Despite Donald Trump’s promise for better wetland management in the nation’s capital, Washington’s consultant and lobbyist classes have proven resilient to drainage.
The outcome of this month’s presidential election will nevertheless have ramifications across the influence industry. Democrats leaving administration and Capitol Hill jobs are scrambling to find new employment in a very competitive market that’s now bullish on Republican talent and businesses are on the hunt for lobbyists who have relationships with Trump and the new Capitol Hill majorities.
“It’s a Republican town now,” said Ivan Adler, who runs a boutique consulting and staffing firm specializing in placing Washington’s political talent in lobbying, public policy and public affairs jobs. “There’s a real thirst out there for people who know Trump.”
Big business had already invested heavily in Republican lobbyists in the past two years, despite Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, according to an analysis NOTUS conducted of the lobbying disclosure reports from 2023 and 2024. Among Fortune 50 companies, 57% of both in-house and outside lobbyists are Republicans — while about 43% are Democrats, an analysis of the quarterly mandatory disclosure reports shows.
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Still, Washington finds itself in a similar place as it did in 2016 after Trump’s first surprise win. Many Republican lobbyists have never been particularly on board with the MAGA agenda, but they are still useful for clients who need outreach and advocacy directed at the more traditional Republicans on Capitol Hill.
In 2016, only a small number of firms with ties to Trump, like Brian Ballard’s Ballard Partners and Robert Stryk’s Stryk Global Diplomacy, emerged out of nowhere to become lobbying powerhouses, able to leverage their ties to Trumpworld to woo clients.
There’s some déjà vu.
“There’s chaos now because none of them know any of the folks who are going to end up in his administration,” said Chris Barron, a Republican lobbyist who runs the firm Right Turn Strategies and was an early backer of Trump in 2016. Barron has maintained and deepened those relationships through the years, recently posting a photo of himself at Mar-a-Lago with a beaming Trump from election week on social media.
“Honestly, this is a moment where K Street ought to be having a moment of reflection and introspection,” Barron said.
Many corporations keeping an eye on the political winds hedged their bets on Kamala Harris.
There were signs — or possibly hopes — that a Harris administration would be more open and receptive to business inputs into policy proposals. She had never in her career campaigned as an antibusiness crusader. She had developed a working relationship with Silicon Valley tech giants and sought corporate input and guidance when she developed the Biden administration’s AI policy. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, was a corporate executive at Uber and took a leading role in her campaign.
A who’s who of former corporate leaders ended up endorsing Harris — a group of more than 90 prominent business executives that included billionaire Mark Cuban and former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, as well as former leaders from American Express, Time Warner, American Airlines, Starbucks and pharmaceutical giant Merck. While Trump had his share of billionaire backers — including most prominently Elon Musk and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman — Forbes calculated that more millionaires and billionaires were backing Harris than Trump.
Harris put two prominent public affairs consultants into campaign positions: Stephanie Cutter and David Plouffe. While neither is a registered lobbyist, they often do communications and strategy work on behalf of corporate clients through the firm Precision Strategies. In the approximately 100 days that she was the Democratic nominee, lobbyists quickly tried to make inroads into her orbit.
Those bets did not pay off for many companies, and now Democrats are in the political wilderness. That will have a big impact on Hill staffers and administration officials coming out of government jobs. About 4,000 political jobs in the executive branch will turn over, as well as several hundred Capitol Hill jobs, depending on the final tally of lost seats in Congress.
“I think it’s always hard when you lose an administration,” said veteran Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf. “It’s a lot of jobs. When the House or Senate flips, there’s some amount of jobs. But when an administration flips, that’s a lot of people.”
Elmendorf said he expected the employment market to be tight but that there will be opportunities for Democrats to find jobs on K Street — especially given the political volatility the United States has experienced over the past few election cycles. There’s a strong demand for issue experts no matter who is in charge. But not everyone will find a landing spot, he said.
“For some younger people who are generalists, or who don’t have deep ties to Washington, a lot of people leave town,” Elmendorf said.
That said, many firms play the long game.
“Even though the town is all Republican, people realize that things can go the other way in two years,” he said. “If you’re smart, you have a bipartisan firm.”
After all, K Street has more longevity than any one president.
“K Street existed before the Trump administration. They will exist after the Trump administration. It’s the mentality they take into everything. There’s chaos now,” Barron said.
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Byron Tau is a reporter at NOTUS.
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