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Gregory O’Dell (courtesy photo) in print, on the Web and in app form. In an interview with President Obama Foer asked the question: had the president ever fired a gun? POTUS offered that he occasionally would go skeet shooting at Camp David, a fact that intrigued the news cycle for several days.
TUCKER FOOTE A veteran of the House Financial Services committee, Foote is not only considered one of the up-andcoming lobbyists on K Street but was named to the Hill newspaper’s list of Top Lobbyists in 2012. The former Capitol Hill aide is at the helm of Mastercard’s Washington office, which, last September, expanded to a team of six. “We want to find new ways to partner with government, not fight it,” Foote told the National Journal at the time. On the horizon for Foote and his cohorts at Mastercard is the debate over credit card swipe fees as retailers continue to push for reform.
P WESLEY FOSTER JR Bit by bit for longer than four decades, Foster has built the largest privately owned residential real estate company in the country. Based in Chantilly,Va., his empire provides mortgage, insurance and title services, manages rental properties and, of course, brings in big dollars from home sales. Foster is cautiously optimistic that the real estate business is getting back on its feet. “We are working our way through and are beginning to see a real shift in the market,” he recently told the Georgetowner. “The good news is
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Stephen Fuller that our company is well positioned to succeed in any scenario.” The company’s top agents include Marc Fleisher, whose team was ranked 13th out of 250 real estate teams nationwide by the Wall Street Journal and Real Trends in 2012 as well as the brothers Wydler (Hans and Steve), whose professional accomplishments include releasing a tell-all book in 2012, “Inside the Sell, Top Agents Reveal Unspoken Secrets and Dangers of Buying and Selling Your Home.”
reputation in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election as a rain-maker backing fellow Mormon Mitt Romney on the Republican ticket. He lost that one, but his other losses are few and far between. Armed with a seemingly unlimited budget, Gerard has gone right back into the fray on the muchcontested $7 billion Keystone XL Pipeline project, a fight that is reaching a crescendo with the EPA’s justreleased environmental impact report contradicting the State Department’s own assessment.
STEPHEN FULLER Need the sequester explained simply? For more than 40 years Stephen Fuller has made the economy his business. Recently he’s positioned himself to be a knowledgeable media expert who spits out digestible bits of data for public consumption on demand. In the past three years, the professor and economist delivered more than 250 public speeches, according to the Washington Business Journal, and has also released a bevy of highly quoted reports. But being a media star has had its drawbacks, too. A recent Loudoun Metrorail study got attacked by some for being too developement-friendly. “I’m old enough to where I don’t take it personally,” Fuller told the Business Journal. He has also been quoted saying that he plans to retire in the next two to three years.
JACK GERARD As head of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest and most aggressive advocate earned a
ED GILLESPIE The oft-quoted Gillespie spent this last campaign cycle within Mitt Romney’s inner circle, trying to make the candidate seem more moderate after a sharp turn to the right in the Republican primary. Now, with Romney not in the White House, Gillespie and the Republicans are seeking a reboot and Gillespie is once again in the position to be influential. He rejoined the Republican State Leadership Committee as its chairman in February as the group launched a “Future Majority Caucus” initiative to elect female, Hispanic, AfricanAmerican and Asian-American Republican candidates to state office. The former RNC chairman has had big wins in the past, shepherding both of George Bush’s presidential victories and the GOP’s takeover of both houses of Congress in 2004.
NICHOLAS GIORDANO As one of the leaders of Washington
Council Ernst & Young’s tax and budget practice, Giordano is expected to have his plate full once Congress begins to tackle tax reform. Before excelling in the world of tax lobbying, Giordano served as the chief tax counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and Legislative Director and tax counsel for Sen. Max Baucus. Giordano’s combined knowledge of political budget and tax policy issues and the fact that WCEY consistently outperforms the field on tax-related lobbying (they reported $6.37 billion in revenue from the tax service line for 2012) makes him an easy choice as Congress’ go-to consult on tax reform.
BRADLEY GRAHAM LISSA MUSCATINE Married former Washington Post reporters Graham and Muscatine were looking for the next step in their careers when they heard that Politics and Prose, Washington’s preeminent independent bookstore, was up for sale. Carla Cohen, who founded the upper Northwest store alongside business partner Barbara Meade, had become ill and died the autumn before, when in June 2011 the husband and wife team took over the neighborhood bookshop. Besides journalism, Muscatine had spent years working in politics, including as Hillary Clinton’s speech writer. Now she and Graham are in charge of the institution which is the destination for authors, political or otherwise, when they pass through town. Adding to the store’s clout, last November “Saturday Night Live” used the Politics and Prose name
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