Why Uber is staffing up on political bigwigs

Uber’s latest news-making hire suggests the controversial ridesharing company is, in fact, going full-court press with its personal popularity campaign.

BetaBeat reported Tuesday that Michael Allegretti, who lost his 2010 bid for the Republican seat in New York’s 13th Congressional District to now-disgraced former Rep. Michael Grimm, will now be Uber’s Director of Public Policy for New York.

“We’re excited to have Michael joining Uber’s policy and communications team, whose ranks are comprised of a growing group of political alumni from a variety of backgrounds, including campaigns, labor, advocacy and government,” an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Yahoo News.

Not only is Allegretti the latest in a string of politically minded hires over the past several months; he’s also the second New York City politico to join the Uber payroll in the past two weeks. The first was Matthew Wing, previously Governor Anthony Cuomo’s press secretary.

CEO Travis Kalanick made clear last August that Uber was, in fact, positioning itself as a “candidate” when he announced that revered Democratic strategist and Obama ’08 mastermind David Plouffe would be steering the campaign. But the recent New York-centric staffing implies that Uber is making a concerted effort to mend its more than complicated relationship with the city — or at least beef up its defense against its foes in the local government and taxi industry, as well as its perception in the media.

Uber’s entrée into the world of on-demand transportation has hardly been a smooth one.

In recent months, reports of sexual assaults by drivers in the U.S. and abroad have dominated headlines and prompted the firm to make a safe-ride checklist available to riders within the app.

And as the Silicon Valley company continues to grow, more cities and business interests are questioning the legality of its operation. But perhaps nowhere else has Uber been met with as much resistance as the city whose iconic fleet of yellow taxis is a part of its identity.

Four years after the company’s official launch, Uber finally became legal in New York City in April 2013, after the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from black-car operators that sought to kill a pilot program for yellow-cab-hailing apps approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. But to say the city’s taxi business embraced the app would be an exaggeration. Just a few months after securing approval to operate in New York, Uber launched a fare war against the city by cutting the cost of its cheaper service, UberX, to just slightly below the price of a regular yellow cab.

In May it seemed that NYC’s old-school taxi business and the high-tech, smartphone-based service might stop butting heads and join forces when top TLC official Ashwini Chhabra announced he was switching teams and joining Uber as its first head of policy development and community engagement. But shortly after the announcement, TLC officials revealed that they’d long been suspicious of Chhabra’s loyalties and called for an investigation into whether he had been secretly reporting to Uber while still working for the commission.

The battle for New York City continued this week when the Taxi and Limousine Commission suspended operations at five out of Uber’s six New York City bases for refusing to submit digital trip data. While the TLC argues that Uber agreed to share its electronic records, like all other taxi bases, since it opened bases in New York, Uber has claimed that demanding the data is a violation of the company’s constitutional right to protect trade secrets.

Allegretti’s appointment confirms that Uber is serious about winning the battle for New York, but whether that means he’ll be expected to smooth things over with the city’s taxi interest or up the ante in the fight against them remains to be seen.

Still, New York is just one, albeit huge, obstacle on Uber’s road to ruling the ride-hailing industry.

In February of last year, the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association, a national trade organization, launched a campaign against Uber and other ridesharing apps such as Lyft and Sidecar. As part of the “Who’s Driving You?” campaign, the organization zeroed in on Uber with a 10-minute documentary entitled “Four Things About Uber You Wish You Never Knew,” in which state and city officials, insurance and transportation industry experts debunk “myths” about Uber: that it’s a tech company (“Uber is a transportation company with a fancy tech app,” says Birmingham, Alabama, city council member Kim Rafferty); that “Insurance for UberX services keeps people safe and covered”; that “UberX is a ridesharing company and doesn’t need to follow taxi laws”; and that “UberX doesn’t need regulation. Deregulation is a good thing.”

“Regulation, in the taxi industry especially, is very, very important,” says Ray Mundy, director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, in the film. “It’s an industry which is a necessity public service. Regulation is necessary so that whether you’re rich or poor, whether you live in a dense neighborhood or a very sparse neighborhood, you can have access in a reasonable amount of time to this on-demand service at a guaranteed rate.”

As the company grows, taking on more cities as well as services (such as moving and delivery), it’s bound to encounter greater scrutiny and opposition at not only a national but also a global level. Just Friday, China banned the use of ride-hailing apps by private drivers. And given the company’s less than cozy relationship with the press in the past — from one executive reportedly using the app to track a reporter’s ride without permission to another suggesting the company should hire researchers to dig up dirt on their foes in the media — it’s no wonder Uber’s techie execs are finally deferring to the political pros.