Tallahassee, Florida-based lobbying firm The Southern Group hired two former Charlotte city councilmen to start a Charlotte office.
Tariq Bokhari and Larken Egleston will head the branch for the business, which opened a Raleigh office in 2024 led by Kevin Wilkinson, a lobbyist who had worked in state government, at UNC Pembroke and as an aide to former U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger. Later that year, The Southern Group hired former N.C. Rep. Jason Saine, a Lincoln County Republican, as a lobbyist.
The Southern Group, which has 13 offices in five states and Washington, D.C., said Charlotte doesn’t have enough lobbyists, according to its release citing the new hires. The firm initially focused on Florida, but has been expanding into other southern states.
“Cities like Tampa and Orlando, which are not capital cities and have metro economies comparable in size to Charlotte, outpace Charlotte by an estimated three to five times in the number of lobbying and government affairs firms with a physical presence in the metro area, as a result, Charlotte’s ability to consistently compete for state attention, appropriations and policy outcomes has been limited,” the release noted.
Egleston is a Democrat who was on the City Council for two terms. He later was a congressional district director for former U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson, and more recently worked as a government affairs officer for the N.C. attorney general’s office, now headed by Jackson.
Bokhari is a Republican who left the council in his fourth term last year to work for the Trump administration as a senior official in the Federal Transit Agency. He left that job after several months and returned to Charlotte. His wife, Krista, was defeated in the November City Council elections.
“Charlotte punches below its weight in Raleigh,” Egleston said in the release. “That is not because the city lacks importance. It is because many companies lack a coordinated, senior-level strategy for government engagement.”
Bokhari co-founded Carolina Fintech Hub, which supports tech-oriented financial services businesses.
David Mildenberg is editor of Business North Carolina. Reach him at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.