July 8, 2019 THE ROARING 2020S: WHAT ISSUE WILL LIKELY DRIVE VOTERS TO THE POLLS? Matter of Fact By Soledad O'Brien Capitalism versus Socialism. President Trump is testing out a 2020 campaign strategy against the Democrats. Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman returns to talk about which economic message voters may respond to at the polls. Read the full article »
June 5, 2019 Trump turmoil keeps K Street busy on trade The Hill By Alex Gangitano President Trump’s latest actions on trade have roiled Washington and global markets but are proving to be a boon for K Street. Lobbyists who specialize in trade have been busy since Trump came into office, and the intensifying turmoil has more businesses turning to the influence world to help navigate the changes. Read the full article »
June 4, 2019 Market shouldn’t overreact to antitrust probes CNBC Mozelle Thompson, former advisor to Facebook and former FTC commissioner, and Bruce Mehlman, tech advisor and founding partner of Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas, join “Squawk Alley” to discuss the impact of antitrust probes on the markets. Read the full article »
May 24, 2019 Trump Claims Democrats Want Socialism, But Many Actually Want To Talk About Capitalism NPR By Mara Liasson President Trump wants to make the 2020 election about socialism, but Democrats are having a debate about capitalism and how to make sure it provides broadly shared prosperity and economic mobility. Read the full article »
May 23, 2019 Sens. Alexander, Murray Release Health Legislation Targeting High Bills, Drug Costs Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email NPR By Rachel Bluth In a year already marked by a wide variety of congressional health care legislation, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., on Thursday released the details of a plan they hope will help bring down health costs and eliminate surprise medical bills for patients. Alexander and Murray are the chair and ranking member, respectively, of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Read the full article »
May 9, 2019 Bruce Mehlman on The Roaring 2020s Matt Lewis and the News By Matt Lewis Bruce Mehlman returns to discuss his latest slideshow presentation: The Roaring 2020s: The Coming Decade of Disruption & Reform. Read the full article »
The Roaring 2020s and The Future of Capitalism Politics Inside Out with Chris Frates By Chris Frates Chris Frates talks to Bruce Mehlman, a Republican strategist and former assistant secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush. Mehlman lays out his argument for the role of capitalism shaping U.S. economic policy and technological innovation in the coming decade. Read the full article »
March 18, 2019 ESTABLISHMENT GATEKEEPERS ARE COMING DOWN; IS THAT A GOOD THING? Matter of Fact By Television Appearance Americans are placing less and less trust in traditional institutions. According to Gallup, that trust has been waning for at least the past 20 years. And that means rising political stars don’t need the blessing of the establishment to win elections. Soledad O’Brien sits down with Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman to talk about the rise of what he calls “permissionless politics” and the potential downsides. Read the full article »
March 15, 2019 Tech giants face new threats from the government and regulators The Economist Software may be eating the world, as the technology investor Marc Andreessen famously said, “but the world is starting to bite back,” says Bruce Mehlman, a lobbyist in Washington. Read the full article »
February 25, 2019 Smaller tax refunds (so far) are a big headache for Republicans Politico By Aaron Lorenzo Sage Eastman of Mehlman Castagnetti, a former longtime Republican aide on the Ways and Means Committee, said, “People were voting in 2018, so you party with bigger paychecks in 2018 and risk the hangover in 2019 and hope it wears off before 2020.” Read the full article »
February 6, 2019 The State of Our Union Fox Business News By N/A Bruce Mehlman appears on Fox News Business to discuss why the state of our union is better than you think. Read the full article »
February 5, 2019 State Of The Union Is Trump’s First Major Speech In 2020 Election Cycle LISTEN· 5:03 NPR By Mara Liasson President Trump will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday night to Congress and the nation. It’s his first major speech as the 2020 election cycle gets under way. Read the full article »
February 4, 2019 The state of our union is better than you think — here’s why Fox News By Bruce Mehlman Stories of Washington’s political dysfunction are legion, the laments predictably consistent. Tribalism is rising. The middle has disappeared. The media crave conflict. Voters tune out. Such sad and overwrought tales make for great copy. They reflect what we feel and they’re often true. Read the full article »
January 17, 2019 Axios AM: Mike’s Top 10 Axios By Mike Allen Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, in one of his hotly awaited decks, says we’re moving toward a “Permissionless Planet,” spurring “mounting calls for new guardrails, gatekeepers or even systemic reform.” Read the full article »
January 15, 2019 The Daily 202: Anxiety about the pace of change animates populist movements on the right and left The Washington Post By James Hohmann Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman believes the defining clash of our time is between people who believe change is coming too slowly and those who believe change is happening too quickly. Read the full article »
January 9, 2019 Democrats seek early victories on drug prices The Hill By Peter Sullivan Lauren Aronson, executive director of the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, said her group has “long supported the Creates Act and other bipartisan, market-based solutions that will put an end to Big Pharma’s abusive practices, boost competition and lower drug prices.” “We’re looking forward to continuing our work with lawmakers to advance these bills and provide relief to millions of Americans,” she said. Read the full article »
November 28, 2018 Looking To 2020, Both Democrats and Republicans See Costs and Benefits of Trump’s ‘MAGA’ Rallies in Midterm Election Results Los Angeles Times By Noah Bierman “People entered the 2018 election with pretty strong views of the president, one way or another,” said Bruce Mehlman, a Republican strategist and lobbyist who publishes a widely read political analysis. “The rallies didn’t change them. But the rallies allowed the president to make the election a referendum on him.” Read the full article »
Lobbyists Target Newly Elected Democrats Politico By Theordoric Meyer and Marianne Levine The number of new Democratic members who have forsworn accepting corporate PAC contributions — which would climb to 41 if T.J. Cox is confirmed to have beaten Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), according to End Citizens United PAC — has made some corporations nervous. Lobbyists have tried to reassure their clients that not all the newly elected Democrats consider themselves part of the progressive wing of the party. “When you look at those new members, there are a lot of moderate members, too,” said David Castagnetti, a partner at the lobbying firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. “They’re not all hostile toward business.” Read the full article »
November 24, 2018 House Results Underscore That What’s Good For Trump Isn’t So Good For The GOP The Washington Post By Dan Balz Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman produced a set of charts analyzing the 2018 election, including one showing various fault lines within the electorate. They include divisions based on race, age, gender, education and geography. Race — whites vs. nonwhites — remains the biggest divide of all. But geography is by far the fastest growing, and now the urban-rural divide is almost as wide as the divide between whites and nonwhites. Read the full article »
November 16, 2018 The Midterms Destroyed Some Conventional Wisdom The Washington Post By Jennifer Rubin Axios reports that a post-election analysis from consultants found, “Democrats won 87% of the Congressional districts with the most college-educated women (40%+ of female residents).” One of the consultants, Bruce Mehlman, is quoted as saying, “The new geography of Trump Era partisanship is turning suburban congressional districts into GOP killing fields, more than offsetting gerrymander gains by mobilizing intense opposition among college educated women, the beating heart of the suburbs. Read the full article »
November 15, 2018 Trickle-Down Representation: Will the Most Diverse Congress Make Capitol Hill More Diverse? The Washington Post By Colby Itkowitz It’s well established that when it comes to diversity, Congress has not accurately represented the United States at large. The share of female, African American, Latino and Asian lawmakers is significantly lower than in the American population. The new class of Democrats, with the first Muslim and Native American women ever elected to Congress, is changing the makeup of Capitol Hill. Just look at this graph from D.C.-based Republican lobbyist Bruce Mehlman. Read the full article »
November 14, 2018 Voter turnout for the 2018 midterms was highest since 1914 Fox News By N/A More than 115 million votes were cast in the midterms — nearly half of the eligible electorate; reaction and analysis from Bruce Mehlman, former secretary of commerce for technology policy. Read the full article »
November 13, 2018 Republicans Planning Bite-Sized Health Initiatives in Lame Duck Bloomberg By Shira Stein A bill to suspend the Obamacare mandate that employers insure their workers and delay the law’s “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans (H.R. 3798) won House Ways and Means Committee approval before the fall recess and Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) has said it could get a vote in November. Bringing the bill up for a vote in the lame duck session is “very likely and was always the plan,” Dean Rosen, a partner at Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas, told Bloomberg Government. “Senate action is another matter.” Rosen said he thinks “the elections will really dictate the appetite to do anything big in the lame duck on Cadillac or anything else.” Read the full article »
November 5, 2018 California lawmakers poised to wield power in a Democratic House San Francisco Chronicle By Tal Kopan “It’s extraordinarily important to push back against a president who is very anti-California, and you think about the talented delegation we have,” said Steve Haro, a lobbyist and former senior staffer for California Democrats Sen. Dianne Feinstein and ex-Rep. Xavier Becerra. “The influence and power they’re going to wield and the respect they have of their current colleagues will put California in a great driving position to push back against the White House and potentially get some serious legislation done,” Haro said. Read the full article »
November 1, 2018 The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino Fox News By Dana Perino Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas principal Dean Hingson appears on The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino on October 31, 2018. Read the full article »
October 23, 2018 Trump’s Drug-Pricing Policies Fail to Move the Needle National Journal By Erin Durkin Lauren Aronson, executive director for the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, said the administration deserves credit for the work it has been doing in this area, and pointed to the Medicare Advantage policy as a move that will have an impact on beneficiary costs. “To move major markets takes quite a bit of time and so I think the administration is doing a lot here to try to move the needle,” she said. Read the full article »
October 10, 2018 BRUCE MEHLMAN PREDICTS DC DISRUPTION WITH UPCOMING MIDTERM ELECTIONS The Daily Caller By Evie Fordham Disruption is coming to Washington, D.C., thanks to the upcoming midterm election, a “fraught” lame duck session and a rookie 116th Congress, Republican strategist Bruce Mehlman argued Monday. Read the full article »
Kavanaugh slugfest could boost GOP in midterms, as polls show voter interest rising Fox News By Gregg Re Political headwinds normally work against the party of incumbent presidents in their first midterm elections. According to an analysis by former George W. Bush administration official Bruce Mehlman, in the past 11 such midterm seasons, new presidents saw their party make net gains only once in the House, four times in the Senate and zero times in state gubernatorial contests. Read the full article »
Kavanaugh fight foreshadows a wild lame-duck session and crazy 2019 in Congress The Washington Post By James Hohmann Republican lobbyist Bruce Mehlman warned clients in a presentation this week (entitled “The Chaos Continues”) that the lame-duck session between the November elections and the swearing-in of the new Congress in January could be especially fraught. “We may all miss October come December,” Mehlman told me yesterday. He thinks Nov. 6 is “merely the five-mile marker in the marathon,” and that “a huge hill is approaching.” Here are four questions Mehlman outlined: Read the full article »
October 9, 2018 GOP’s gender gap problem Axios By Mike Allen This was a striking graphic that David Nather spotted in a recent slide deck by Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. It shows how rapidly women have drifted away from the Republican Party since the 2016 election — opening up a lopsided preference for Democrats to control Congress in just the last few months. Read the full article »
There’s Life Beyond the Hill but When Do You Explore It? Roll Call By Alex Gangitano When people tell David Thomas they want to leave the Hill, he asks them to be sure they’ve thought the decision through. “The first thing I always ask is, ‘Are you truly ready? Are you going to miss being in the center of the action?’” he said. Thomas, 47, a partner at Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas, left the Hill over a decade ago. He started out as an intern for Al Gore, when he served as a Tennessee senator, and he was California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s chief of staff for four years. Read the full article »
September 13, 2018 App store challenge among first tech cases likely to go before Kavanaugh The Washington Examiner By Steven Nelson Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is poised for a lifetime shaping the nation’s laws, and no area is more likely to see movement than technology as justices wrestle with how the Constitution applies to modern devices. Read the full article »
September 4, 2018 Axios Sneak Peek Axios By Mike Allen Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas has found a new way to measure House Republicans’ peril: “vulnerability ratio” (net number of seats at risk vs. number needed to flip). Read the full article »
August 3, 2018 What Republicans have going for them heading into midterms Fox News By Dana Perino Bruce Mehlman Discusses what Republicans have going for them heading into midterms. Read the full article »
Midterms in the Age of Disruption By Bruce Mehlman Mehlman Castagnetti Infographics: Midterms in the Age of Disruption Read the full article »
July 30, 2018 Wildcards Republicans need to watch out for heading into the 2018 midterms Politics Inside and Out With Chris Frates By Chris Frates Bruce Mehlman and David Castagnetti discuss their new report “Midterms in the Age of Disruption: What to Expect in the 2018 Elections.” Read the full article »
Wildcards Democrats need to watch out for heading into the 2018 midterms Politics Inside and Out With Chris Frates By Chris Frates Bruce Mehlman and David Castagnetti discuss their new report “Midterms in the Age of Disruption: What to Expect in the 2018 Elections.” Read the full article »
A look at Wave Indicators heading into the 2018 midterms Politics Inside and Out With Chris Frates By Chris Frates Bruce Mehlman and David Castagnetti discuss their new report “Midterms in the Age of Disruption: What to Expect in the 2018 Elections.” Read the full article »
GOP Women Seek to Keep Numbers From Dwindling in the House The Wall Street Journal By Kristina Peterson With more than a quarter of the current 23 House Republican women leaving Congress after this year, GOP women are working to replenish their ranks in primary elections like Thursday’s crowded showdown in this Knoxville district. Read the full article »
July 27, 2018 100 days: Dems have midterm edge, but it’s not historic The Hill By Reid Wilson “Everything politics has taught us in the last four decades suggests you want to be the party out of the White House in a midterm when the president’s net approval is as low as it is today,” said Bruce Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist who closely tracks electoral trends. Read the full article »
July 23, 2018 Dan Coats, the Intelligence Chief, Finds His Voice. Will It Anger Trump? The New York Times By Julian Barnes Throughout Dan Coats’s career in public service, as a senator and now as the director of national intelligence, he has prided himself on working the back rooms, not seizing the bully pulpit. Read the full article »
Midterms in the Age of Disruption Bloomberg Government By Bloomberg Government Midterms in the Age of Disruption Read the full article »
History argues for Democratic Senate gains The Hill By Reid Wilson Senate Democrats have one enormous advantage even as they face one of the most difficult political terrains in recent memory: They are not the party that controls the White House. Read the full article »
Midterm history 101 The Washington Post By Paul Kane In 2012, Sen. Sherrod Brown faced more than $24 million in ads from conservative groups opposing his first reelection. Six years later, the Democrat has been forgotten as outside groups have almost entirely abandoned the Ohio airwaves, vastly improving his chances to win a third term in November. Read the full article »
July 19, 2018 Wave Watch: Surge Indicators for Dems Axios By Mike Allen A series of measures of the national mood, especially presidential and congressional approval, are similar to past wave elections, pointing to a potential bonanza for Dems, lobbyist Bruce Mehlman points out in a new presentation. Read the full article »
June 29, 2018 Mulvaney as chief of staff, boon or bust for budget hawks? PoliticoPro By JENNIFER SCHOLTES and KAITLYN BURTON “I think it’s evident that the administration will take a fiscal hard line on negotiations,” says Mike Robinson, a former House GOP appropriations aide who is now a lobbyist at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. Read the full article »
June 19, 2018 Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas Hires Senior Hill Veteran Steve Haro Press Release By David Thomas Mehlman Castagnetti welcomes long-time Capitol Hill chief of staff and former Obama administration official, Steve Haro, as its newest principal. Read the full article »
June 13, 2018 Mindless Tribalism Infecting American Politics National Journal By Josh Kraushaar This week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll contained news of a disheartening but unsurprising development: Voters in both parties hate the opposition more than they support their own side’s policies. This dynamic, known as negative polarization, is poisoning our politics and contributing to a mindless tribalism. Read the full article »
June 7, 2018 The Most Amazing Breakdown of Politics in Trump’s America The Daily Caller By Henry Rodgers The well-known government affairs firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas did an incredible job of summarizing the current state of play in D.C. politics in a must-read memo published June 4. It lays out 10 important trends that are critical to strategic government relations planning. Read the full article »
April 19, 2018 #MeToo, Social Media, and Keeping an Eye on the Big Picture The Cook Political Report By Charlie Cook Far more interesting to me even this week are the broader changes in American politics and society. Some of the more interesting things that cross my desk are PowerPoint presentations prepared by some of the sharpest and most thoughtful minds in Washington, people like Bruce Mehlman and Doug Sosnik. Bruce, a Republican, and Doug, a Democrat, have watched Washington up close for well over a combined half century, and have acquired the ability to explain political trends and developments in a visually powerful way, preparing slide decks for clients and friends that have developed a cult following among political aficionados. Read the full article »