Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed. However he stated in an announcement that he “labored onerous with Speaker McCarthy’s staff throughout the speaker’s race as a result of he’s my good friend” and since Mr. McCarthy “is aware of the best way to construct consensus round an agenda after which the best way to implement it.”
Mr. Miller added, “I simply need to be generally known as a man who works onerous for my purchasers and does proper by my buddies,” including that “all the pieces else is simply noise.”
Mr. McCarthy additionally declined to be interviewed. In an announcement, Drew Florio, a spokesman for him, stated the speaker and Mr. Miller are “lifelong buddies,” and credited the lobbyist with enjoying “a key function in aiding Speaker McCarthy’s political fund-raising operation,” whereas stressing that his efforts have been “on a volunteer foundation.”
However the blurriness of the traces between Mr. Miller’s lobbying and his assist for Mr. McCarthy have been underscored within the days after the speaker election.
Mr. Miller helped arrange three days of festivities to have a good time, together with a gala dinner at which Mr. Miller took the stage to introduce Mr. McCarthy. “Man, Kevin, I’ve waited a very long time to say this: Women and gents, the speaker of the Home, Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Miller instructed the viewers of donors, company executives, members of Congress and different outstanding Republicans, in keeping with an attendee.
The next morning featured a breakfast for donors and freshman Home Republicans held on the Washington workplaces of one in every of Mr. Miller’s lobbying purchasers — Altria, the tobacco and e-cigarette firm. Since July 2017, Altria has donated almost $1.4 million to a brilliant PAC related to Mr. McCarthy and paid $1.3 million to Mr. Miller’s agency.
Constructing Affect
Mr. Miller, 48, met Mr. McCarthy, 58, within the early Nineteen Nineties. Mr. Miller was a highschool scholar, and Mr. McCarthy was a district workers member for the Bakersfield, Calif., space’s congressman.
