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Can K Street's Most Pro-Biden Firm Save TikTok?

SKDK, co-founded by Biden consigliere Anita Dunn, has taken on TikTok as
its client.

Earlier this month, the White House called
<[link removed]>
on ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of social media site TikTok, to
sell the platform or risk facing an outright ban from Congress.

Momentum is building in Washington from members of both parties for a
crackdown on Beijing's tech juggernaut because of national-security
concerns. On Thursday, the head of TikTok testified before Congress and
got grilled by lawmakers about the site's data harvesting practices on
American citizens.

The White House primarily encouraged a voluntary sale of the company,
though that's unlikely to happen. The Chinese Communist Party gets a
final say in the company's business decisions and would be resistant
to caving under U.S. pressure. That means the company's fate will be
up to Congress, where Republicans are more keen than Democrats on a ban
and already passed a bill through the House this February. In response,
TikTok's hired lobbying guns have snapped into action and will target
the key Democratic lawmakers still on the fence. Many Senate Democrats
oppose the ban, pointing to the platform's cultural purchase with
young people, a more potent voting bloc for the party than they are for
Republicans. Democratic officials honed
<[link removed]>
campaign ads on the social media platform more effectively than
Republicans in the 2022 midterms.

What's even more telling about the recent techlash against TikTok is
the K Street firm that ByteDance hired
<[link removed]>
to steer the company through the storm: SKDK, a powerhouse
communications and consulting shop with deep ties to both the Obama and
Biden administrations as well as the Democratic National Committee.

SKDK is now the first major consultancy that works with U.S. Big Tech
companies to also take on TikTok as a client. This breaks
<[link removed]>
a tacit agreement formed among K Street shops. Both the Chamber of
Progress and TechNet, top lobbying firms for Silicon Valley, believed it
would risk their deals with Google, Amazon, and Facebook, direct
competitors to the Chinese platform.

SKDK's co-founder Anita Dunn has been at the center of Joe Biden's
inner circle for many years. Credited for turning around Biden's 2020
campaign, she then served, initially, as a pivotal White House adviser
occupying the role that Karl Rove held under the Bush administration and
David Axelrod under Obama. After briefly leaving to go back to SKDK, she
soon returned to the White House in an advisory role where she now helps
the administration weigh tactical decisions that directly involve many
of her past corporate clients. At first, Dunn flouted public
disclosures, but after outside pressure mounted, she released them and
had to recuse herself from allegedly working on such a breadth of issues
that some questioned what she would even be allowed to do.

Her firm has developed a reputation as the go-to consulting shop for
monopolists-from Amazon to Comcast and the railroad
industry-whenever these firms need to curry favor with Democratic
lawmakers. The firm helped secure the American Airlines merger in 2013
and more recently operated a front group to back legislation in New York
that would proactively gut unionization drives by Uber and Lyft gig
workers.

It's no surprise then that TikTok turned to SKDK in the midst of
ongoing talks with the White House just before Biden's recent
announcement urging a voluntary sale. The hire is a clear play not only
to soften the administration's stance in the months to come but also
to tap SKDK's extensive network of Democratic insiders to gear up for
the legislative fracas on the ban. The communications firm is packed
with former DNC officials and Hill staffers, including the former top
spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who will
be the most crucial decision-maker on the TikTok ban. One of SKDK's
partners, Josh Isay, previously served as Schumer's chief of staff.

**** EVEN BEFORE TIKTOK'S RECENT PR HIRE, progressive organizations
would frequently cite SKDK when pressed about their worst fears about
the direction of the Biden administration over the next two years. By
and large, the left flank of the party has been pleasantly surprised
with President Biden's embrace of their proposals on climate, student
debt, and antitrust enforcement. They expressed concerns, though, that
these advances would be undermined by personnel changes. Recent hires
indicate that the administration may snap back to the corporate wing of
the party. Those include ex-corporate manager
<[link removed]> Jeffrey
Zients as chief of staff and Wall Street-friendly
<[link removed]>
Lael Brainard as director of the National Economic Council. In these
decisions, Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project saw foreboding
signs of yet another Democratic administration falling into the same
traps that hamstrung the Obama administration, especially during its
second term.

"SKDK is high up there among the consulting class in terms of people
we're concerned about," said Hauser.

After serving as a senior adviser and communications director to Obama,
Anita Dunn made herself a bȇte noire to many on the left by immediately
cashing in on her political connections to woo corporate clients. The
firm epitomizes the revolving door between the Democratic establishment
and the C-suite level of its corporate clients. Even Obama
administration insiders found Dunn's conduct unsavory at the time.

"Dunn did remarkable work while serving in government ... it's
unfortunate that she also personifies the revolving door, using her
influence, while at her SKDK firm, to undermine progressive policies on
behalf of corporate clients," a former White House official under
President Obama told the

**Prospect**.

Once out of the White House, Dunn leveraged her connections for food
producers PepsiCo and General Mills to oppose food nutrition standards,
as well as helping for-profit college Kaplan to nix education reforms.
SKDK also ran cover for TransCanada during the protests over the
Keystone XL Pipeline in 2012 by "countering misinformation," as a
TransCanada spokesperson put it. During this period, Dunn visited
<[link removed]>
the White House over 100 times as an unregistered lobbyist consultant
before getting hired as an adviser to the DNC.

[link removed]

SKDK has long avoided registering as a traditional lobbying firm. The
only lobbying they've done on the books was a half-million-dollar
contract to defend former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, later indicted on
corruption charges. Instead, executives pay SKDK millions of dollars to
shape the narrative around their companies through ad spots and PR
campaigns. But the firm also engages in more direct influence-peddling
through junkets and events, tapping their political connections, which
the firm routinely publicizes.

"The off-the-books lobbying is in many ways more insidious because it
all takes place in the shadows, and people don't see it for what it
is," said Hauser.

In recent years, this integrated lobbying strategy has made a splash
within the tech world. SKDK ingratiated itself with Silicon Valley
during the Obama administration after working with Google to keep tax
loopholes in place for foreign profits. During Amazon's HQ2 hunt in
2018, the tech giant tapped the K Street group to manage local
opposition to the deal and convince wary New York Democrats to offer
billions in tax subsidies.

Then, in 2019, SKDK took on Israeli spyware company the NSO Group as a
client, at a time when it faced lawsuits for spying on journalists. The
terms of the deal entailed resuscitating the company's public image.

On its political team, the firm routinely picks up multimillion-dollar
contracts with both the DNC and its DCCC campaign arm. In both 2020 and
2022, the DNC handed
<[link removed]>
out these consulting contracts to work with affiliated PACs at a time
when Democratic party officials were throwing their weight behind
moderate candidates to stymie progressive challengers.

Early in Biden's presidency, the White House put in place new
revolving-door ethics standards-but with glaring loopholes allowing
the president to waive the limited restrictions when deemed necessary.
Still, this put Anita Dunn's appointment as top adviser into question.
Many groups pushed back against her appointment given her track record,
though Biden ultimately ushered her through.

Even with a powerhouse firm like SKDK, TikTok only has so much room to
maneuver in the Senate to kill a ban. Republicans are eager to both look
tough on China and signal a newfound anti-tech posture, especially since
GOP leadership has entirely dropped any pretense of getting serious
about antitrust enforcement against U.S. tech companies. That leaves the
remaining Democrats, many of whom worry about the political
ramifications of a ban among the many millions of its young users.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) mused last month that he's
open to the ban but hasn't joined the White House in an outright
endorsement of the legislation.

As pressure mounts on Democrats to take a stand on the ban, SKDK is the
firm to watch behind the scenes.

~ LUKE GOLDSTEIN, WRITING FELLOW

Follow Luke Goldstein on Twitter <[link removed]>

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