From ‘Top Chef’ Judge to Political Player

WASHINGTON â€" Tom Colicchio â€" the head judge on the “Top Chef” television show who runs his own restaurant empire â€" will bring his talents to the nation’s capital on Tuesday.

But don’t expect a Washington restaurant from him anytime soon. Mr. Colicchio is here as a board member of Food Policy Action, which rates members of Congress based on how they vote on food policies.

The group is looking at creating its own political action committee to get involved in the 2014 Congressional races, and Mr. Colicchio is a headlining a fund-raiser on Tuesday evening at the home of Representative Chellie Pingree, Democrat of Maine, to kick off the effort.

“We want to get a little more involved in some of the races, and support those who are making the right decisions and call attention to those who aren’t,” Mr. Colicchio said.

In 2012, he said, there was barely any discussion of hunger in America.

“I think it’s time to start organizing people to start voting around these various food issues,” Mr. Colicchio said. “Then, once one person loses an election because of how they voted on these issues, and then things change.”

Food Policy Action hopes to pressure legislators on issues like animal welfare and antihunger programs, said Scott Faber, the group’s executive director. Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary in the Obama administration, is a strategic adviser to the group.

“Food Policy Action represents the first time the food movement has really tried to make food political,” Mr. Faber said. “We’ll be highlighting the ways members have voted to make food less safe, to make people more hungry, and where they’ve voted against sensible food policies.”

The fund-raiser comes as the Republican-controlled House is expected to take up a food stamp bill this week.

Mr. Colicchio said that “if Congress manages to cut $20 to $40 billion” from food stamps â€" known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program â€" “there’s no way charity can make that up.”\

“All the fund-raisers in the world are not going to get back to that number,” he said. “Are we O.K. with people starving in the streets? I don’t think so.”

Mr. Colicchio estimates that during the fight over the farm bill â€" which ultimately passed, stripped of its provisions regarding food stamps and nutrition â€" he spent six days in Washington, lobbying “anyone who will listen.”

“We know there’s hunger in every Congressional district in the country,” he said. “I think more than anything, we really need to change the messaging around things like SNAP â€" the idea that it’s a handout and welfare, we really need to change that message.”

Mr. Colicchio also was an executive producer on “A Place at the Table,” a documentary that examines the problem of hunger in the United States, and he visited Washington shortly after President Obama was elected in 2008, for a inauguration dinner. It was there that Joan Nathan, an award-winning cookbook author began choking on a piece of chicken â€" and Mr. Colicchio promptly jumped up to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

“I’m not only good at getting food in, I’m good at getting food out,” he joked.