# Cornerstone Government Affairs The **#5 lobbying firm in DC by 2025 revenue ($55.55M)** — and the top-20's clearest counter-model to the celebrity shops. Founded in 2002 by Geoff Gonella and Campbell Kaufman, Cornerstone deliberately built itself around **former senior congressional staffers rather than name-brand ex-members of Congress**, and around federal *appropriations* work rather than headline policy fights. Employee-owned (ESOP since 2016), explicitly bipartisan, with ~200 professionals across DC and sixteen state capitals — one of the few top-20 firms with a genuine state-lobbying footprint. ## Scale and trajectory 2025 income of $55.55M was up roughly 15% from ~$48.2M in 2024, tracking the record industry-wide surge documented in [[2025 Record Lobbying Year]] rather than any Trump-proximity premium. The book runs to 600+ clients — a volume model, heavy on universities, municipalities, tribal governments, and health systems chasing directed federal funding, alongside corporates like Waymo, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and an expanded U.S. Chamber of Commerce engagement. ## The staffer model Cornerstone's [[Revolving Door]] runs through the committee-staff layer, where appropriations language actually gets written: personnel include Keith Stern (former chief of staff to Rep. Jim McGovern), Peter Webster (former chief of staff to Sen. Chris Coons), and alumni of the House Budget, Small Business, and Financial Services committee staffs. The firm also appears in POGO's Pentagon revolving-door database. The wager is that a former appropriations staff director moves money more reliably than a former senator — a quieter and cheaper form of access than the Trump-world firms sell. ## FARA Cornerstone holds a FARA registrant history (OpenSecrets registrant profile), though no currently active foreign principal was verified as of July 2026 — a thinner foreign book than peers like [[Squire Patton Boggs]] or [[Ballard Partners]]. ## See also [[Lobbying Hub]] · [[Lobbying]] · [[Revolving Door]] · [[Cassidy & Associates]] · [[2025 Record Lobbying Year]]