By Kevin McCauley
Wal-Mart Stores has hired the powerful Capitol Counsel lobbying shop to handle tax and other Washington issues for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retail behemoth.
John Raffaelli , founding partner of CC and former chairman of The Washington Group, which was sold to Ketchum, is among those working the Wal-Mart business.
He is joined by former Louisiana Congressman Jim McCrery. As ranking member of the House Ways & Means Committee, Republican McCrery shepherded President Bush II’s tax cuts through Congress. The Alliance for Savings & Investment, a coalition of financial services companies, retained McCrery and CC last year to win an extension of those tax cuts for the wealthy.
Other CC staffers on the Wal-Mart beat are Tucker Shumack, ex-tax and finance counselor to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Me), Drew Goesl (communications director to former Ark. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln, Dena Battle, one-time director of tax policy at the National Assn. of Manufacturers, and Jim Gould, who was chief tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee.
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