The MAGA lobbyists upending Washington with McDonald’s and bear hunting

Instead, McDowell snagged an invite, through his friend Donald Trump Jr., to a falconry trip Kennedy hosted. On a sunny day in upstate New York last October, McDowell got his time with the future cabinet secretary while he fed mice to the falcons after a successful hunt.

Kennedy “is more likely to be friends with some Native American shaman than a lobbyist," McDowell said earlier this month as he ate a bone-in rib-eye at a steakhouse popular with Republican officials.

Many high-profile lobbyists steered clear of Donald Trump in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and skipped fundraising for him during the 2024 election. Now, as the Trump administration seeks to upend industries across America with tariffs and legal threats, it is also upending the business of lobbying, by rewarding loyalty and making K Street the latest battleground for Trump’s war on elites.

The shift is reshaping the pecking order in Washington’s influence industry. Job credentials that mattered in the past are increasingly irrelevant today.

The 35-year-old McDowell is a North Carolina lobbyist who never worked for Congress, the White House or any other Washington institution. He is instead parlaying his background as a self-described government skeptic, who made his children baby food out of dandelion root and bear meat he hunted himself in an effort to avoid additives, into a power broker for the new administration where Kennedy, the health secretary, is reconsidering the role of pharmaceuticals and food ingredients.

He has hired Jackson Hines, Kennedy’s young nephew who worked on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, as one of the first employees for his Washington operation, as well as Chris LaCivita Jr., the son of one of Trump’s campaign managers.

His firm, Checkmate Government Relations, is preparing to open its Washington office next month on Pennsylvania Avenue. McDowell is decorating it with hunting trophies, antique Oriental rugs and an office chair custom-made out of crocodile hide.

One of the first items to be delivered: A taxidermied black bear, frozen midstride, that McDowell killed in North Carolina and shipped to Washington last week on a flatbed truck.

During his first weeks in Washington, McDowell registered to lobby on behalf of Novo Nordisk, which makes the popular anti-obesity drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, Eli Lilly, the vaccine maker Sanofi and the ​University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others. One longtime client has already seen a win: Three days after inauguration, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the client, a North Carolina Native American tribe, should have federal recognition.

Critics say the relationship between Trump’s family, his advisers and the lobbyists who are gaining traction in his second administration is an overly cozy one that presents potential conflicts of interest. “So much for ‘draining the swamp,’" said Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US. McDowell said Hines, who declined interview requests, doesn’t directly lobby his uncle.

Even for those who bill themselves as Trump whisperers, there are limits to their influence. In early April, the Trump administration said that Medicare and Medicaid won’t expand coverage of the anti-obesity drugs. Kennedy and other leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement have been critical of such drugs, saying they don’t address the root cause of chronic disease.

When it comes to health and weight loss, McDowell said, “any of those drugs can be a part of the solution, but they cannot be the solution."

The lobbyist wears a belt buckle with the logo of his firm, Checkmate Government Relations.The office of Checkmate Government Relations.

LaCivita is trying to get a tariff exemption for his first official lobbying client, Vortex Optics, which makes riflescopes and other equipment for guns. But the Trump administration is granting few. “We’re working out other angles," LaCivita said, including talking to the Pentagon, which has contracts with Vortex.

A few other Washington firms are also trying to showcase their pro-Trump politics, as clients have sought advice from right-wing influencers instead of traditional Washington firms.

The lobbying firm CGCN has started co-hosting events with the right-wing media site Breitbart News, the first of which featured an interview with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos recently set up a new public-affairs firm. Another firm, Continental Strategy, proudly ordered fast food as a group meal for its staff one recent Friday.

Continental Strategy’s founder, Carlos Trujillo, who served in multiple roles in the first Trump administration, said it was all part of the firm’s brand. “We’re regular guys here," Trujillo said. “We eat McDonald’s. We go to church."

Selling connections to a new administration is part of a time-honored tradition in Washington, said Steve Elmendorf, a Democrat and managing partner at the firm Avoq. “I think the question for all of them will be, are they creating a sustainable business that can live beyond Trump, or not?"

Embroidered jackets

McDowell is decorating the office with hunting trophies and antique Oriental rugs, among other things.

For McDowell, coming to Washington has been a family affair. His younger brother, Addison McDowell, was elected in November to a U.S. House seat from rural North Carolina where they grew up with both parents as pastors. Their youngest brother, Luke, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016.

A few years after a college internship in the North Carolina Senate, McDowell tried his hand at lobbying and started signing clients from UPS to the sports-gambling industry, which has more recently retained McDowell to work on its behalf in Washington.

McDowell “makes things happen," said North Carolina GOP state Rep. John Bell, who met McDowell at a milk-chugging contest outside the state General Assembly roughly a decade ago. (McDowell’s team won, Bell said.)

In 2021, the state Senate blocked a bill to crack down on debt-settlement companies, which were McDowell’s clients, after the House had passed it.

“I guess we’re just going to do whatever Ches f—ing McDowell wants," GOP state Rep. Julia Howard quipped to colleagues at the time, according to people who heard about the comments. (Howard recently said she didn’t recall using “foul language," but that “if I did, I’m not ashamed.")

Today, McDowell often wears a navy blue suit with the phrase “Ches F—ing McDowell" embroidered inside the jacket.

Shortly before the 2016 election, when few thought Trump would win, McDowell spotted Donald Trump Jr. at a conservation gala that was auctioning off a weekend near the coast hunting North Carolina’s unusually large black bears, which don’t hibernate in the winter and can weigh more than 700 pounds.

Trump bid on it. McDowell approached him and promised he could do better than the guide offering the trip for auction. Trump took the offer and the duo have hunted turkeys, elk and pigs together in the years since.

McDowell still employs lobbyists in North Carolina but now spends his weeks in Washington. In his absence, state Rep. Howard is seeking to advance the debt settlement bill in the state legislature again.

McDowell “has moved to Washington to lobby," Howard said recently during a speech on the North Carolina House floor. “So he’s not going to be a pain in our side."

Write to Maggie Severns at maggie.severns@wsj.com and Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com