Obama Taps Former Lawyer/Lobbyist for Urban Affairs Office

Barack Obama welcomed another lawyer into his White House this morning, when he formally announced two appointees to the newly created White House Office of Urban Affairs. One of them, Derek Douglas, special assistant to the president for Urban Affairs, once practiced in O’Melveny & Myer’s strategic counseling group.
 
If you’re thinking that “strategic counseling” sounds like it might involve some lobbying, you’d be correct. In 2004, while at O’Melveny, Douglas lobbied for the Public Transportation Safety International Corp. According to lobbying disclosures, O’Melveny was helping the client “develop support for safety guards to reduce fatalities and injuries from transit bus rear-wheel accidents.”  
 
That doesn’t sound particularly scandalizing, but, as reported here by The Swamp, the Republican National Committee has already cried hypocrisy. The RNC points out that Obama tapped Douglas, despite his administration’s tough stance on distancing lobbyists from the executive branch.  (Read more about Obama’s lobbying policies here.)
 
More recently, Douglas was associate director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress, where he was a registered lobbyist until 2007. Disclosures show he was involved in lobbying on a number of matters, including lending practices and fair housing issues for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, New York Governor David Paterson made Douglas his Washington counsel and director of his Washington office.
 
Douglas’ appointment also expands Obama’s inner-circle of Yale Law alums. Douglas got his J.D. at Yale, as did White House counsel Gregory Craig and seven other lawyers working with Craig in the counsel’s office.
 
The president named Adolfo Carrion director of the Urban Affairs office. Carrion, a New York urban planner, previously served two terms as Bronx Borough President.