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The history of lobbying in the United States is a chronicle of the rise of paid advocacy generally by special interests seeking favor in lawmaking bodies such as the United States Congress. While lobbying has usually been understood as activity by paid professionals to try to influence key legislators and executives, it has been around since the early days of the Republic, and affects every level of government from local municipal authorities to the federal government in Washington. In the nineteenth century, lobbying was mostly conducted at the state level, but in the twentieth century, there has been a marked rise in activity, particularly at the federal level in the past thirty years. While lobbying has generally been marked by controversy, there have been numerous court rulings protecting lobbying as free speech.
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Beginnings
When the Constitution was crafted by Framers such as James Madison, their intent was to design a governmental system in which powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subduing the general will. According to Madison, a faction was "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." Madison considered factions as dangerous, since they threatened to bring about tyranny if their control became too great. Madison, writing in the Federalist Papers, suggested that factions could be thwarted by requiring them to compete with other factions, and therefore the powerful force of one faction could be counteracted by another faction or factions. Today, the term "special interest" has often been equated with Madison's sense of "faction". In addition, the Constitution sought to protect other freedoms, such as free speech.
Accordingly, the ability of individuals, groups, and corporations to lobby the government is protected by the right to petition in the First Amendment. It is protected by the Constitution as free speech; one accounting was that there were three Constitutional provisions which protect the freedom of interest groups to "present their causes to government", and various decisions by the Supreme Court have upheld these freedoms over the course of two centuries. Even corporations have been considered in some court decisions to have many of the same rights as citizens, including their right to lobby officials for what they want. As a result, the legality of lobbying took "strong and early root" in the new republic.
During the nineteenth century, generally, most lobbying happened within state legislatures, since the federal government, while having larger jurisdiction, did not handle many matters pertaining to the economy, and it did not do as much legislating as the state governments. When lobbying did happen in those days, it was often "practiced discreetly" with little or no public disclosure. By one account, more intense lobbying in the federal government happened from 1869 and 1877 during the administration of President Grant near the start of the so-called Gilded Age. The most influential lobbies wanted railroad subsidies and a tariff on wool. At the same time in the Reconstruction South, lobbying was intense near the state legislatures, especially regarding railroad subsidies, but it also happened in areas as diverse as gambling. For example, Charles T. Howard of the Louisiana State Lottery Company actively lobbied state legislators and the governor of Louisiana for the purpose of getting a license to sell lottery tickets.
Twentieth century
In the Progressive Era from the 1880s to the 1920s, reformers frequently blamed lobbyists as corrupting politics. Already the idea that lobbying should become more exposed was beginning to take hold. In 1928, there was criticism of the American Tariff League's payments, in concert with the Republican National Committee, to help elect Herbert Hoover; the League was criticized for failing to report its expenditures and how it had hired two "Washington correspondents", that is, two lobbyists.
In 1953, after a lawsuit involving a congressional resolution authorizing a committee to investigate "all lobbying activities intended to influence, encourage, promote, or retard legislation," the Supreme Court narrowly construed "lobbying activities" to mean only "direct" lobbying––which the Court described as "representations made directly to the Congress, its members, or its committees". It contrasted it with indirect lobbying: efforts to influence Congress indirectly by trying to change public opinion. The Court rejected a broader interpretation of "lobbying" out of First Amendment concerns, and thereby affirmed the earlier decision of the appeals court. The Supreme Court ruling was:
In support of the power of Congress it is argued that lobbying is within the regulatory power of Congress, that influence upon public opinion is indirect lobbying, since public opinion affects legislation; and that therefore attempts to influence public opinion are subject to regulation by the Congress. Lobbying, properly defined, is subject to control by Congress, . . . But the term cannot be expanded by mere definition so as to include forbidden subjects. Neither semantics nor syllogisms can break down the barrier which protects the freedom of people to attempt to influence other people by books and other public writings. . . . It is said that lobbying itself is an evil and a danger. We agree that lobbying by personal contact may be an evil and a potential danger to the best in legislative processes. It is said that indirect lobbying by the pressure of public opinion on the Congress is an evil and a danger. That is not an evil; it is a good, the healthy essence of the democratic process. . . .
Several political trends emerged from an interplay of factors in the second half of the twentieth century:
As a result of a new political climate, lobbying activity exploded during the last few decades. Money spent on lobbying increased from "tens of millions to billions a year," by one estimate. In 1975, total revenue of Washington lobbyists was less than $100 million; by 2006, it exceeded $2.5 billion. Lobbyists such as Cassidy became millionaires while issues multiplied, and other practitioners became similarly wealthy. One estimate was that Cassidy's net worth in 2007 exceeded $125 million.
Cassidy made no bones about his work. He liked to talk about his ability to get things done: winning hundreds of millions in federal dollars for his university clients, getting Ocean Spray Cranberry juice into school lunches, helping General Dynamics save the billion-dollar Seawolf submarine, smoothing the way for the president of Taiwan to make a speech at Cornell despite a U.S. ban on such visits.
Another trend emerged: the revolving door. Before the mid 1970s, it was rare that a congressperson upon retirement would work for a lobbying firm and when it did occasionally happen, it "made eyebrows rise". Prior to the 1980s lawmakers rarely became lobbyists as the profession was generally considered 'tainted' and 'unworthy' for once-elected officials such as themselves; in addition lobbying firms and trade groups were leery of hiring former members of Congress because they were reputed to be 'lazy as lobbyists and unwilling to ask former colleagues for favors'. By 2007, there were 200 former members of the House and Senate were registered lobbyists. New higher salaries for lobbyists, increasing demand and a greater turnover in Congress and a 1994 change in the control of the House contributed to a change in attitude about the appropriateness of former elected officials becoming lobbyists. The revolving door became an established arrangement.
In the new world of Washington politics, the activities of public relations and advertising mixed with lobbying and lawmaking.