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'Trading Places' In The Telecom World
by Ted Leventhal
Some of the telecommunications experts in the House and Senate have been engaged in their own version of "trading places" in recent months.
Beth Stein, the telecommunications counsel to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is the latest player. Stein has accepted a new position with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, according to sources.
The chain reaction among telecom aides on Capitol Hill began in December, when Daphna Pheled, the legislative director to Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., became the telecom adviser to Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. Chani Wiggins then left Harkin's office to replace Pheled as Stupak's legislative director.
Now Stein has gone to Harkin's office, leaving a vacancy in Cantwell's staff.
In other congressional news, PoliticalMoneyLine.com reports that Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, has registered a political action committee at the Federal Elections Commission even though he is retiring from Congress at the end of this year. The "One America PAC" is expected to be a vehicle for Turner to remain in contact with colleagues after retirement. PoliticalMoneyLine reports Turner's campaign balance at more than $1.1 million as of Dec. 31. Turner is the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee.
And Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., was released from the Johns Hopkins Medical Center last week, where he had been recovering from surgery to remove a tumor from his small intestine, the News Orleans Times-Picayune reported. Physicians recommended that the lawmaker undergo a regimen of "precautionary chemotherapy," a spokesman said. Tauzin has decided not to seek re-election but has yet to say whether he will complete his final term or resign before the year ends. Four candidates have announced plans to run for his seat.
The Return To Justice
David Higbee has been named chief of staff and deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's antitrust division. He previously served in the White House as a special assistant to the president, providing advice on senior appointments and management issues at the Justice and Homeland Security departments, the FTC and other agencies.
Earlier, Higbee worked for Justice as deputy associate attorney general, and before that he was the department's counsel assisting the antitrust division, tax division, U.S. Trustee program, corporate fraud task force and international experts.
Changes In Executive Scenery
Venture capitalist and former telecom executive Paul Stern has been named non-executive chairman of the investment and merchant bank Claris Holdings and its subsidiary, Claris Capital.
Stern will continue to serve as a co-founder of Arlington Capital Partners, a $450 million private equity firm based in Washington, D.C. Before launching Arlington, Stern co-founded Thayer Capital Partners and co-led its $364 million middle-market private equity fund. Stern was chairman and CEO of Northern Telecom, now Nortel Networks, from 1988 to 1992. Earlier, he led Burroughs, which later became Unisys.
Elsewhere in industry, the technology sales and marketing firm Federal Solutions Group has named Howard Stern as its CEO to succeed Mark Hogan. Stern comes to FSG from other high-tech posts, most recently as senior vice president for Federal Sources Inc., where his clients included Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. Previously Stern led public-sector business development and sales activities for Commerce One, Sterling Commerce and other systems-integration companies.
The consulting and systems-integration firm BearingPoint has chosen former AT&T President Betsy Bernard for its board of directors, making her the ninth member of the board. Bernard appears for the third consecutive year on Fortune magazine's top businesswomen, where she is ranked 12th. She also serves on the boards of United Technologies and Principal Financial Group, and she is a member of the International Women's Forum and the Committee of 200.
Exploring New Ventures
Pierre Omidyar, the founder of the online auction company eBay, is preparing to launch a venture to promote social change across multiple sectors of American society.
The organization, still under development, will be called the Omidyar Network and is intended to facilitate investments in for-profit, nonprofit and policy initiatives, Omidyar said recently in a panel presentation at the annual PC Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Iqbal Paroo, the foundation's president and CEO, said in a release last month that staffers have spent the last several months examining different approaches to investing in social change and that "significant work" remains to be done before the network's launch. "We foresee tremendous opportunity in the application of Pierre's entrepreneurial approach in the social sector," he said.
Omidyar invested in and recently joined the board of the event-organizing Web site Meetup.com, which gained notoriety during the presidential campaign of Democrat Howard Dean.
A veteran of the wired world, meanwhile, is leading a new wireless venture on the radio. Mark Walsh, the creator and former director of America Online's business-to-business unit, is now the CEO of the New York-based liberal talk-radio network Air America that debuted Wednesday.
Walsh's online credits include serving as vice president and general manager of CUC International's online group and president of General Electric's online service GEnie. As VeritcalNet CEO, Walsh took that company public in 1999. And he was the Democratic National Committee's chief technology adviser in 2002, and led the Internet operations for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry before heading to Air America.
His broadcasting credentials include a stint as head of new business development with HBO.
Kerry Campaign Sets Online Fundraising Record
Kerry's presidential campaign set Democratic fundraising records in the first quarter of 2004, including a new one-day record for online fundraising.
Kerry raised $50 million in the first quarter, $38 million of it in March, as he secured the Democratic nomination with primary wins. Online donations to JohnKerry.com reached $26.7 million from 245,000 individual donors, including the one-day record of $2.6 million. Dean held the former Democratic record at just less than $820,000 on June 30, 2003.
Meanwhile, Philip Maggi, a former legislative counsel to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is starting his own shop, Influence reports. Prior to his stint with Snowe, Maggi was technology policy counsel for Infotech Strategies. Infotech recently hired Shane Ham, formerly with the Progressive Policy Institute, to work with information and technology clients.
And Verizon Communications has hired a new lobbyist, Emilio Gonzalez. Influence reports that Gonzalez worked with Mickey Ibarra & Associates for the past year and was a special assistant for technology with the Education Department under the Clinton administration.
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