POLITICO Influence-Armenian activists turn pressure campaign to 2024 primary

With help from Daniel Lippman

ARMENIAN ACTIVISTS TARGET GOP DEBATE: Armenian activists and conservative religious groups are targeting the second Republican presidential primary debate tomorrow to bring attention to the hostilities that broke out last week between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

— The Armenian Youth Federation, which has partnered with the 120,000 Reasons coalition that includes the Armenian National Committee of America and Armenian Assembly as well as evangelical groups like Bob Vander Plaats’ The Family Leader and the Family Research Council, plans to lead a protest tonight outside of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which will host tomorrow’s debate, and the group will run ads during the contest tomorrow night.

— The pressure campaign will come a day after two high-ranking U.S. officials — acting Assistant Secretary of State Yuri Kim and U.S. Agency For International Development Administrator Samantha Power — landed in the region to survey the aftermath of the fighting.

— Azerbaijan launched a day-long “lightning” offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh last week following a 10-month blockade of a key commercial corridor in the region, prompting Armenian separatists’ swift surrender and sparking an exodus and fears of ethnic cleansing, though Power declined to endorse that term, POLITICO’s Gabriel Gavin reported.

— 120,000 Reasons’ decision to target the GOP debate follows a protest outside the White House earlier this month amid complaints that inaction from the Biden administration emboldened Azerbaijan. Earlier this month, a group of bipartisan House and Senate lawmakers introduced bills in each chamber that would declare a “campaign of ethnic cleansing,” end U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan, sanction Azerbaijani officials and increase aid to Armenia.

— “We promised: ‘Never again,’” the coalition’s ad says. “But now 120,000 Christian Armenians are trapped with no access to food, fuel and medicine. It’s being called genocide, one the White House refuses to acknowledge.” It goes on to plead for “our leaders to speak up and show the world our commitment to end genocide isn’t just an empty promise.”

— The 30-second spot will air inside the Beltway on Fox Business Network and Fox News during the debate as well as within the Beltway on MSNBC and CNN during the networks’ post-debate coverage. It will also air everywhere on the Rumble, the debate’s right-wing streaming partner. In addition, the group also plans to digitally target the Reagan Library during tomorrow’s debate in order to reach the spin room and the staffers on site.

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MEHLMAN’S LATEST: Mehlman Consulting’s Bruce Mehlman is out with the latest of his famous slide decks, this one focusing on possible answers to dozen questions to watch over the next 13 months. That includes, of course, a potential rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the presidential election — “the least anticipated sequel since ‘Caddyshack 2’” — in addition to gaming out how productive this Congress will be, what’s next in U.S.-China relations and the culture wars.

STREAMERS FORM A TRADE GROUP: “The world’s biggest streaming companies are coming together to launch the industry’s first unified coalition, the Streaming Innovation Alliance,” Axios’ Sara Fischer reports.

— “The new group is led by two former policymakers acting as senior advisers: former Republican Rep. Fred Upton and former Democratic Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acting chair Mignon Clyburn,” and the group’s board comprises “the biggest streaming companies in the world, including Netflix, Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, Comcast’s Peacock, Disney, TelevisaUnivision and Univision’s ViX, as well as smaller, niche streamers, such as ForUsByUs Network, Vault and AfroLandTV.”

— “Noticeably missing from the group,” which Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin helped organize, are “Apple, Amazon and a few of the major ad-supported streaming companies such as Roku and Tubi.”

— SIA’s formation follows a honeymoon period of sorts for streamers, which had previously faced few regulatory threats up but is now pushing back on efforts to lump the industry in with social media platforms like TikTok in kids’ online safety legislation and is squaring off with local broadcasters over how their programming is distributed on streaming services.

VENN PROMOTES OLSON TO PRESIDENT: Venn Strategies has elevated Erik Olson to president of the firm as it looks to continue its rapid growth. Olson first joined Venn in 2013 as a principal, and added the title of COO in 2018. Before joining the firm, he was a longtime staffer for now-fellow K Streeter Ron Kind on the Hill.

— “We are … four times our size that we were when Eric joined 10 years ago,” firm founder and CEO Stephanie Silverman said in an interview. “We have a lot more clients, more people, we have practices that we didn’t have. And we need more senior leadership, not just to manage the day to day, but to think about, you know, managing intentionally and strategically for the next 10 years. And in my mind, that required a partnership — Eric has been the best of partners for the last decade.”

— Jon Pyatt, who joined Venn earlier this year after serving as chief of staff to former Rep. Cheri Bustos, will take over Olson’s responsibilities overseeing the firm’s day-to-day management.

AKIN GUMP ADDS SPACE LOBBYIST: Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld is the latest firm on K Street building up its space lobbying chops. Michael Mineiro, a former staffer on Akin Gump lobbyist Lamar Smith’s House Science Committee, is joining the firm as senior counsel in the telecom, media and technology practice. Mineiro was most recently senior vice president of legal, regulatory and government affairs at HawkEye 360, and has held a number of executive branch roles pertaining to space policy.

— He served as a senior policy analyst and liaison to the National Space Council during the Trump administration, where he led interagency policy development efforts, including on commercial uses of space. He also worked in NOAA’s Office of General Counsel and its National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

CALIFORNIA, HERE (FUNDRAISERS) COME: POLITICO’s Melanie Mason reports that this week’s breakthrough in contract negotiations between the screenwriters’ union and major studios could end a drought of something besides scripted TV programming: Hollywood political fundraisers.

— “Hollywood has long acted as a kind of high-limit ATM machine spitting out over $100 million dollars into state and national campaign coffers during major election cycles. A sizable amount of that cash dried up as the labor stoppage dragged on and candidates feared that holding fundraisers in Los Angeles would be bad optics,” per Melanie. “Some local campaigns blame the industry’s woes for causing them to fall as much as 25 percent short of projections.”

— “So far in the 2024 cycle, the impact of the strikes has been felt up and down the ballot, from Los Angeles City Council races to President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Biden, whose donor base is so entwined with the entertainment industry that Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg has an official role as campaign co-chair, avoided the Los Angeles fundraising circuit entirely in deference to striking workers.”

— Biden’s campaign is still treading lightly with the writers’ agreement not yet ratified and actors still picketing, and while finance chair Chris Korge maintained that the strikes hadn’t significantly dented the campaign’s fundraising, “it is undeniably inconvenient when the second-largest city in the country is a fundraising no-go zone for the president much of the year,” Melanie writes.

OPTIMAL DEBUTS TARGETING TECH FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Political media firm Optimal has staffed up to bring its programmatic ad targeting prowess from the ballot box to its public affairs offerings. Katy McKegney and KJ Jones will help with the launch of its new platform, Deploy, which the firm hopes will grow its existing public affairs practice.

— The platform includes enhancements to the data integration and audience targeting already offered by Optimal to political campaigns, “tooling it for public affairs clients to make sure that if a company is trying to affect legislation or public opinion, we’re able to get their message in front of the right audience in a very easy-to-use, efficient way,” Mark Jablonowski, Optimal’s president of politics and public affairs, told PI.

— “For us specifically, we’ve invested so much time, money and effort into the technology that underpins this, that we felt this was really just an opportune time to bring it to the public affairs market,” he said. Jablonowski added that Deploy’s technology could work for a broad range of goals, but offered up influencing shareholder or legislative committee votes as prime examples of where it could especially come in handy.

SPOTTED at an after party honoring Congressional Black Caucus chiefs of staff on Saturday at the French ambassador’s residence, per a PI tipster: French Ambassador Laurent Bili and Sabine Bili, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Yebbie Watkins of Rep. Jim Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) office, Michael Reed of Rep. Katherine Clark’s (D-Mass.) office, Erica Lowe of the White House, Kim Tignor of the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice and Take Creative Control, Eyang Garrison of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Chanelle Hardy of Google, Tony West of Uber, John Mason of Altria, Mignon Clyburn, Lyndon Boozer of Capitol Counsel, Colette Honorable of Exelon, Lance Mangum of FedEx, Michael Collins of Starbucks, Ed Hubbard of the Renewable Fuels Association, Gerry Harrington of Capitol City Group, Nicole Venable of Invariant and Virgil Miller of Akin Gump.

— Finseca, which represents financial security professionals, is promoting Jen Fox to lead its federal affairs team. Fox previously headed up the trade group’s political affairs operations and is a National Restaurant Association and Engine Advocacy alum.

— Ripple has hired Lauren Belive as head of U.S. public policy and government. She most recently served as director of government affairs at SoftBank Group and is a Zoom, Lyft and Obama White House alum.

— Margaret Franklin and Brett Ewer have joined Michael Best Strategies as principals, respectively. Franklin was most recently a vice president at Fulcrum Public Affairs and Ewer was previously government and public affairs lead for CrossFit.

— Ed Weiler is joining Textron as director of legislative affairs. He was previously a commander of the Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Pacific in the Navy and was previously deputy director of appropriations for the Navy.

— Michael Pape has joined Capitol South as an associate. He was most recently director of business development for VillageMD and is a Kentucky GOP and Ed Whitfield alum.

— John Dickerman is joining the Business Council of Canada as vice president for the U.S., the group’s first U.S.-based policy adviser. He was previously head of North America for the Confederation of British Industry.

— Lori Kearns has joined the Investment Company Institute as a director of government affairs, helping lead outreach to Democrats on Capitol Hill and the Biden administration. She was most recently policy director at the DSCC.

— Charity Weeden has been named NASA’s associate administrator for the agency’s Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy. She previously served as vice president for global space policy and government relations at Astroscale U.S.

— Kristy Goodfellow is the new vice president of trade and industry affairs at the Corn Refiners Association. Goodfellow was previously director of World Trade Organization affairs at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Gabe Amo Victory Fund (Gabe Amo for Congress, Rhode Island Democratic State Committee)

Horseshoe Bend Citizens United PAC (PAC)

Alpine Group Partners, LLC.: Xxii Century Group
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP: Brand Engagement Network, Inc.
Cordone Consulting LLC: Produce Distributors Association
West Front Strategies LLC: Rtx Corporation And Affiliates

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