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A New Congress Means New Jobs
by Heather Greenfield
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi elevated longtime aides to the chamber's power positions when she took her oath of office Thursday. It looks like some of her most loyal staff members will be her eyes and ears at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Pelosi's political director, Brian Wolff, is expected to become executive director of the DCCC, the campaign arm for House Democrats. Wolff, a close ally of Pelosi's, also has served as deputy executive director in charge of finance at the DCCC and raised millions for the party and worked on the 1992 and 1996 campaigns of former President Bill Clinton, and the 2000 campaign of Clinton's wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Adding to Pelosi's influence at the DCCC is her spokeswoman, Jennifer Crider, who will move over to run the communications department of the DCCC.
The start of the new Congress has prompted other new personnel changes as well.
Aides who worked for retired House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., are finding their next gigs. Joe Pouliot, who handled journalists for the committee when Republicans controlled it, will become a vice president for the CJR Group. He is likely to be back on Capitol Hill often in his new capacity as a lobbyist.
David Goldston, the committee's chief of staff, will become one of those journalists, writing a regular column for Nature. He also will teach a policy course at Princeton University.
In other Hill news, Sean Kennedy, who has lobbied for AT&T for the past 2-1/2 years, is returning to become chief of staff for new Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Kennedy worked for one-time House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., for nine years.
He told Technology Daily, "It's a great time to go back to Congress and to work for a freshman member in a Democratic Congress."
In a statement McCaskill said Kennedy's "vast knowledge of the legislative process" and his experience with Gephardt "will be a tremendous asset to our operation."
McCaskill also hired some of her campaign staffers. Deputy Campaign Manager Tod Martin will be her deputy chief of staff, and Adrianne Marsh will be her communications director.
And Mike Sozan is leaving as counsel for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., after three years to become legislative director for Sen. James Webb, D-Va.
In an e-mail to friends and colleagues, Sozan said he "can imagine no better boss than Sen. Nelson. I learned a lot from his example, as well as from his top-notch staff. My plan is to take those lessons with me to Sen. Webb's office."
FCC Aides Promoted To Leadership Roles
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is promoting Fred Campbell as chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. Campbell has been Martin's legal adviser for wireless issues and previously served as an attorney adviser in the Wireline Competition Bureau.
Campbell previously worked at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, where he advised on a broad range of telecom issues.
Catherine Seidel, who has been acting chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau since April 2005, moves over to become chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.
Seidel also has served as a deputy bureau chief and chief of staff for the wireless bureau. Before that, she was chief of the telecom consumers division in the Enforcement Bureau and worked at Bell Atlantic for almost 10 years.
Telecom Group Makes Trio Of Hires
The new president of the Telecommunications Industry Association has announced some hires his first week on the job. Grant Seiffer is adding James Maday, Terry Lane and Michael Nunes.
Maday leaves Capitol Hill to manage government affairs for TIA. He worked for Rep. Mike Oxley, R-Ohio, for the past three years as a legislative assistant.
Lane also is leaving the Hill, where he served as deputy communications director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee for two years. Before that, he covered the telecommunications industry for Communications Daily as a reporter for more than four years.
Nunes will be the new director of international and government affairs. He brings more than 10 years of international relations and trade experience to TIA, most recently as economic adviser to Jennifer Hillman, a commissioner with the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Nunes has worked extensively on telecom issues, first as an analyst with the Gartner Group in Mountain View, Calif., and later as telecom services analyst for the ITC.
Veteran Litigator Joins Software Group
The Software and Information Industry Association has hired District of Columbia copyright and anti-piracy litigator Scott Bain as its litigation counsel beginning Tuesday.
The plan is to have Bain work on existing copyright enforcement and educational programs, and also lead new industry litigations on online auctions and published content. Bain was formerly vice president of legal affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America, a partner at the Wiley Rein & Fielding law firm, and a software engineer at Seagate Technologies.
At RIAA, Bain led industry efforts to limit infringement over the Internet. His notable patent experience includes NTP v. Research in Motion, in which his client obtained a $612 million settlement for RIM's infringement of wireless e-mail patents in its BlackBerry products.
Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA's vice president of intellectual property policy and enforcement, said the association is excited to get a counsel with Bain's credentials. "We are certain that his expertise will enable SIIA to further expand the anti-piracy benefits we are able to offer our customers," Kupferschmid said.
Now That's A House Cleaning
When staffers for outgoing Rep. Charles Taylor of North Carolina finished cleaning their computers to give to the new lawmaker replacing him, there was not a scrap of sensitive personal data on them. Unfortunately, there also weren't any operating systems on them, either.
In a day when data security is in fashion, Taylor, a Republican, left computers for Democrat Heath Shuler that had been thoroughly stripped. "To clean off the operating systems, that's more than just cleaning the files," Shuler Chief of Staff Hayden Rogers told the Citizen-Times.
But Taylor Press Secretary Deborah Potter defended the move, saying the erasures were done because the law restricts access to personal details of constituents, like medical information and Social Security numbers.
The news report said 11 desktops and four laptops were wiped clean, but only eight will have to have the operating systems restored because the older models will be replaced. The cost is estimated at more than $2,500.
Quote Of The Week
"What we really expect out of the Democrats is for them to treat us as they would like to have been treated."
-- House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaking on "Fox and Friends" on Jan. 4.
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