Longtime labor lobbyist Chris Carpenter joined the staff at IBEW Local 48 in October as political director. Local 48 is one of the most politically potent unions within its jurisdiction of Oregon and Southwest Washington. Carpenter comes to the job after six years as a lobbyist with FocusPoint Communications, and before that he served two years as political director for the Oregon and Southern Idaho District Council of Laborers. He fills a vacancy that was created in July when Marshall McGrady left the job of political director to become training director of NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center (NIETC). For McGrady, that was a return: He had previously spent seven years as a NIETC instructor.
Portland City Council member Eric Zimmerman has hired Lorne Bulling as chief of staff. Bulling spent the last three-plus years as an energetic advocate for the union building trades as political director of Ironworkers Local 29, after first getting familiar with labor working at the lobbying firm Pac/West. The hire appears to cement Zimmerman’s tight ties to labor: His previous chief of staff was Ryan Nielsen, who spent the previous eight years working for the Laborers, SEIU and AFT. Nielsen first got involved with labor in a union campaign while he was a graduate student worker at Johns Hopkins University. Nielsen left the job with Zimmerman to move back to his native Chicago.
