The Private Equity Lobbyist Network Surrounding Chuck Schumer

By Donald Shaw | Published on Nov 6, 2026

Summary: Blackstone, Apollo, and private equity trade groups employ Schumer alumni to push their interests in Washington as progressive senators push for tougher restrictions on the industry.

As Democrats prepare to take control of the Senate in January, progressive senators are pushing for tougher restrictions on private equity in areas like health care, housing, and workers’ retirement plans. Winning over Chuck Schumer, who is expected to return as majority leader, could prove difficult: the industry has hired former policy chiefs and political aides from his orbit to press its interests in Washington.

The former Schumer staffers are now working on some of the industry’s most significant policy fights in Washington. Two of Schumer’s former legislative directors are lobbying for a private equity trade association on expanding private investments in workers’ 401(k) plans. His former health policy adviser now represents Apollo Global Management on hospital management issues. Blackstone’s government relations staff includes a former Schumer campaign aide as well as the senator’s son-in-law.

Federal lobbying disclosures indicate the chambers of Congress and federal agencies lobbied, but do not name the individual lawmakers or congressional offices that were contacted. The filings therefore do not show whether Schumer’s former aides have lobbied him or his staff on behalf of their private equity clients.

The industry’s connections to Schumer could complicate efforts by progressive lawmakers to win support or floor time for their legislation. Schumer has backed some narrower measures targeting private investors, including a bill to give public agencies and nonprofits priority in buying distressed mortgages. But he has not cosponsored any of four private equity reform bills championed by the American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group that researches corporate concentration and pushes for stronger antitrust enforcement and restrictions on private equity. The proposals would strengthen scrutiny of corporate housing purchases, impose penalties for abuses in health care, require greater transparency and safeguards for investor-owned health care providers, and make investment firms responsible for liabilities at companies they control.

Laurel Kilgour, the group’s research manager, told Sludge, “anyone who is serious about taking on private equity” should endorse those measures, which include Elizabeth Warren’s sweeping Stop Wall Street Looting Act. “Schumer is on none of those,” Kilgour said.

Schumer’s office did not respond to questions about his ties to the industry or his positions on private equity legislation.

Lobbying to Put Private Equity in 401(k)s

For fifteen years, Heather McHugh and Meghan Taira successively held one of the most important policy jobs in Schumer’s office. McHugh served as Schumer’s legislative director from 2010 to 2013, while Taira held the position from 2013 to 2025.

Now, both work on the American Investment Council’s lobbying team at Resolution Public Affairs. The trade group represents the private equity industry, which has been pressing Washington to make it easier for investment managers to sell private assets through workplace retirement plans. The group’s members include Blackstone, Apollo Global Management, KKR, Carlyle, and Bain Capital.

Resolution’s disclosure for the third quarter of 2026 lists both among the lobbyists working to influence members of the Senate and House on the “Inclusion of private assets in 401(k) plans, generally.” The firm also reported lobbying on private equity and credit regulation and legislation affecting investor ownership of homes.

Both McHugh and Taira also lobby for BlackRock Funds Services Group and the Investment Company Institute, according to third-quarter disclosures. The Investment Company Institute is a trade association for the investment fund industry whose members include BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity, Apollo Global Management, and Brookfield Asset Management.

Private equity firms have been pushing for regulatory changes that would make it easier for employer retirement plans to include their investments. The industry would gain both a larger pool of money to invest and the fees it charges to manage the investments, plus a share of fund profits. Some progressive lawmakers and groups warn that the push could expose workers’ retirement savings to high fees and risky assets.

Blackstone has already begun pursuing that business. In October 2025, it announced a dedicated unit focused on bringing private investments into defined contribution retirement plans. In January, retirement services provider Empower announced that Blackstone was joining its private markets program, allowing participating retirement plans to offer funds that invest in private equity, private credit, infrastructure, and real estate.

Private equity’s presence in 401(k)s does not rely on Congress passing a new law. A 2020 Labor Department guidance allowed professionally managed investment funds within retirement plans to include private equity. The Biden administration subsequently issued additional warnings about the risks, but in August 2025, Trump’s Labor Department rescinded that supplemental guidance.

The Trump administration has since proposed going further. A Labor Department proposal announced in March would create a regulatory safe harbor for retirement plan fiduciaries selecting investments, including private assets, if they follow a specified evaluation process. The rule remains listed as a proposal in the government’s regulatory agenda; the 2025 withdrawal of the Biden guidance has already happened.

The American Investment Council backed the proposal, arguing that retirement savers should have access to the diversification and investment opportunities available to large institutions.

Prominent Democrats see a threat to workers’ savings. Resolution Public Affairs’ first-quarter disclosure lists the proposed Labor Department rule among its lobbying issues for the council, naming both Taira and McHugh as part of the team handling that work.

In a June opposition letter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Bobby Scott warned that the proposal would encourage expensive, complex investments and weaken workers’ ability to hold plan managers accountable. They cited difficulties valuing private investments and selling them when participants need their money.

A Former Health Adviser Lobbying for a Hospital Owner

Another former Schumer adviser is now representing a firm whose hospital holdings have drawn bipartisan congressional scrutiny.

Matthew Fuentes spent eight years overseeing Schumer’s health care policy portfolio. His biography on the Avenue Solutions website credits him with helping lead Senate Democrats through fights over the Affordable Care Act, pandemic relief, and the prescription drug provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.

He now appears on Avenue’s lobbying team for Apollo Global Management. The firm’s third-quarter disclosure reports $60,000 in income from Apollo for work on “Issues related to hospital management.”

Funds affiliated with Apollo own Lifepoint Health and ScionHealth, which together own at least 203 hospital locations in the Private Equity Stakeholder Project’s fall 2026 tracker, making Apollo the largest private equity hospital owner in its accounting.

In January 2025, a bipartisan Senate Budget Committee investigation led by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican Chuck Grassley criticized the treatment of an Iowa hospital under successive private equity owners, including Apollo-owned Lifepoint Health. Investigators described the hospital’s failures to meet commitments involving physician recruitment, investment, and services, while finding that Lifepoint paid Apollo $9.2 million annually in management fees.

Apollo defended those fees to investigators, saying its advisory services strengthened Lifepoint’s ability to invest in facilities, employees, and care. Lifepoint and Apollo also argued that their investments helped sustain rural hospitals facing severe financial pressures, according to the committee’s report.

Fuentes also lobbies for Help at Home, a home-care provider backed by private equity firms Centerbridge Partners and the Vistria Group. Avenue reported receiving $30,000 from the company in the third quarter for lobbying on home care, Medicaid services, and federal payment rules.

Blackstone’s Schumer Connections

Blackstone’s connections to Schumer span his Senate office, his campaign operation, and his family.

Alex Katz, a senior managing director of government relations for Blackstone, previously served as Schumer’s director of intergovernmental affairs and as a special assistant. He helped run Schumer’s 2016 reelection campaign and later worked as a senior adviser to the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, according to his Blackstone biography. Blackstone describes Katz’s job as helping the firm navigate legislative and regulatory risks and advising its portfolio companies.

The firm also employs Michael Shapiro, who is married to Schumer’s daughter Jessica, as a managing director in government relations. His current biography says he focuses on infrastructure investments and projects. Jessica currently oversees policy and partnerships across the Northeast for OpenAI.

Blackstone also retains Forbes-Tate, whose lobbying team includes Ryan McConaghy, a former Schumer legislative assistant who later served as policy director and then staff director of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Center under Schumer. The firm reported receiving $80,000 from Blackstone Administrative Services Partnership in the third quarter for lobbying by McConaghy on taxes, financial services, and housing investment restrictions in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. The bill, enacted in July, largely bars investors controlling at least 350 single-family homes from buying additional homes beginning in January.

Blackstone helped pioneer Wall Street’s move into single-family rental housing after the financial crisis, buying nearly 50,000 homes through its Invitation Homes subsidiary. It sold its remaining stake in that company in 2019, but it acquired another major rental housing operator, Tricon Residential, for $3.5 billion in 2024. In 2019, U.N. human rights experts accused Blackstone and its subsidiaries of raising rents and pursuing “aggressive evictions.”

McConaghy also lobbies for Global Medical Response, an ambulance company controlled by KKR. Forbes-Tate reported lobbying for the company in the third quarter for work on federal health care payments, workforce issues, and emergency transport policy.

During negotiations over the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, McConaghy urged congressional offices to press Schumer over Blackstone’s objections to a proposed corporate minimum tax. “We need as many offices as possible weighing in with concerns to Leader Schumer’s office,” he wrote in an email obtained by the Associated Press, which also included proposed changes to the bill.

Private equity executives and their families have also supplied millions of dollars to Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Schumer. Through September, its donors this election cycle included longtime Bain Capital leader Jonathan Lavine, who gave $1 million, and GCM Grosvenor chairman and CEO Michael Sacks, whose firm manages private equity and other alternative investments, who gave $700,000, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Centerbridge Partners co-founder and former Blackstone private equity chief Mark Gallogly and his wife, Elizabeth Strickler, gave $750,000 combined. Other private equity-linked donors included Insight Partners co-founder Jeff Horing, who gave $250,000; Energy Capital Partners president Tyler Reeder, who gave $225,000; and Carlyle senior adviser James Attwood and managing director Bruce Rosenblum, who gave $100,000 and $75,000, respectively.

Schumer’s Record on Private Equity

Schumer has long said he supports ending the carried-interest tax break, which allows private equity and hedge fund managers to pay lower capital-gains tax rates on some of the profits they receive for managing other people’s money. But his approach to changing it has drawn criticism from fellow Democrats.

During reform efforts in 2007 and 2010, Schumer insisted that proposed changes should reach partnerships across industries, rather than just targeting private equity and hedge funds. That would have subjected more investment managers to higher taxes, but critics accused him of deliberately expanding the opposition until the legislation could no longer pass. “Schumer wanted to broaden the bill to death,” former Rep. Barney Frank told the New Yorker in 2016. Schumer defended his position, telling Forbes in 2012 that he had voted three times to tax carried interest as ordinary income and wanted the change to apply across private investment partnerships.

A decade later, the climate and health package Schumer negotiated with Sen. Joe Manchin included a much more limited reform: extending the holding period required for favorable carried-interest tax treatment from three years to at least five. It would have preserved the preferential rates for managers who met the five-year holding requirement. Even that provision was dropped after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema demanded its removal. “I pushed for it to be in this bill,” Schumer said at the time, explaining that Sinema would not let the legislation advance unless it came out. “So we had no choice.”

Schumer has supported some restrictions on institutional investors in housing. This year, he joined Sen. Jack Reed’s Preserving Homes and Communities Act, which would give public agencies and nonprofits priority in purchasing certain mortgages sold through federal programs and strengthen protections against foreclosure. He also voted for the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which became law as of July.

Over the past several decades through the 2024 cycle, Schumer has received nearly $4 million from the private equity and investment industry, according to OpenSecrets, more than any other sitting senator.

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