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Music To The Ears Of New Hires
by Bara Vaida
Linda Bloss-Baum, majority counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee since 1999, is leaving Capitol Hill to join the entertainment world. She will be vice president of public policy and government relations for Vivendi Universal Entertainment and Universal Music Group.
Before working for the committee, Bloss-Baum managed domestic policy for the Business Software Alliance between 1993 and 1999. "Linda's experience and energy will add considerable value" to Vivendi, said Matt Gerson, senior vice president of U.S. public policy and government relations for the firm. Bloss-Baum replaces Stewart Verdery, who left the Vivendi post to join the Homeland Security Department.
Elsewhere in the music industry, Deirdre McDonald has been appointed to the newly created position of senior vice president for industry and government relations at BMG, the music division of Bertelsmann.
McDonald will advise and shape BMG's strategic objectives in the areas of legislation, regulation and policy. She also will work with BMG's labels and divisions worldwide to address industry issues, including piracy and other challenges posed by new technologies, and will represent the company to legislative bodies, governmental agencies and trade organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America.
McDonald most recently served as vice president for legal and business affairs for BMC, as well as chief litigation counsel, since joining the company in 1998.
Bush Taps Education Aide, SEC Nominee
Karen Johnson was sworn in last week as assistant secretary of education for legislation and congressional affairs, where she will play a key role in the continued implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Before joining the Bush administration, Johnson was vice president of social marketing and public affairs at Porter Novelli, where she provided strategic public affairs and communications counsel for various nonprofit and foundation clients. She was a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communications before that.
Johnson is a veteran of numerous campaigns and large-scale political-management efforts, including the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, where she oversaw the logistics and activities of the convention's 45,000 visitors. Johnson began her career as a staff assistant for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
President Bush also said he intends to re-nominate Paul Atkins to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an additional five-year term that would expire June 5, 2008. First appointed last July 29, Atkins is a former SEC attorney and was a partner with the PricewaterhouseCoopers accounting firm before becoming an SEC commissioner.
In other administration news, Fredrick Wentland was named associate administrator for spectrum management at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). He has worked for NTIA for 22 years and replaces William Hatch, who retired last year.
TechNet Nodes Host Lawmakers
Two regional units of the bipartisan lobbying group TechNet have held recent campaign events or are planning them for this month.
TechNet New England, the Boston division of the group, held a meet-and-greet session with Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., on Wednesday in Boston. And on June 16, it is hosting a CEO Roundtable with Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., at Avici Systems in North Billerica, Mass.
Texas TechNet, meanwhile, is scheduled to host a fundraiser for House Judiciary Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, on Saturday.
In other campaign news, Andrew Rosenberg, an associate at the Patton Boggs law firm, is planning on challenging Rep. James Moran in the Democratic primary next year for Virginia's 8th District, Influence Online reported last week.
Moran, a former co-chairman of the New Democrat Coalition, has been under fire within his own party since he made pointed comments about Jews. Other Democrats already have announced plans to challenge him. Rosenberg, whose registered clients include the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and health insurer CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, said he will remain at the firm for now and plans to exit soon to work on his campaign full time.
The Republican Governors Association (RGA), meanwhile, recently filed campaign finance data showing that Ed Tobin, a former corporate affairs director at Microsoft, is being paid $250,000 a year in his position as executive director at the RGA, according to PoliticalMoneyline, a nonprofit tracking organization of fundraising donations. Tobin left Microsoft in early 2002. The RGA raised $3.34 million between October 2002 and March 2003, according to the group's filings.
House Democrats Create Security Task Force
Hoping to raise the party's profile on the issue of homeland security, House Democratic leaders have tapped Carolyn Maloney of New York to lead a Democratic Caucus task force to promote their policy objectives and to challenge the Bush administration's commitment to adequate funding of security initiatives in the states.
Maloney represents constituents who were directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As chairwoman of the task force, she is expected to take a much more aggressive approach to the issue than Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Jim Turner of Texas, who has a reputation for bipartisanship. An aide said Turner would work closely with Maloney but added, "His priority is securing the nation and not getting into the political machinations."
Democrats already have pressed Bush for more funding for "first responders" to emergencies, and several aides said Democrats are intent on making the public aware of the party's work on the issue. The task force's vice chairmen are Eliot Engel of New York, and Chris Bell and Silvestre Reyes of Texas. An Engel aide said Engel plans to pursue telecommunications and evacuation issues. A Bell aide said port security in Houston is a priority for Bell.
New Think Tank To Focus On Privacy, Security
The directors of Privacy and American Business (P&AB) have created a new homeland-security- and privacy-focused think tank called the Center for Strategic Privacy Studies (CSPS).
The think tank's leaders will be Alan Westin, a privacy expert and president and publisher of P&AB, and Lorrie Sherwood, executive director of P&AB and its parent organization, the Center for Social and Legal Research.
"Our new center will examine all the privacy and security issues involved in government's expanded demands on businesses to provide customer and employee personal data for anti-terrorist investigations and monitoring," Westin said. "Finding and maintaining the proper privacy balance is vital."
Staff Changes At Qorvis, Microsoft
Qorvis Communications announced the addition of Michael Quint, managing director, to the firm's growing technology industry public-relations practice.
Quint joins Qorvis from Quint Communications, a strategic marketing and communications firm he founded in 2002. Before that, he served as director of marketing at Veritect, a unit of the government-contracting firm Veridian, where he helped position Veritect for sale to RedSiren Technologies last June. Quint also previously served as director of corporate communications at eGrail and as director of public relations for MicroStrategy.
In other industry news, Steve Lipner, who had run Microsoft's security-response center since last December, left the position for another with the software company, sparking speculation within security circles that he may be taking blame for Microsoft's security woes, Security Wire Digest reported last week.
A spokesman for Microsoft told the security publication that Lipner is now heading the company's security-engineering strategy team, a group of 10 engineers who scour products for flaws. Kevin Kean will replace him at the center, which fields and responds to vulnerability reports about Microsoft products.
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