Capitol Counsel

20 min read

VERIFIEDPRIMARY SOURCES
VERIFIED 2026-03-27
3 primary6 investigative7 secondary

lobbying k-street revolving-door healthcare pharma tax finance defense agriculture bipartisan

related: PhRMA · Lockheed Martin · ExxonMobil · AT&T · Comcast

Who They Are

Capitol Counsel is a mid-sized, bipartisan Washington lobbying firm founded in 2007 by John D. Raffaelli, a veteran Democratic tax lobbyist with three decades of K Street experience. Headquartered at 700 13th Street NW — the entire second floor of a building near the White House — the firm employs approximately 40 lobbyists and generated $25.4 million in lobbying revenue in 2025 from 185 registered clients.

The firm’s name is deliberate. Raffaelli has said it refers to where his lobbyists earn their keep: “under the Capitol dome.” Before launching Capitol Counsel, he built the Washington Group into one of DC’s top-20 lobbying shops at $11.4 million annual revenue. Before that, in the 1980s and ’90s, he ran McAuliffe, Kelly & Raffaelli with then-operative Terry McAuliffe (later Governor of Virginia), representing Philip Morris, Boeing’s predecessor McDonnell Douglas, and the Republic of Turkey.

Capitol Counsel’s defining characteristic within the K Street ecosystem is its exceptionally high revolving door rate: 73.7% of its registered lobbyists are former government employees — the highest rate in this vault’s tracked cohort of top lobbying firms (vs. 64.8% at Squire Patton Boggs, 55.4% at Akin Gump, 53.1% at Brownstein Hyatt). The firm’s business model is access arbitrage: hire the former chief of staff, the former Senate floor expert, the former communications director, and rent out their relationships to whoever can pay.

The firm concentrates heavily on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees — the two most powerful tax-writing bodies in Congress. This reflects both Raffaelli’s origins as a Democratic tax lobbyist and the firm’s expansion into healthcare, defense, energy, and financial services — all jurisdictions of the Finance and Ways and Means panels.

Revenue history (OpenSecrets):

  • 2025: $25.4M (185 clients)
  • 2024: $25.8M (165 clients)
  • 2023: $25.4M (164 clients)
  • 2022: $25.3M (181 clients)
  • 2021: $21.9M (170 clients)
  • 2014: $14.7M (ranked #9 for lobbying revenue, +21% from 2012)

Client List

Top clients by sector (2024-2025 data):

Healthcare / Pharma

  • PhRMA — The central trade lobby for brand-name drug companies. Capitol Counsel lobbies on Medicare drug pricing, FDA regulation, and patent protections on PhRMA’s behalf.
  • Amgen Inc — Major biologic drug manufacturer; lobbied on drug pricing and Medicare reimbursement.
  • Roche Holdings (Genentech Inc) — Biotech giant; lobbied on Medicare drug pricing and oncology reimbursement.
  • Bayer AG / GSK plc / H. Lundbeck — Major pharmaceutical companies; lobbied on pricing, FDA regulation, Medicare.
  • Healthcare Leadership Council — Industry group representing major health insurers and drug companies; explicitly opposed to universal healthcare. Jonathan Kott, former Manchin aide, personally lobbied for HLC on drug pricing.
  • American Health Care Assn ($240,000 / 2025) — Nursing homes and long-term care; Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement.
  • American College of Emergency Physicians / American Academy of Ophthalmology / American Physical Therapy Assn — Specialty physician groups lobbying on reimbursement rates and scope of practice.
  • PBM Accountability Project — Coalition lobbying against pharmacy benefit managers; drug distribution policy.

Finance / Banking

  • Investment Co Institute — Trade association for mutual funds and ETFs; retirement savings, financial regulation, capital gains tax policy.
  • American Bankers Assn ($160,000 / 2025) — Banking regulation, deposit insurance, Basel capital requirements.
  • Capital One Financial / Truist Financial / Huntington Bancshares / US Bancorp — Regional and national banks; CFPB oversight, fintech regulation.
  • Franklin Resources (Franklin Templeton Investments) — Major asset manager; tax and financial regulation.
  • Reinsurance Assn of America — Insurance industry; catastrophic risk policy.

Energy / Utilities

  • Exelon Business Services — Largest U.S. nuclear power operator; lobbied on energy tax credits, nuclear production tax credits, transmission policy.
  • American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — Oil refinery trade group. Jonathan Kott lobbied for AFPM after joining from Manchin’s office in 2021.
  • ExxonMobil (via Kott, 2021) — Kott registered to lobby Exxon on energy issues immediately after joining Capitol Counsel from Manchin’s staff.
  • Edison Electric Institute — Electric utility trade group; transmission and rate policy.
  • Innergex Renewable Energy / FuelCell Energy / Plus Power — Renewable energy developers; production tax credits, grid interconnection.

Defense / Aerospace

  • Lockheed Martin — Largest U.S. defense contractor; Capitol Counsel lobbies on defense appropriations and procurement. Listed on the firm’s client roster for multiple consecutive years.
  • Blue Origin — Jeff Bezos’s space company; lobbied on NASA contracts and Space Force procurement.

Telecom / Media

  • AT&T Inc — Telecommunications regulation, broadband policy, spectrum allocation.
  • Comcast Corp — Cable broadband, telecommunications regulation, content policy.
  • NCTA — The Internet & Television Assn — Cable industry trade group; broadband and net neutrality policy.
  • Fox Corp — Jonathan Kott personally lobbied for Fox Corporation on “corporate tax issues” beginning June 2021.
  • Paramount Skydance / Verizon Communications — Media and telecom.

Other Major Clients

  • Walmart Inc — Retail regulation, labor, trade policy, supply chain.
  • Delta Air Lines — Airline regulation, slot rules, consumer protection.
  • Intuit Inc — Tax software; lobbied on IRS direct-file proposals that would compete with TurboTax and H&R Block.
  • National Assn of Realtors — Real estate tax deductions, mortgage interest deduction.
  • British American Tobacco (Reynolds American) — Tobacco regulation; FDA oversight.
  • TransUnion LLC — Credit bureau regulation, CFPB oversight, consumer data standards.
  • Government of Ontario / Government of Alberta — Foreign government representation (multiple years).

The Revolving Door

Capitol Counsel was architecturally designed around the revolving door. With 73.7% of its 38 registered lobbyists (2024) being former government employees, the firm’s core product is access and relationships built on the public dime.

Josh Kardon — Partner (joined January 2014)

Former Government Position: Chief of Staff to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) for 17 years (also served as Legislative Director/Press Secretary and energy/environmental advisor to then-Rep. Barbara Boxer). Lobby Focus: Trade, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, financial services. Key Clients: Comcast, Delta Air Lines, Nike, NCTA, National Assn of Real Estate Investment Trusts, Paramount Skydance. Why It Matters: Wyden chairs or ranks on the Senate Finance Committee — the most powerful tax and healthcare policy body in Congress. Kardon spent 17 years cultivating those relationships. Roll Call headlined his hire: “The Beginning of Wyden World?”

Jonathan Kott — Partner (joined June 2021)

Former Government Position: Senior Advisor and Communications Director, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) for 7 years; simultaneously Communications Director for Senator Chris Coons (D-DE). Between Hill stints, ran dark money group Big Tent Project Fund ($12M+ raised) attacking Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary. Lobby Focus: Energy, healthcare, media, telecom. Key Clients: ExxonMobil, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Healthcare Leadership Council, Biogen, Fox Corporation, Delta Air Lines, Exelon, PBM Accountability Project, International Franchise Assn. Why It Matters: Manchin was the decisive swing vote during Democrats’ 2021-2022 reconciliation window. Kott’s Manchin access — and his media credibility as a “Manchin whisperer” invited onto cable news to explain his former boss’s votes — made him uniquely valuable to energy and pharma clients whose priority was weakening the Inflation Reduction Act.

Martin Gold — Partner (joined late 2014)

Former Government Position: Counsel to Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker (R-TN) and Bill Frist (R-TN). Republican staff director and counsel to the Senate Rules Committee. Professional staff member, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Recognized parliamentary expert; authored major reference work on Senate practice. Lobby Focus: Healthcare, pharmaceutical, financial regulation. Key Clients: Roche/Genentech, Healthcare Leadership Council, Physicians Advocacy Institute, Franklin Resources, Zai Lab. Why It Matters: Gold is not a typical revolving door hire — he is a Senate rules and procedure expert. His value to clients is knowing exactly how legislation can be blocked, amended, or advanced through parliamentary strategy. Former Republican Senate leadership access completes the firm’s bipartisan coverage.

Hon. Pat Roberts — Partner (joined February 2021)

Former Government Position: U.S. Senator (R-KS), 1997-2021. Chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. First member of Congress ever to chair both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees. Lobby Focus: Agriculture, defense, healthcare, intelligence community interests. Key Clients: Lockheed Martin, Comcast, Cook Inlet Assn (Alaska Native corporation), Colorado State University, agricultural interests. Why It Matters: Roberts joined Capitol Counsel within weeks of retiring from the Senate after 24 years — a textbook revolving door. His Agriculture and Intelligence Chairmanships cover two of Capitol Counsel’s most valuable client sectors. The 2-year cooling-off period applies only to direct lobbying of former colleagues; strategy and client consultation can begin immediately.

Hon. Jim McCrery — Partner (joined January 2009)

Former Government Position: Republican Congressman, Louisiana’s 4th District (1988-2009). Ranking Member on the House Ways and Means Committee. Lobby Focus: Tax, trade, healthcare — all Ways and Means jurisdiction. Why It Matters: McCrery’s arrival in 2009 was the catalyst for Capitol Counsel’s bipartisan expansion. The Washington Post named him one of four “lobbyists to watch” in 2010 after the Republican House takeover. His Ways and Means background made the firm credible to finance, pharma, and energy clients who need tax policy expertise. According to founder Raffaelli, McCrery’s style and personality “permeate the firm.”

Shannon Finley — Founding Partner

Former Government Position: 8 years as political advisor to Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) — national finance director for his 2002 re-election campaign and director of Glacier PAC; later political director. Baucus chaired the Senate Finance Committee during the ACA negotiations. Lobby Focus: Healthcare, taxes, financial services, political strategy. Why It Matters: Baucus was chairman of Finance during the most consequential healthcare legislation in a generation. Finley’s network through the Baucus orbit and Democratic Finance Committee pipeline remains active throughout healthcare policy.

Alan Hill — Of Counsel (joined January 2026)

Former Government Position: Decades in executive leadership at the intersection of government and industry; key role advancing legislation across House Energy and Commerce Committee jurisdiction; spearheaded the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Current Role: Founder, J.A. Hill Group, LLC; Of Counsel, Capitol Counsel. Lobby Focus: Communications, technology, energy, advanced materials and manufacturing. Why It Matters: Hill brings Energy and Commerce Committee depth to Capitol Counsel’s roster at precisely the moment that committee’s jurisdiction — broadband, spectrum, AI, energy transition — is being reshaped by the second Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. His addition fills a specific gap in the firm’s committee coverage and expands its technology and energy manufacturing practice.

What They Deliver

Capitol Counsel’s client outcomes cluster around Finance Committee and Ways and Means jurisdiction: drug pricing, tax structure, appropriations, Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement, and financial regulation.

Drug Pricing / Medicare Negotiation (2021-2022): Capitol Counsel represented PhRMA and multiple individual pharmaceutical companies (Amgen, Roche/Genentech, Bayer, GSK, Biogen) during the Inflation Reduction Act negotiations. The final IRA severely constrained Medicare drug price negotiation: limited to a small initial list, with extensive carve-outs for biologics and small-molecule exclusions. Partner Kott personally lobbied for the Healthcare Leadership Council and Biogen on drug pricing specifically during the negotiation window.

ExxonMobil / Fossil Fuel Protection (2021): Within months of Kott joining from Manchin’s staff, he was registered as a lobbyist for ExxonMobil and AFPM — lobbying on energy issues as Manchin was simultaneously blocking Build Back Better’s climate provisions. The alignment between Kott’s client roster and Manchin’s obstruction was documented by The Lever, CNBC, and Jacobin.

Intuit / Free Federal Tax Filing (ongoing): Intuit (TurboTax parent) is a Capitol Counsel client. The firm has consistently lobbied to protect Intuit’s market from competition by a free IRS-run filing system. This is a documented industry campaign: the Free File Alliance’s lobbying has successfully delayed a government-run alternative for years, protecting ~$1 billion in Intuit annual consumer revenue.

Lockheed Martin Defense Appropriations (ongoing): Capitol Counsel has maintained Lockheed Martin as a multi-year client. Lockheed is the single largest recipient of U.S. defense appropriations; it receives roughly $50+ billion annually in government contracts. The lobbying is directed at the appropriations committees where former Senate Agriculture/Intelligence Chairman Roberts has significant relationships.

Rubicon Strategy Partnership — Canada-U.S. Trade/Tariff Navigation (January 2025): On January 7, 2025 — the same week Trump was inaugurated and tariff threats against Canada began escalating — Capitol Counsel announced an exclusive partnership with Rubicon Strategy Inc., one of Canada’s top government relations firms. The partnership created a joint practice specifically designed to help clients navigate Trump’s tariff regime and U.S.-Canada regulatory disputes. The timing is analytical: the partnership was announced before Trump even took office, suggesting Capitol Counsel had pre-positioned for the trade disruption. Clients operating across the border — particularly in energy, manufacturing, and agriculture — now have a single firm with senior relationships in both Ottawa and Washington. This is the “bipartisan access machine” model applied not between U.S. parties but between the two national governments that are increasingly in conflict.

Collective Strategies Partnership — Wildfire Crisis Lobbying (March 2026): In March 2026, Capitol Counsel announced a strategic partnership with Collective Strategies, a public affairs firm focused on the wildfire policy space. The partnership targets the intersection of federal emergency management, forest service appropriations, and climate-related infrastructure funding — all of which were acute political battlegrounds in 2025-2026 as the Los Angeles fires and subsequent policy debates put wildfire response at the center of federal appropriations fights. This is Capitol Counsel expanding its appropriations access into emerging disaster-sector lobbying, where FEMA, USFS, and Interior Department relationships are the core asset.

The Bipartisan Model

Capitol Counsel was built as a deliberate bipartisan access machine — not by accident but by design. Founder Raffaelli initially launched with only one Republican (healthcare expert Denise Henry Morrisey). McCrery’s arrival in 2009 threw the bipartisan expansion into overdrive. The firm now maintains a near-equal party split among its lobbyists.

The model: no client should ever worry about which party controls which chamber. When Republicans took the House in 2010, Capitol Counsel was already prepared with McCrery. When Democrats flipped the Senate in 2020, Kott arrived carrying Manchin and Coons access. When agricultural and intelligence relationships were needed, Pat Roberts came aboard. When Senate floor procedure became critical — a tool for both advancing and blocking legislation — Martin Gold, counsel to two Republican Senate Majority Leaders, was available.

The bipartisan model also serves a media function: Capitol Counsel lobbyists, particularly Kott, are regularly invited onto cable news to provide “objective” analysis of former bosses. This amplifies the firm’s perceived credibility while providing free, on-air advocacy for the political conditions that benefit corporate clients.

Money

Capitol Counsel’s 73.7% revolving door rate is the highest in this vault’s tracked lobbying cohort. Revenue grew from $0 in 2007 to $25.4M in 2025 — tripling in its first seven years, sustaining above $22M/year since 2021. With 38 lobbyists, that’s approximately $680,000 in revenue per lobbyist per year. The business model is simple: former government employees sell access to their former offices. The higher the former position, the higher the billing rate. A former Senate Majority Leader’s counsel is worth more than a junior House staffer. Capitol Counsel found the people at the top and hired them.

Lobbying-to-Policy Timeline

DateRecipient/TargetAmountPolicy ReturnTime Gap
Jan 2009House Ways and Means Committee (via McCrery hire)McCrery joins; revenue grows $1.7M in first yearBipartisan coverage achieved; firm survives 2010 House flip with Republican relationships already in placeImmediate; 12 months to revenue impact
Jan 2014Senate Finance Committee / Wyden orbit (via Kardon hire)Firm reaches $14.7M / #9 lobby revenue nationally (21% growth)Trade and telecom clients gain Finance Committee access; firm positions for ACA implementation lobbyingImmediate on hire
Q3 2021Senate Energy committees / Manchin orbit (ExxonMobil via Kott)$10,000 ExxonMobil contract; AFPM billing undisclosedManchin’s Build Back Better obstruction aligns with Exxon/AFPM lobbying; fossil fuel provisions strippedWithin 3 months of Kott hire
2021–2022Senate Finance / HELP committees (Healthcare Leadership Council via Kott)HLC billing undisclosed; multiple Capitol Counsel lobbyists on healthcareIRA drug pricing limited to small initial drug list; biologics carve-out maintained; HLC core priorities preserved12–18 months
Feb 2021Senate Agriculture / Intelligence / Defense (via Roberts hire)Roberts joins weeks after Senate retirementAgriculture and defense client relationships monetized immediately; Lockheed and Comcast gain former Senate Intel Chair accessWithin weeks of retirement
2021–presentCongressional tax-writers / IRS (Intuit via multiple lobbyists)$80,000–$120,000 annual Intuit billingIRS Direct File program delayed and scoped narrowly; paid TurboTax market position protectedOngoing
2022–2025House/Senate Appropriations (Lockheed Martin via multiple)Multi-year Lockheed client relationshipDefense appropriations maintained; Lockheed contract revenues stable at $50B+/yearOngoing
2024–2025Senate Commerce / Federal Communications (Fox Corp, AT&T, Comcast, NCTA via multiple)Combined telecom/media client billing (multiple seven-figure relationships)Telecom merger review, spectrum policy, and broadband regulation outcomes favor clients; net neutrality remains contestedOngoing
Jan 2025USTR / Ways & Means / Finance (Canada-US trade clients via Rubicon partnership)Partnership structure; client billing undisclosedCross-border trade and tariff navigation service launched as Trump threatened 25% Canadian tariffs; clients gain joint Ottawa+DC coveragePre-positioned before inauguration
Mar 2026FEMA / USFS / Interior (wildfire policy clients via Collective Strategies partnership)Partnership structure; client billing undisclosedWildfire response appropriations and forest management legislation lobbied post-LA fires; emerging disaster sector practice launchedOngoing

Money

The Kott-Manchin revolving door timeline is Capitol Counsel’s most documented access-to-outcome sequence. Kott left Manchin’s office in late 2019. He ran the Big Tent Project Fund, raising $12M to crush Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign — specifically attacking Medicare for All as a middle-class tax hike. He returned to advise Coons on Biden’s COVID relief and second impeachment. Then he joined Capitol Counsel in June 2021 and within weeks registered to lobby for ExxonMobil, AFPM, and the Healthcare Leadership Council. The three client industries his former boss Manchin was simultaneously protecting through Build Back Better obstruction. The revolving door doesn’t just create access — it creates an ideological pipeline. The former aide who spent years helping moderate Democrats explain away their corporate votes becomes the lobbyist who helps corporations protect the politicians doing the protecting.

Billing vs. Outcomes

At $25.4M across 185 clients (2025), the average Capitol Counsel billing is approximately $137,000/year per client. The disparity between large and small clients is significant. Major corporate clients (AT&T, Comcast, Delta, Lockheed, PhRMA member companies) likely pay seven figures annually. Smaller associations and nonprofits (Share Our Strength, New England Aquarium, March of Dimes) pay $30,000–$80,000.

The ROI calculation favors corporate clients overwhelmingly. A pharma company paying $300,000–$500,000 to lobby against Medicare drug pricing that would reduce their drug revenue by hundreds of millions annually is making a 100-to-1 return on investment at minimum. The IRA’s limited drug pricing scope — 10 drugs in the first cycle, significant carve-outs for biologics, no price caps for the majority of Medicare drugs — represents policy outcomes worth billions annually to Capitol Counsel’s pharmaceutical client base.

Intuit’s engagement is similarly clarifying: TurboTax generated roughly $1 billion in consumer filing revenue annually. Capitol Counsel’s billing of ~$100,000/year to block or constrain a free federal filing alternative is the cheapest insurance policy in Washington.

Contradiction

Capitol Counsel’s partner Jonathan Kott spent years as Senator Manchin’s trusted communications director — helping the senator portray himself as a constituent-focused bipartisan statesman. Kott then ran the Big Tent Project Fund, which spent $4.8 million on digital ads describing Medicare for All as a middle-class tax hike and Bernie Sanders as dangerously radical. Then he joined Capitol Counsel and lobbied for the Healthcare Leadership Council — the industry group most directly invested in ensuring Medicare never negotiates drug prices. The message arc: “universal healthcare will hurt regular people” → “Medicare should not negotiate drug prices.” The audience changed. The clients changed. The argument never did. The “constituent advocate” became the corporate obstruction engine. The revolving door did not corrupt Kott; it merely revealed what the job had always required.

Class Analysis

Capitol Counsel represents the most technically refined iteration of the revolving door at the federal level: not a firm that opportunistically hires departing officials, but one that was strategically architected around the revolving door as its core value proposition from the beginning.

Raffaelli’s founding insight — that what clients buy is relationships, not legal expertise — produced a firm whose recruitment is explicitly relationship-driven. The Hill described the Capitol Counsel founders as “amazingly strategic about how to grow the firm the right way.” Each major hire mapped to a specific gap in the firm’s relationship portfolio: Republican Ways and Means (McCrery, 2009), Democratic Finance Committee (Kardon/Wyden orbit, 2014), Senate floor procedure (Gold/Baker-Frist, 2014), Manchin/moderate Democrat obstruction orbit (Kott, 2021), agriculture and intelligence (Roberts, 2021).

The class function this serves: Capitol Counsel is a mechanism for converting public service relationships into private revenue. Every year an aide or official spends building relationships on the public dime becomes an asset monetizable on K Street. The revolving door is not an aberration of American democracy — it is the core feature that makes American democracy function for the donor class.

Capitol Counsel’s bipartisan model launders this through the frame of effective, professional advocacy. By covering both parties simultaneously, the firm positions itself as indispensable regardless of electoral outcomes. Clients are not betting on one party; they are purchasing structural access to the institution itself. When the House flips Republican, McCrery’s network activates. When the Senate is 50-50 and Manchin holds all the cards, Kott’s network activates. The firm sells weather-proof access to power.

The Kott case is the most explicit example of the ideological infrastructure the revolving door creates. A lobbyist who ran $12M in dark money against Sanders, who lobbied against Medicare drug pricing, who represented fossil fuel companies during Build Back Better negotiations — appearing repeatedly on cable news as a “Manchin whisperer” to explain why his former boss was right to kill drug pricing reform and climate legislation. The revolving door produces not just access but credentialed spokespeople for corporate obstruction, presented as objective analysts with government experience.

Patterns present: Revolving Door Hub · Bipartisan Access Machine · Bundling Operation (Finley/political fundraising history) · Regulatory Shuttle (Kott between Senate offices and client industries)

Sources

content-readiness:: ready

Graph View

Backlinks

Related Profiles

Pages sharing the most connections with this one