Washington lawyers and lobbyists at K&L Gates, Squire Patton Boggs and other firms with ties to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., are optimistic they will have his ear as he settles into his new role as House majority leader.
Virginia Republican Rep. Eric Cantor’s unexpected primary defeat this month to economics professor David Brat was unsettling to clients, lobbyists and lawyers said. But McCarthy, who has served under Cantor as the House’s No. 3 Republican since 2011, has the skill to move legislation through a divided Congress, they said.
K&L Gates partner Dan Crowley, who has known McCarthy for 20 years and has raised money for him, described the lawmaker as a “consensus builder who is of the Ronald Reagan mold.”
“He’s very fond of saying, ‘You can’t have too many friends,’ ” Crowley said.
Crowley has a dozen lobbying clients in the financial-services industry, according to congressional records. The list includes Charles Schwab & Co. and the Credit Union National Association.
Although McCarthy is known as an advocate for the energy and technology industries that flourish in his home state of California, Crowley said the financial-services sector would be “smart” to cultivate strong relationships with the lawmaker. Such connections with McCarthy, he said, could help banks as they fight for changes to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—a major lobbying target for the financial-services industry.
Crowley said he hopes to host a gathering “in the near future” of McCarthy and financial-services clients.
“He’s a friend to industry,” Crowley said of McCarthy, a former small business owner who has served for seven years as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “He’s a pro-business, free-market Republican.”
At Squire Patton Boggs, lobbyists are preparing their clients for a House with McCarthy as majority leader. Kevin O’Neill, who served as deputy chairman of the public policy department at the Patton Boggs legacy firm, doesn’t expect McCarthy to change much of the substance of what the Republicans do in the House, still led by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. But there could be tweaks to what the chamber does. McCarthy, for instance, could change the timing for certain matters to come before the House, O’Neill said.
Patton Boggs, which boasted the highest grossing lobbing shop among the 2013 Influence 50—The National Law Journal’s annual survey of revenue in the lobbying industry—has more than 150 lobbying clients, congressional records show. (Squire Patton Boggs has yet to alter the reports to reflect the firm’s name change, which occurred with the June 1 merger of Patton Boggs and Squire Sanders.)
