- July 22, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
The lobbying firm ACG Advocacy saw its business skyrocket after one of its partners, David Urban, helped Trump carry Pennsylvania in the 2016 election. But its lobbying business diminished after Urban left a couple of months before Trump lost to become an executive vice president at ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok.
ACG brought in $2.5 million in lobbying revenue in the second quarter of this year, down from $4.4 million in the second quarter of 2020, according to a POLITICO analysis of its disclosure filings — a drop of 43 percent.
Shawn Smeallie, ACG’s founder, said the firm knew that its swollen revenues during the Trump administration weren’t sustainable.
“David Urban and I used to call it a sugar high,” Smeallie said in an interview.
ACG’s revenues are still higher than they were before Trump was elected, he pointed out, and the firm has hung onto many of Urban’s clients, including Comcast, Walgreens and 7-Eleven….
