And round and round they go...

March 16, 2011 — Since January, Remapping Debate has been working with the Center for Responsive Politics to identify associations between the lobbying industry and Congress, relationships reinforced by a “revolving door” between jobs in the U.S. government and jobs at lobbying firms and clients. We continue to add data to each of our sub-projects.

Where are they now?

After the mid-term elections, 116 Senators and Representatives left Congress either because they lost the election, lost their party’s primary, or chose not to run. We can now answer the question “where are they now” for 60 of the last Congress’s ex-Members.

Remapping Debate and CRP decided to also track new positions taken by ex-Member’s Chiefs-of-Staff and Legislative Directors. Currently, we know what 84 of these former senior staffers are doing.

Who is staffing the current Congress?

Remapping Debate and Center for Responsive Politics expanded our joint tracking project to include senior-level staff members of current Senators and Representatives including Chiefs-of-Staff, Legislative Directors, Communications Directors, Policy Directors and Policy Advisors. Were there just a smattering of current staffers who had once been employed by a lobbying entity?

No. It turns out that 150 current staffers held one, if not more, lobbying jobs before taking their present positions.

Tracking the career histories of committee staff has yielded similar results: 46 senior staff members of Senate and House committees lobbied before joining government ranks.