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You know ironically, that’s how lobbyist’s most effectively agitate for their positions? People often think there’s this conspiracy that lobbying and 'special interests' work like some kind of nefarious Jewish cabal, straight out of the Elders of Zion. It isn't like that, at all. I have a relative that's done lobbying work in DC.
First the public perception of lobbying is 100% wrong. People think it’s like something straight out of House of Cards, and that's simply not the case. There is literally no such thing as 'here is a sack of cash, now go pass this legislation for me.' The Abscam Scandals ended like 95% of that in the 80's and what little left there was ended with the Jack Abramoff scandal. I know some people think it's ridiculous when they read this, but it's true. 99.99% of federal and state legislators actually do take ethics seriously.
Lobbying is using money and public support to sway a legislator to see how voting for/against a bill is in the best interest of his/her constituency. I'm not saying you have to agree with this entirely, only that 'that' is what it 'is'. Who are the players? The traditional 'rolodex' lobbyist is a dying beast. This is the lobbyist that people are probably thinking of when you think 'lobbyist', somebody like Trent Lott. This is the guy that can open the doors, and knows the guy that knows the guy. This is 'somewhat' valuable, but not very. One thing that's great about our government is that you can solicit your representative anytime you want. All of us are familiar with this. And of course people do this. Every person that ever worked on the Hill knows about crazy constituents that went into the legislator's office and read them the riot act over something. But the truth is the rolodex lobbyist isn't that valuable. Where they 'are' valuable is describing relationships between important people (e.g., "Sen X won't wipe is ass without Sen Y's approval. If you get Sen Y onboard, Sen X falls right in line").
The biggest players in the post-Abramoff world are trade associations and advocacy groups. 'These' are the people that fuck, and there's 'literally', tens of thousands of them. A great example is the NRF. To put it simply, every little retailer that wants to belong, from Mom and Pop's all the way up to Wal-Mart contributes money, and that combined money is used to advocate for the industry. The NRF sends people to conferences, to Capitol Hill, to state legislatures, everywhere, to support pro-industry legislation and to shoot down anti-industry legislation.
A tertiary player (but growing in influence) is the Government Affairs groups for large companies. Here's AT&T's head guy. They are basically single-company trade associations. But a big company like AT&T belongs to a lot of associations in addition to having their own GA team.
Now as far as the money goes, this is actually the least important aspect of lobbying. That name of the game is campaign contributions. Campaigns at all levels are extremely expensive, and you need help paying for them. But, direct contributions are limited and public, so they aren't too valuable. The contributions come in from PACs and advocacy groups or organizing groups (NCSL is an example).
Mechanically speaking, the NCSL will have a conference and a shit ton of legislators (state-level in this case, but there are tons of federal conferences) will attend. They have to attend because if they do NCSL will contribute $X to their campaign fund. Also a massive huge number of lobbyist from trade associations and company GA teams will also attend. Incidentally, those lobbyists paid anywhere from $10k to $100k to attend the event. This is the money that goes into the legislators' campaign funds. At these events, all the lobbyists elbow-jockey for the attention of the legislators. The goal is to get a 'sit down' or a call set up at some later date. Why does the money not matter? Because the legislator gets his campaign contribution irrespective of what happens at the meeting. He's under zero obligation to even 'listen' to the lobbyists. At the sit down, the lobbyist is going to try to explain why issue X is important. Or even better, the lobbyist will set a meeting and bring some constituents.
Another thing too is the fact that for just about every issue in America, there are two extremely well funded but diametrically opposed parties. Take net neutrality. If I'm a legislator, I can be in the ISP camp or in the content/Google camp. But it doesn't matter, one of the two sides will fund my campaign. I don't care who does it. And this is what's so funny about it. There is 'literally' so much money in politics now that there is a PAC/group that will fund almost every possible position. This is very true on the federal level, sort of true at the state level.
So if money doesn't matter, how do lobbyists pressure legislators? They call it 'social advocacy'. It's a 'huge' business. Say for example, Congress is pushing a bill that would be bad for retailers. The NRF is going to be tasked with killing it. This is a campaign. The first thing the NRF is going to do is call, not Capitol Hill, but local retailers. The NRF will broker phone calls between Mom and Pop retailers and their representatives to put 'extreme' pressure on the congressman to vote a certain way (e.g., "I have been in business in your district for 20 years. I'm hanging up a sign in my window 'tomorrow' about how you are killing the local community by voting for bill X. I'm also going to the local Rotary Club and we are going to discuss how you have turned your back on your constituents!"). Believe me, congressmen listen to these calls, and they will have no idea is was set up by the NRF. This is extremely common. Also common are email campaigns (less effective) and 'fly-ins' where an association will get, say, 10 local store owners to fly to DC and complain to their representative for an hour. As you might imagine, this is also extremely effective. At your local level, you should try this if you want something in your city changed, it will very likely work.
A very common thing a legislator will ask a lobbyist for is 'cover'. Asking for cover is asking a lobbyist to sway public opinion on an issue. This is also fairly common. Believe it or not, there are 'media advocacy' companies that will set out to sawy social media in favor or against an issue. I don't know how they work exactly, but they have their hands in everything, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, 'definitely' Reddit, all of them. A trade association will hire an agency to 'paper' an issue. So the agency will scan, say, Reddit and whenever issue X comes up, the agency will start commenting with "Well this article is total bullshit because X" and upvote himself with other zombie accounts. Same with Twitter, same with Facebook. I didn't believe it until it was shown to me by my relative awhile ago. Its extremely expensive, but extremely effective.
This whole industry grew out of SOPA/PIPA legislation some years ago. It was a watershed moment, when lobbyists and legislatures simultaneously realized the power of organized social media. Media advocacy is 'expensive' and the people that work there get paid big time. If you can do this, I highly recommend you explore the field.
That's basically how it all works.
Of course there are, that's why democracy is a scam.
'Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.' The printed press, the tv networks, and now social media companies will claim to be 'pro-democracy' until comes time for the people to vote, buy video games or movie tickets, or make healthcare decisions 'wrong'.
The powerful will swing their power, they will bury the news, they will censor or bot the internet, leverage their intelligence connections, propagate hysteria and incite race riots, make up WMD or pandemics out of whole cloth... And then they'll you you voted for this, this is what you wanted.
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A while ago I might have been more prone to agree with you on this, but with high profile bribery including Eric Adams, Tom Homan, and well, the practically endless examples on display in the Trump admin now from pardoning big criminals for their support of companies related to him (or relatives who gave him a million dollars) to a ton of foreign policy shenanigans to well, tons of other examples it sure does seem like the stereotypical bribery of giving money for politics is alive and well.
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