BOUTIQUE LOBBYING FIRM
IN THE THICK OF IT Darrick McGhee (left) and Travis Blanton in their Tallahassee office.
122 | INFLUENCE SPRING 2016
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Jeb Bush. “We developed a solid relationship,” Johnson said. “I needed help with my book of business and it was a good fit.” Blanton started in 2002; by 2006, his name was on the shingle. More recently, the firm has added Darrick McGhee, hired away from Gov. Rick Scott’s office, where he was director of legislative affairs. He also was at the Department of Economic Opportunity, including stints as interim Executive Director, Chief of Staff and Director of Legislative and Cabinet Affairs. Johnson credits McGhee with making the firm’s footprint bigger in executive-branch lobbying, and allowing Johnson to focus on his portfolio of “legacy clients.” Melanie Brown, the firm’s Director of Government Relations, is now on maternity leave. She has been Finance Director for House Campaigns at the Republican Party of Florida, raising $13 million. And attorney Diane Carr left Tallahassee’s Hopping, Green & Sams law firm to come on as general counsel. “We try to hire a person as opposed to filling a position,” Johnson said. Acknowledging that wins this past Session were “team efforts” with other shops,
he mentioned passage of an opioid abuse deterrent bill backed by state Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto and state Rep. Jeanette Núñez. Addicts often crush opioids, such as hydrocodone, in order to snort, smoke or inject them. New measures in pill manufacturing deter such abuse by making them difficult to crush or tamper with. He also helped ensure the death of a measure that would have eliminated the “certificate of need” process, which requires hospitals to show state regulators there’s a need in the community before they can build a new facility or expand an existing one. With lawmakers continually trying to change the regulatory world of health care, Johnson & Blanton’s business is virtually self-sustaining. “The industry is always going through so many significant changes: Financing, transparency, recovery care centers,” Johnson said. “Our argument is that all of it coming at one time is a lot to ask of one industry. I don’t know of another field where there are so many marketplace-changing initiatives coming from so many different places.”
PHOTOS: Mary Beth Tyson
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t’s almost a misnomer to call J&B a boutique operation, with the numbers they throw on the board. The firm posted median reported income of more than $3 million in 2015. As one nominator wrote: “They make the money and have the clout of a firm that’s much bigger.” The former one-man shop started by Jon Johnson in 1995, still specializing in health care issues, is a few bodies larger, but still holds to the small-is-beautiful philosophy. Johnson honed his chops as in-house lobbyist for the Florida Medical Association in the early ’90s, when Republicans started riding the wave that took them into statewide political dominance. “I caught that wave,” he said. “As a lobbyist, I was known as a conservative and I was cheap; I hardly had any overhead. With guys like Dan Webster and John Thrasher coming to power, I guess my timing was good.” That was also when health care issues started to take center stage. Johnson still reps clients he had at his beginning, including Adventist Health System and Florida Hospital Association. Now-partner Travis Blanton was chief of staff at the Agency for Health Care Administration under then-Gov.
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