A senior Trump administration official, Drew Maloney, has decamped to lead a private equity industry group in Washington.
The American Investment Council’s (AIC) board voted Wednesday to appoint Maloney, who served as the Treasury Department’s top congressional liaison up until Friday, to serve as its chief executive.
{mosads}“I felt like I had accomplished a lot in a short amount of time in the building,” Maloney told The Hill in a phone interview. “Treasury was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had serving in government. I’d never done that before on the administration side, and I relished that opportunity.”
The department notched wins on rolling back regulations on the financial sector and negotiating key provisions in the tax reform measure that was signed into law last year.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin praised Maloney as a savvy operator on Capitol Hill.
“Drew’s guidance and counsel were invaluable as we worked to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the most comprehensive tax reform legislation in over three decades,” Mnuchin said in a statement. “He skillfully helped Treasury leadership pursue many other critical legislative priorities, including financial regulatory reform issues and [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] reform legislation.”
Politico reported earlier this month that he had been tapped for the AIC job.
Maloney, who has worked with the Trump administration since the transition, is slated to begin his new role in early July. And he brings a lengthy Washington résumé to the gig.
Early in his career he worked on Capitol Hill as a Republican leadership aide, before joining — and leading — lobbying firm Ogilvy Government Affairs, where his diverse set of clients included private equity firms Carlyle Group and Blackstone.
Maloney has been a GOP fundraiser, working as an adviser to presidential contender Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. He then worked for oil and gas giant Hess, serving as global head of the company’s government affairs and public policy office.
He began working with the Trump administration’s transition team, helping to move presidential appointees through the confirmation process, and it’s how he first met Mnuchin, who asked him to work for the Treasury Department.
Maloney is filling a vacancy left by former House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) ex-chief of staff, Mike Sommers. Earlier this year, Sommers announced he had been appointed to lead the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful K Street trade group that represents the oil and gas industry.
AIC is a smaller organization, with roughly $7 million in revenue and lobbying expenditures of just more than $1 million a year.
Maloney told The Hill that he wants to grow the organization’s members to give it more clout on Capitol Hill and within the administration, in addition to becoming more sophisticated with how it moves its public policy goals.
He mentioned arming up with Twitter, podcasts and other means not normally taken by an organization that represents a sector as complex as the private equity industry.
“Over the next year … I think we have to continue to tell the story of private equity and use our members and their portfolio investments to continue to tell that story,” he said. “And to be more creative because everyone is competing against multiple voices in Washington. There are multiple channels to policymakers to make sure your voice is heard. We’re going to continue to be creative to use those channels to tell our story the best way at AIC.”