving as president of the
Substance Abuse and Addiction Recovery Alliance in Northern Virginia. His
"spare, spare" time goes to playing bluegrass music and raising
bonsai trees. Ihara, 58, joins IDI from the Edison Electric Institute,
where he was the vice president for external affairs. At IDI, he'll be in
charge of putting together constituent coalitions on public policy issues.
Ihara previously worked at CSX Transportation, as a staffer on the Senate
Democratic Policy Committee, and as director of policy for Kentucky's
Division of Energy.


HILL PEOPLE


Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., recently expanded his staff by adding
three Evergreen State natives. New press secretary April Gentry is
returning to familiar territory after spending a year as press secretary
to Rep. Dennis Rehberg, R-Mont. She succeeds Joy King, who is now the
deputy communications director for the Ohio State Republican Party.
Gentry, 23, who hails from Seattle, got her start working on the campaign
of Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash. Now, says Gentry, Nethercutt's staff is
concentrating on Appropriations Committee issues, particularly those
involving the subcommittees on the Defense, Interior, and Agriculture
departments, on which Nethercutt sits. Another Dunn veteran, Ken Van Pool,
has joined Nethercutt's staff as a legislative assistant; he'll focus on
health care, education, Social Security, and veterans' affairs. Van Pool,
26, is from Federal Way, Wash., and spent nearly three years working for
Dunn, most recently as a legislative assistant. He replaces Elise
Deschenes, now manager of federal affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America. And 22-year-old Elizabeth Fleming, a former
intern in Nethercutt's Spokane office, has made the move to Washington to
serve as a staff assistant.


Have a tip for National Journal's People column? Contact Erin Heath at
202-739-8560 or eheath@nationaljournal.com.


Erin Heath

National Journal