Lobbying

Lobbying is the practice by individuals, organizations, or interest groups of trying to influence government decisions and public policy. The term gets its name from efforts to sway legislators in the lobbies outside legislative chambers. Over time its scope has expanded to include influencing legislation, executive actions, administrative regulations, judicial appointments, and other government decisions at the local, state, national, and, sometimes, international levels.

Lobbying has long been seen as pernicious. In 1869 a florid reporter wrote this about lobbying:

Crawling through the corridors, trailing its slimy length from gallery to committee room, at last it lies stretched at full length on the floor of Congress—this dazzling reptile, this huge, scaly serpent of the lobby.

But lobbying is also central to functioning representative democracies, serving as a way for individuals and groups to communicate their goals to the policymakers who represent them. As Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd wrote in 1987:

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interest group: Lobbying strategies and tactics

Congress has always had, and always will have, lobbyists and lobbying. We could not adequately consider our work load without them.…They spend many hours and considerable shoe leather trying to convince 535 members of Congress of the wisdom or folly of certain legislation.…But they have a job to do, and most of them do it very well indeed. It is hard to imagine Congress without them.

Organizations that engage in lobbying include businesses, trade associations, labor unions, professional societies, nonprofit organizations, charitable organizations, universities, religious organizations, state and local governments, foreign governments, and citizen advocacy groups. Individual citizens also lobby the government when they contact their representatives to ask them to vote one way or another on a matter of legislation or policy. Lobbying exists in many political systems, but it has a defining role in U.S. politics, in part because the U.S. Constitution offers sweeping protections for free speech in the First Amendment.

What follows is a discussion of the role of lobbying in representative democracy, its history and controversies, and examples of how lobbying—and lobbyists—work.

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Lobbying in the early United States

One of colonial America’s first—and most successful—lobbyists was Benjamin Franklin, who spent time in England lobbying (successfully) against the Stamp Act and (unsuccessfully) for the Olive Branch Petition, a last-ditch attempt to avoid revolution. Lobbying in the early United States most commonly took the form of petitions submitted to Congress and state legislatures on issues that included veterans’ pensions, tariffs, banking, public lands, internal improvements, and, later, slavery and abolition, done by the likes of the Quakers and individuals such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

The term itself probably has its origins in 17th-century England and the practice of constituents gathering in the lobby of the House of Commons to meet their representatives. By the early 1800s it was widely used in the United States, first in statehouses and subsequently in Congress.

An early example of lobbying to benefit a business interest was when Samuel Colt (of revolver fame) passed out pistols to lawmakers in his bid to get Congress to extend his patent. He succeeded.

How lobbying works

Fundamentally, lobbying is exerting power to try to achieve an end. How that power is exerted is central to lobbying strategies. Sometimes lobbying is direct and more transactional, arguably taking more of a brazen approach. Other times the approach is more indirect, which is sometimes called “grassroots” lobbying. Both require an enormous amount of logistical coordination (and money). Here is how each works:

• Direct lobbying: This form involves face-to-face interaction with legislators or their staff on specific policy issues. Lobbyists may provide research, even going so far as drafting potential legislation, to influence policy. The types of meetings between lobbyists and legislators that spawned the term are an example of direct lobbying.
• Indirect (grassroots) lobbying: Often, but not exclusively, associated with charities or other nonprofits, indirect lobbying comes in the form of mobilizing the public to weigh in on an issue. This can include letter writing or social media campaigns, marches, and petition drives. Organizers of such grassroots efforts (which is a bit of an oxymoron) must be solely interested in raising awareness on an issue as opposed to advocating for a specific policy position, which would be direct lobbying. These types of campaigns can often sway representatives who must face their constituents on election day. Because of the success of grassroots efforts, lobbying groups sometimes disguise their direct efforts as being grassroots.

Lobbying controversies through history

At its best, lobbying provides a meaningful way for constituents to make their feelings known to the lawmakers who represent them. This ideal is what representative democracy is all about. At its worst, lobbying serves to entrench access by the elite to those who can craft policy that is beneficial to elites. In other words, a version of “the rich get richer.”

From the Gilded Age to today, there have been many examples—some more egregious than what Samuel Colt did—of how corporate entities have expanded their power through politics.

• Crédit Mobilier: In 1865 U.S. Rep. Oakes Ames, a Republican from Massachusetts, along with his brother and a railroad executive, created Crédit Mobilier to build the Union Pacific Railroad. The railroad was built using federal money, and Ames was among a small group who profited enormously from the government contracts. When his colleagues seemed likely to investigate in 1868, Ames arranged for some of those colleagues to receive shares of Crédit Mobilier stock at bargain prices; the investigation was soon dropped. (The scheme ultimately came to light four years later, and Ames was censured.)
• King of the Lobby: Sam Ward was a New York businessman whose family had deep roots in finance and whose sister, Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” During the American Civil War and beyond, Ward held court in Washington, D.C., earning the nickname the “King of the Lobby” and gaining fame for the elaborate way he wined and dined legislators to garner their votes. Ward’s motto was known to be that the quickest way to get a legislator to vote “aye” was through his stomach.
• Thomas Corcoran: The first of a new generation of lobbyists, Corcoran served in a variety of government positions during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, advocating for New Deal legislation from his government perch. When he left the federal workforce in the early 1940s to go into private law practice, he found himself with a host of corporate clients, including pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors, who wanted to leverage his connections within the government to influence legislation. The practice of being a lawyer-lobbyist was particularly lucrative. Corcoran reported an income after leaving the government of $100,000 (almost $2.3 million in 2026 dollars).
• Jack Abramoff: Perhaps the most famous lobbying scandal since Crédit Mobilier involved lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Abramoff, a high-powered Washington lobbyist, defrauded Native American tribes of tens of millions of dollars while routinely bribing public officials with lavish trips, luxury concert tickets, and campaign contributions in exchange for legislative favors. In some cases, he lobbied against causes he had previously lobbied in favor of. Abramoff was ultimately sentenced to prison, as was Ohio Rep. Bob Ney, who accepted gifts from Abramoff in exchange for his votes.

First Amendment protection vs. regulation

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Broadly speaking, lobbying is the practice of petitioning, in the words of the First Amendment, “the Government for a redress of grievances.” As such, it enjoys enormous constitutional protections, but as seen in the examples above, those protections can be taken advantage of if no guardrails are in place. Attempts to regulate lobbying through the years have had mixed success:

• Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act (1946): The first major federal effort to regulate the industry required lobbyists to register and report their expenditures, but it contained significant loopholes and was largely ineffective at regulating indirect lobbying. In 1954 the Supreme Court, in United States v. Harriss, limited the act to covering only paid lobbyists and in-person meetings.
• Lobbying Disclosure Act (1995): This law required anyone who was spending at least 20 percent of their time lobbying to register with Congress, among other stipulations.
• Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (2007): Passed in the wake of the Abramoff affair, this law required more frequent reporting by lobbyists and tighter definitions on what gifts and travel could be offered by lobbyists to members of Congress. It also established a waiting period before former legislators could become lobbyists.

Top lobbyists

Despite attempts to rein it in, the power of lobbying interests in Washington, D.C. (often referred to as K Street, because that’s where so many lobbying firms have their offices), continues to be significant.

In 2010, in a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the spending of corporations and labor unions on political campaigns was upheld as free speech. Although this kind of spending is not technically lobbying, it gave rise to super PACs, which complement more traditional lobbying activities.

In 2024 associations, unions, and corporations spent $4.4 billion on lobbying, up from $3.2 billion in 2015. Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying included groups as seemingly diverse as the National Association of Realtors ($86.4 million), Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ($31.7 million), Meta ($24.4 million), and the AARP ($19.9 million). These reflect some of the top issues in front of lawmakers, from housing legislation and pharmaceutical regulation to the artificial intelligence race and protection of benefits for older people.

The National Rifle Association, long seen as an influential lobbyist, presents an interesting case study on how spending affects legislation. Though the NRA’s 2024 spending was just more than $2 million, its strategy and its implications are telling. Through its separate political action committee, the NRA almost exclusively supports only pro-Second Amendment candidates. The NRA also issues a scorecard, grading members of Congress on their voting record on NRA issues. The NRA’s ability to influence its members to vote for (or against) candidates based on a single issue has for a long time solidified its political power.