SHINING LIGHT. With the formation of the Congressional Transparency Caucus on Capitol Hill, the openness-advocacy group Sunlight Foundation has formed an Advisory Committee on Transparency to support the caucus' basic mission. Daniel Schuman, policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation, will be taking on an additional role as the advisory committee's director. Schuman has worked at nonprofit groups such as the Constitution Project and the membership organization American Constitution Society. Before that, Schuman was a legislative counsel with the Congressional Research Service. Earlier in his career, he worked as an aide to Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla. Schuman earned his law degree from Emory University in Atlanta. During that time, he did work for two distinctly different organizations: He was a law clerk for both the ACLU and Fox television stations. The Congressional Transparency Caucus is being headed by Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Mike Quigley, D-Ill.
CHINA TIES. The world of lobbying has included some interesting registrations in recent weeks. Several members of the team of BGR Government Affairs (Barbour Griffith & Rogers) have registered to represent the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Though other members of the firm had worked on behalf of AmCham-China previously, the new lobbyists include Stephen Rademaker, an ex-senior counsel and policy director for national security affairs to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Rademaker is a former chief counsel at the House International Relations Committee, now called the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Also representing AmCham-China is J. Walker Roberts, a 17-year-veteran of the same panel. Charles Jefferson, a former chief of staff to Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and an ex-aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., has signed up.
STILLWATER RUNS DEEP. Becky Bernhardt has been promoted to deputy press secretary for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. She had been a staff assistant. Bernhardt is from Arlington, Va., but also has family in Stillwater, Okla. Bernhardt attended Oklahoma State University but transferred to Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., where she graduated with a political science degree on an international relations and criminal justice track. During her time there, she was treasurer for the campus College Republicans and worked for the 2006 campaign of former Sen. George Allen, R-Va. Bernhardt was also a page for Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., in the summer of 2003. "It was really after this summer that I began to develop a passion for politics and a desire to learn the ins-and-outs of the legislative process," she says.
This article appears in the May 1, 2010, edition of National Journal Daily.
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