# Gerald Cassidy Co-founder (1975, with Kenneth Schlossberg) and longtime chairman/CEO of [[Cassidy & Associates]] — the man who **invented the modern earmark-lobbying business** (see [[Earmarks]]). Born 1940 in Brooklyn; Villanova, then Cornell Law; migrant legal-aid attorney in Florida before becoming general counsel to Sen. George McGovern's Senate nutrition committee — the connection that produced the firm. The 1976 Tufts University nutrition-center earmark (~$27M) was the first recorded case of lobbyists profiting by inserting funding for a private institution into a spending bill without any agency request. Central subject of Robert Kaiser's *Washington Post* "Citizen K Street" series and *So Damn Much Money* (2009). Stepped back to chairman emeritus in 2013. *Status: stub — expand with the Kaiser material: fee-model innovations, Democratic fundraising, and the earmark-moratorium decline arc.* ## See also [[Cassidy & Associates]] · [[Earmarks]] · [[Lobbying Hub]]