Photograph by Emma Fidel/Bloomberg

Citigroup Executive Vice President Candi Wolff has been escaping Washington, D.C., for her family's Christmas tree farm every year since 1994.

Citigroup Inc. Executive Vice President Candi Wolff can talk about Christmas trees for hours. She can tell you how an electric tree baler works, the difference between a Colorado Blue Spruce and a Douglas Fir, and that tree sales are a year-end economic indicator, although she can’t quite tell you why.

Wolff can also recall the times former Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George W. Bush would phone while she was working on her family’s Christmas tree farm in Round Hill, Virginia.

“I’d say, ‘Hold on, I’m out selling trees, hold on!”’ she said in an interview. “And I’d run somewhere where I could actually have a conversation.”

Wolff, 48, Citigroup’s head of global government affairs and a former assistant to Bush for legislative affairs, has been escaping the Beltway — literally and figuratively — for Snickers Gap Tree Farm every winter since 1994. That’s when she met her hydrogeologist husband, Mark Wolff, whose father started planting trees on the 40-acre farm in 1981.

The mountainside farm 55 miles from the White House provides a welcome break from Wolff’s corner office on Pennsylvania Avenue, she says. There, she directs a staff of 42 and oversees Citi’s relations with more than 100 governments, including the U.S. Aside from the poinsettia on her office coffee table, you might not know that the lobbyist, named one of Washington’s 25 most influential women in 2012 by the National Journal, is also a Christmas tree aficionado.

You won’t know, that is, until she’s “gotten to you” –her phrase for inviting you out to Snickers Gap — as she’s done with many Washington friends over the years.

“I would get my Hill colleagues,” said Wolff, who worked for the Republican Senate Steering Committee and Policy Committee during her first few years of farm visits. “We sort of had this high-priced crowd out there — we were the lawyers or lobbyists.”

In those early days, Wolff helped work the baler, a netting machine, because she had smaller fingers than the farm men and was better at tying knots. Today, Snickers Gap trees have grown too big for her to lift easily, so she sticks to customer-related tasks like refilling the apple cider heater, giving directions and handling the money — a fitting job for someone who has been a bank executive since May 2011.

Wolff says she enjoys interacting with customers, many of them longtime Snickers Gap visitors, and that she finds the retail experience “grounding,” in part because not all the customers know who she is. ”I’m wearing jeans and I’m kind of getting back to the earth, if you will,” Wolff said.

As much as Wolff enjoys the farm, she says she doesn’t mix business with pleasure. She chuckles at the mention of agriculture policy, which she jokes about avoiding while at the White House.

“It was never really my interest,” she said while walking through a plot of firs. “I can do this and this is fun, but I don’t want to understand ag policy.”

Fun it may be, though not exactly relaxing. The choose-and-cut farm, which opens the weekend after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, is usually so busy during the first two weekends of December that Wolff doesn’t have time to check her Blackberry until sundown.

This year, Snickers Gap sold out of all but the largest trees early, giving Wolff more time to chat with her family: Her brother-in-law now owns the farm, her niece and nephew run the “Snack Shack,” and her husband and teenage daughters help customers claim their trees from the hillside.

Wolff says the simple human interaction away from Washington’s Scrooges and stress is one of the tree farm’s greatest holiday gifts. ”They’re out there for Christmas,” Wolff said. “For the most part there’s not a bah-humbug mood. Occasionally you get a few Grinches, but most people are just happy to be out there.”

Original post is The Secret (Santa) Life of a Washington Lobbyist by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Capitol Hill police check Santa Claus with a metal detector as he enters the U.S. Capitol on his way to Speaker of the House John Boehner's office on Dec. 12, 2012. The man was working with the group Catholics United, and wanted to urge Speaker of the House John Boehner to pass pending 'fiscal cliff' legislation before Christmas.

House Speaker John Boehner has warned his troops not to make any plans after Christmas.

Then again, every day is like Christmas, the speaker says — so long as people are playing with hypothetical solutions to the year-end fiscal talks that have ensnared him and President Barack Obama.  He said so in a brief question and answer session with reporters today pressing the Ohio Republican on what he might accept.

“Ifs, ands and buts are like candy and nuts,” Boehnner said. “If that were the case, every day would be Christmas.”

Original post is Boehner: Christmas Every Day — `Like Candy and Nuts’ in the Capitol by Political Capital.

Photograph by Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Vice President Joe Biden talks with Costco employees in the bakery section of the store in Washington on Nov. 29, 2012. Biden went shopping for presents and to highlight the importance of renewing middle-class tax cuts so families and businesses have more certainty at this critical time for our economy.

Shoppers at this morning’s grand opening of Washington’s first Costco got a little more than they bargained for: A sample-tasting, high-fiving vice president of the United States.

Joe Biden tried on watches and perused pies during his morning outing, intended to draw attention to middle-class shoppers whom he contends will have “a big problem” if Congress doesn’t act to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

“All these folks in the store here, it’s going to make a difference,” he said about the automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled at year’s end. “Take $2,200 out of their pockets next year, you have a big problem.”

Biden, greeted by Costco CEO and co-founder Craig Jelinek, co-founder Jim Sinegal and dozens of excited customers, entered the 154,000-square-foot store while proudly showing off his Costco membership card — which was renewed yesterday.

“I wanted to get my wife’s card and she said, ‘No, no, no, go get your own,”’ Biden told the crowd.

The famously friendly Biden was on his game as he traveled through a maze of aisles crowded with surprised shoppers and local reporters covering Costco’s opening. He slapped hands, joked with employees and gave one woman a hug after she threw her arms open and shouted, “I’m from Wilmington, Delaware!”

Later, as Biden neared the store’s auto-parts section, a man shouted, “Hey Joe, over here!”

“Hey man, I don’t need tires, I don’t drive anymore,” Biden shouted back.

After choosing a large apple pie to kick off his trip, Biden stopped in the childrens’ book area. He quickly chose at least a dozen books, including one about Olivia, the fictional pig. He told reporters he purchased the books for his wife’s Delaware charity, Book Buddies, and that he selected books “based on things I know my grandkids like.”

He shook more hands and navigated groups of shoppers before stopping at a jewelry case to look at watches. Holding two pink roses, he took a moment to examine the case, which included brands priced at $1,199 and $299.

Then, he asked an aide for his phone.

“I’m getting some guidance,” he said to the crowd as he dialed his daughter Ashley.

Once on the move again, Biden’s staff corralled onlookers, many blocking aisles to whip out camera-phones, in order to clear an area where the vice president could check out.

“Now you know why my wife doesn’t let me shop alone,” Biden said after he’d paid.

He paused next to his cart, loaded with a 32-inch Panasonic television, to speak to reporters about the impending fiscal cliff.

“I think it’s important Congress acts now, I mean right now. All it has to do is take a single vote to extend the middle class tax cut,” Biden said. “We’re fully prepared to work with our Republican colleagues to make sure we deal with the rest of the cliff. That would take $900 billion off the cliff right now.”

Before heading out to his car, Biden stopped to talk to Ivey Stewart, the Costco employee who steered his cart and accompanied him throughout the store.

As Biden spoke on Stewart’s phone, apparently to one of her relatives, Stewart wiped tears from her face.

Original post is Biden Opens Wallet at Costco Debut by Political Capital.