ACC NABS POWER 5 LOBBYING TITLE: “The Atlantic Coast Conference spent just over $1 million lobbying Congress in 2023, almost triple what it paid out the previous year and significantly more than any other college athletic conference,” per Sportico’s Daniel Libit. — “At $790,000, the Southeastern Conference more than doubled its 2022 lobbying expenditures, according to a Sportico analysis of disclosure forms filed with the House Clerk and Secretary of the Senate. The rest of the Power 5 leagues realized smaller spending increases or mostly held steady: The Big 12 paid $170,000, up from $100,000 in 2022, while the Big Ten’s $220,000 was slightly less than the year before.” — “The Pac-12, meanwhile, was on pace to match its 2022 spending before terminating its relationship with lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates in the fall, following an exodus of conference members to the Big Ten and Big 12. The Pac-12 — and its subsidiary, Pac-12 Enterprises — finished last year having expended $210,000 on lobbying.” — “Cumulatively the P5 spent more than $2.39 million to peddle influence on Capitol Hill. By comparison, the NCAA reported spending $540,000 — $360,000 on its outside lobbyist, Brownstein Hyatt, and the rest attributed to its in-house government relations director, Dawn Booth. This tally was $20,000 more than what the association spent in 2022.” — “Once a de minimis line item on college conference budgets, Congressional lobbying dramatically ramped up in 2021, following the adoption of state-based NIL laws and the Supreme Court’s ruling for the athlete plaintiffs in NCAA v. Alston.” — “Since then, Congress has seen over 25 pieces of legislation proposed, none of which have even been voted out of committee. This lack of action did not appear to quell the conferences’ K Street commitments. All of the Power 5 conferences have continued to use the same lobby shops over the last several years.” DURBIN TO HAUL IN CREDIT CARD, AIRLINE EXECS OVER SWIPE FEES: “Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday called on the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, United Airlines and American Airlines to testify before the panel in April about credit card competition,” our Jasper Goodman reports. — “The airline and credit card companies have lobbied against Durbin-sponsored legislation that would crack down on credit card swipe fees. Both industries say it would limit rewards programs.” — “Durbin, who introduced the swipe fee legislation alongside Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), said in a statement that the credit card firms have used ‘false and misleading advertising’ to oppose the bill and criticized United and American as airlines that ‘have become credit card companies that fly planes.’ He added that ‘it is critical that the [Judiciary] Committee, and the American people, hear directly from’ the CEOs given their engagement on the issue.” — “The Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents banks, credit unions and card companies, slammed the hearing. EPC Executive Chair Richard Hunt said in a statement that ‘there are consequences — both known and unknown — with’ the Durbin-Marshall legislation and that ‘a check-the-box hearing is irresponsible.” — A dueling coalition of mega retailers that supports Durbin and Marshall’s bill, the Merchants Payments Coalition, cheered the announcement. Stephanie Martz, an executive at the National Retail Federation and a leader at MPC, said in a statement this morning that “there are many questions to be addressed” by the finance execs, whom she accused of making false claims about the swipe fees bill “rather than honestly debating the issues on its merits.” HOW TIKTOK DID IT: “The company that looked like Washington’s biggest villain less than a year ago is now hosting official campaign posts by the president of the United States — a testament to TikTok’s steady persistence in playing the Washington influence game,” our Rebecca Kern, Hailey Fuchs and Brendan Bordelon write. — “President Joe Biden has already racked up more than 6 million views for a Super Bowl-themed video his campaign posted on TikTok Sunday night, making him the first major Democratic presidential candidate to embrace TikTok.” — “Not long ago, political and security concerns would have made such a public embrace of TikTok unthinkable for a national politician. Last March, TikTok looked far more toxic than appealing, as both Democrats and Republicans lined up to hammer its CEO in a prolonged hearing in the House. Since then, however, the app has boosted its spending on lobbying and cultivated influential friends.” THE SUPER BOWL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS: While the vast majority of the high-dollar commercials from this weekend’s Super Bowl were your typical celebrity-powered advertising fare, a handful of advertisers used their pricey spots to either go on offense or defense on some of the biggest public policy issues in the country, which Taylor McCarty Hoover of Cogent Strategies broke down in a blog post Monday. — On offense, viewers saw the advocacy group Patient Rights Advocate tap up-and-coming singers Lainey Wilson and Jelly Roll to call on Congress to crack down on drug prices, the Dawn Project going after Tesla’s self-driving stumbles, and OpenAI investor Microsoft “working to normalize AI, presenting it to consumers as a partner rather than a threat.” — On defense, McCarty Hoover pointed to Pfizer’s ad touting scientific breakthroughs over the centuries, Snapchat’s spot painting the social media platform as more authentic and therefore “less social media” than its competitors, and the NFL’s ads on improving mental health, combating bullying and being a global convener. NEW CRYPTO GUARD PICKS THEIR FIRST TARGET: “The biggest name and the biggest spender of crypto money in the 2022 election cycle is now awaiting his prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy. But new super PACs have sprouted up as the successors to the collapsed Sam Bankman-Fried empire, and they are making their first big bet of the 2024 election cycle: trying to crush Representative Katie Porter, a Democrat running in next month’s California Senate primary,” The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher writes. — “The biggest new crypto-focused super PAC, Fairshake, began reserving television and digital advertising across California in a multimillion-dollar buy late on Monday, and it could be a major player in the race’s final three weeks.” — “Fairshake revealed two weeks ago in federal filings that it and two affiliated super PACs had amassed a combined roughly $80 million in 2023, with most of the money coming from three major cryptocurrency players: Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Andreessen Horowitz.” — “The group is planning a blitz of anti-Porter advertising and had begun booking time in markets statewide on Monday. The ad released on Tuesday begins, ‘Katie Porter plays us for fools,’ and accuses her of accepting some donations from industry executives.” — “It is not exactly clear what about Ms. Porter has drawn the crypto industry’s ire other than her record as a progressive who favored regulating the industry to better favor consumers and made the grilling of a financial chief executive a viral moment a few years ago.” — “‘Californians aren’t fooled: Shadowy crypto billionaires don’t want a strong voice for consumers in the Senate,’ Ms. Porter wrote on X after The New York Times reported on the advertising blitz. ‘They fear people who call out corporate greed, so they’re spending millions on dishonest dark-money ads against me.’ She also quickly sent out fund-raising emails about the ‘crypto-billionaires’ attacking her.” SPOTTED at the Internet Education Foundation’s annual State of the Net conference on Monday, per a tipster: Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), Deirdre Mulligan of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson and NTIA’s Mark Colón, FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Anna Gomez, Heather West and Harley Geiger of Venable, FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, Robert Silvers of DHS, Tim Lordan of the Internet Education Foundation, Maura Colleton Corbett, Amy Schatz, Connor Farry and Rachel Wolbers of Glen Echo Group.
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