Anthony T. Podesta, commonly known as Tony Podesta, is an American lobbyist best known for founding the Podesta Group

Podesta Group

The Podesta Group is a lobbying and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1988 by brothers John Podesta and Tony Podesta and has previously been known as Podesta Associates, podesta.com and PodestaMattoon...

. Podesta has lobbied for a variety of groups, including Bank of America

Bank of America

Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...

, BP

BP

BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

, and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 in addition to political campaigns such as Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...

, George McGovern

George McGovern

George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

, Michael Dukakis

Michael Dukakis

Michael Stanley Dukakis served as the 65th and 67th Governor of Massachusetts from 1975–1979 and from 1983–1991, and was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988. He was born to Greek immigrants in Brookline, Massachusetts, also the birthplace of John F. Kennedy, and was the longest serving...

, Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

. More recently, he has worked for Pennsylvania Democratic representatives Joe Sestak, Chris Carney

Chris Carney

Christopher P. "Chris" Carney is the former U.S. Representative for , serving from 2007 until 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party and was a prominent member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition....

, and Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy may refer to:* Patrick Murphy , Canadian Olympic cyclist in 1956* Patrick Murphy , Irish giant* Patrick Murphy , Irish Fianna Fáil politician from Cork...

, and chaired former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell

Ed Rendell

Edward Gene "Ed" Rendell is an American politician who served as the 45th Governor of Pennsylvania. Rendell, a member of the Democratic Party, was elected Governor of Pennsylvania in 2002, and his term of office began January 21, 2003...

's reelection campaign. He is closely connected with the Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 and, along with his brother John

John Podesta

John David Podesta was the fourth and final White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, from 1998 until 2001. He is the president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law...

 and wife Heather, has repeatedly been named one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists and fundraisers.

Life and early career

Podesta grew up in Chicago with his Greek-American mother Mary, first-generation Italian immigrant father John Sr, and his brother John Jr. He studied political science both in college, at the University of Illinois at Chicago

University of Illinois at Chicago

The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...

, and in graduate school at MIT. While studying at MIT in 1968, Podesta left for New Hampshire to work on the election campaign, organizing students to support Humphrey-Muskie

Hubert Humphrey presidential campaign, 1968

The Hubert Humphrey presidential campaign of 1968 began when Vice President of the United States Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota decided to seek the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States following the announcement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that he would not seek the...

. A few months later he began traveling around the country with presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy

Eugene McCarthy

Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...

 and then ended up running the scheduling advance operation in California and later states.

McCarthy was the first of several losing Democratic politicians that Podesta campaigned for. Others included Joe Duffy for the Senate in Connecticut in 1970, Ed Muskie and then George McGovern for president in 1972

United States presidential election, 1972

The United States presidential election of 1972 was the 47th quadrennial United States presidential election. It was held on November 7, 1972. The Democratic Party's nomination was eventually won by Senator George McGovern, who ran an anti-war campaign against incumbent Republican President Richard...

, Ted Kennedy in 1980

Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 1980

The 1980 Democratic presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 1980 U.S. presidential election...

, Walter Mondale's presidential campaign in 1984

United States presidential election, 1984

The United States presidential election of 1984 was a contest between the incumbent President Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate. Reagan was helped by a strong economic recovery from the deep recession of 1981–1982...

, and Michael Dukakis in 1988

United States presidential election, 1988

The United States presidential election of 1988 featured no incumbent president, as President Ronald Reagan was unable to seek re-election after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, won the Republican nomination, while the...

, the same year that the Podesta brothers founded their lobbying firm.

In 1981 Tony Podesta became a founding president of People for the American Way

People For the American Way

People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy group in the United States. Under U.S. tax code, People For the American Way is organized as a tax-exempt 501 non-profit organization.-Purpose:...

, a liberal

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 group started by television producer Norman Lear

Norman Lear

Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...

. He led the group until 1987.

Podesta Group

In 1988 Tony and John Podesta founded Podesta Associates, which became PodestaMatoon when Republican Daniel Mattoon joined the team in 2001. The name was again changed to the Podesta Group when Mattoon left in 2006.