Toyota and Longtime Lobbyists at Brown Rudnick Part Ways

Updated at 5:16 p.m.

Brown Rudnick has stopped lobbying for two motor vehicle companies, ending advocacy work that began in the mid-2000s.

The government advocacy relationships the firm had with Toyota Motor North America Inc. and Yamaha Motor Corp. concluded on June 30, according to lobbying termination reports filed with Congress this week.

Brown Rudnick received at least $1.8 million from Toyota since it started to lobby the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate for the company in 2004, congressional records show. The firm most recently lobbied for the holding company for the Japanese automaker's U.S. manufacturing and sales companies on financial, energy and environmental matters. Brown Rudnick principal Michael Lewan and director Anne Saunders Fabry, as well as former firm director Kristen Gullott, worked on the account this year.

Gullott wrote in a brief e-mail that she left Brown Rudnick last month to start Dogwood Strategies in Alexandria, Va. But she didn't indicate that she would continue to lobby for Toyota. She didn't immediately respond to either follow-up e-mails or phone calls. Toyota spokeswoman Martha Voss declined to discuss whether Gullott is part of the automaker's current lobbying team.

Toyota Motor North America has spent $2.1 million on federal lobbying during the first half of this year. Brown Rudnick is the third firm this month that has severed its lobbying ties with the company. Greenberg Traurig and Capitol Hill Consulting Group filed lobbying termination reports with Congress earlier this month.

Toyota dropped the firms after it conducted a periodic review of "available resources and outside consulting firms to realign them with our current needs and goals," Voss wrote in an e-mail.

"A review was recently undertaken and some changes were made to better reflect the challenges we face in the current Washington environment," Voss wrote. "We have discontinued our relationships with some firms. We were fortunate to have been well-served by some of the best advisors in Washington over the past several years and the recent changes should not be interpreted to reflect negatively on the quality or professionalism of the advice we were receiving from them."

Gullott, who handled the Yamaha account at Brown Rudnick, wrote in her brief e-mail that she is still lobbying for Yamaha.

Yamaha gave Brown Rudnick at least $360,000 for its congressional lobbying efforts since 2007. The firm most recently advocated for the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturer of motorcycles, boats and other vehicles on spending bills concerning homeland security, manufacturing and boating.

The company allocated $60,000 to its federal government advocacy efforts during the first half of 2012.