Some of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms raked in unprecedented amounts of cash last quarter. But it’s the upstart firms with ties to President Donald Trump or his administration that have been drowning in lobbying fees, lapping their more established rivals on K Street as Trump’s second term continues to scramble the hierarchy of the influence industry.
Ballard Partners led the charge with more than $25 million in lobbying revenues in the third quarter, shattering the firm’s previous record of $20.7 million the previous quarter. Clients flocked to the firm that once counted White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi as employees.
Ballard’s phenomenal growth — the firm is set to add 5,000 square feet of new office space in the coming weeks, despite previously having moved into larger offices in the last few years — is another indicator of a transformation of lobbying in Trump’s second term. The biggest winners aren’t the massive law and lobbying firms that have pulled together deep benches of bipartisan lobbyists with extensive policy expertise and ties to the Hill and party establishment.
Those carefully curated rosters, aimed at insulating firms from the whiplash of transitions in political power, are being supplanted in value by the consolidation of federal authority within the West Wing — and the select group of firms that might be able to get a foot in the door.
“The industry is in an adjustment year as lobbying needs have changed under the Trump administration in a way not normal for a ‘new’ President,” John Raffaelli, a longtime Democratic lobbyist and founder of the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, wrote in an email.
Ballard is perhaps the biggest winner of all. The firm signed roughly three dozen new clients during the third quarter, including one of Brazil’s top business lobbies, the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, the city of Miami and the Port of Long Beach. It collected six-figure payments from over 80 clients, according to a POLITICO analysis of disclosures and reported holding three of the most lucrative lobbying contracts on K Street last quarter.
The runner-up last quarter was a decades-old mainstay of the D.C. lobbying world, but one that touts its own ties to the White House.
BGR Group, which employs Trump adviser David Urban and previously employed Transportation Secretary (and acting NASA Chief) Sean Duffy, reported $19.2 million in lobbying revenues in Q3 — up from $17.7 million in Q2 and $11.4 million a year ago.
“Every one of our policy practice areas has got something big going on,” said Loren Monroe, a principal at BGR. He pointed to the firm’s leading health care practice, whose clients include marquee drug lobbies, health systems, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, patient groups and providers.
The firm also represents top targets of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, including pesticide companies and giant food conglomerates. It has signed up elite universities whose federal funding has been frozen, crypto firms looking for a light regulatory touch and defense companies seeking business.
BGR leapfrogged two of K Street’s more recent leaders, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which respectively took in $18.9 million and $16.3 million in lobbying revenue last quarter.
Another firm with close ties to the White House, Miller Strategies, jumped into the top five with $14.1 million last quarter, up from $2.9 million a year ago. Miller Strategies is led by Jeff Miller, a top GOP fundraiser who served as one of the finance chairs for Trump’s second inauguration.
When it comes to Trump’s impact on the lobbying industry, the rising tide has lifted most boats.
Brownstein’s third quarter earnings were still a firm record, and while Akin’s numbers were down slightly from the previous quarter, the firm had its best third quarter ever.
Across the top 20 firms by revenue, 14 shops saw their revenue rise by double digit percentages or more, according to the POLITICO analysis and numbers provided by the firms.
Of the top 20, only Forbes Tate Partners and Capitol Counsel saw their lobbying income decline compared to the same time a year ago — and those decreases were minuscule, coming in at 0.3 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.
“I think for a traditional bipartisan shop we have managed this well,” said Raffaelli, whose firm reported a 2.3 percent increase in revenues compared to the second quarter.
Another Trump-linked firm that has capitalized is Continental Strategy, which was started in 2021 by former Trump administration official Carlos Trujillo. The firm’s lobbyists include former Trump campaign aides and former top aides to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Continental reported $8.3 million in lobbying fees in Q3, compared to nearly $400,000 during the same period last year.
A person familiar with the firm’s thinking said that Continental hasn’t needed to do much outbound client prospecting to fuel its boom in business. New business has been driven more by referrals from existing clients, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss business dynamics.
“Our growth isn’t driven by any specific policies or issues — it’s clients seeking us out for our reputation and the talent we have assembled,” Trujillo said in a statement.
Other firms that saw big increases are Checkmate Government Relations, which is led by Trump family friend Ches McDowell; Mercury Public Affairs, a bipartisan shop that’s been in D.C. for over two decades, but which was Wiles’ most recent K Street home before going into the administration; and Michael Best Strategies, which is led by Trump’s first White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
(For the full third-quarter rankings of lobbying firms, read (and sign up for) POLITICO Influence, our newsletter on all things K Street.)
A tariff lobbying bonanza
The gold rush on K Street comes despite the fact that Trump signed the year’s shining legislative achievement — the reconciliation package permanently extending prized tax cuts, gutting clean energy incentives, slashing funding for safety net programs and unlocking billions of dollars for an immigration enforcement — just four days into the quarter.
The third quarter tends to be sleepier for lobbyists because the city clears out for the August recess. But any concerns about an end-of-summer slump did not come to pass.
“I said to someone the other day that if your lobbyist is telling you that nothing is happening in Washington because of the shutdown or because of gridlock or because of August recess … you are missing the forest for the trees,” Monroe quipped.
Efforts to shape how the megabill is implemented are now underway at the agency level. Beyond that, lobbyists repeatedly cited the frenetic pace of activity in the executive branch — on trade in particular — as one of the top drivers of business last quarter.
Brian Pomper, a partner at Akin, said that Trump’s trade policy “has prompted clients from virtually every industry to seek counsel” from the firm’s roster of trade lobbyists, which includes a top trade official from Trump’s first term along with former House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady.
The firm has signed more than two dozen new clients this year to work on trade or tariff issues, disclosures show. They include steel giant Alcoa, Volvo North America, retailers Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co., Kimberly-Clark Corporation and Driscoll’s.
Tariffs were mentioned as a specific area of focus in 350 lobbying disclosures last quarter — triple the number of disclosures that listed tariff policy during the third quarter of 2024.
Even though the chaos that marked the initial rollout of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs in the spring has died down somewhat, K Street will be glued to next month’s Supreme Court proceedings to determine whether Trump’s broad tariffs are illegal.
One lobbyist even went so far as to suggest that anxiety surrounding the tariff litigation has exceeded the uncertainty leading up to Trump’s unveiling of the tariffs, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the president.
Not even a government shutdown has managed to dampen lobbying activity.
Though it has snarled efforts to set up meetings for clients across the government, lobbyists are now working to tweak their game plans for convincing lawmakers to use their dwindling floor time to prioritize their clients’ top issues. There’s a whole host of issues vying for that time: appropriations, a defense reauthorization, tax extenders, technical corrections to the reconciliation bill, crypto regulations, health reforms, AI, permitting or another issue entirely.
“We need to look past the shutdown,” said Will Moschella, who co-leads Brownstein’s lobbying practice. “Because that ultimately is going to resolve itself.”
