The Statehouse may be the public’s building but it is the lobbyists’ home.
Elections can change the membership of the state Senate or House of Representatives but they cannot change the membership of the Capitol’s chief residents. When an election is over, voters get on with life and their legislators go to Topeka, where lobbyists await like hosts for their returning guests.
The Capitol moves on a kind of symbiosis, a mutual dependency among legislators and lobbyists. Many lobbyists are expert at navigating the jungle growth of complicated issues. They are proficient in their fields. They know the venerable codes and strictures of Statehouse culture. Veteran lobbyists are Topeka’s institutional memory and its monitor ‒ and they are critical in financing political campaigns.
At the same time, legislators have the power to make or break laws. They may endorse or amend rules and regulations. They can enhance or undermine life for lobbyists and their clients. In the domed environment of the Capitol, it seems that neither lobbyist nor legislator can long function ‒ or thrive ‒ without the other. Nowhere is the correlation more vivid than in the money behind election campaigns.
During the 2000 election, for example, more than $7.1 million in campaign contributions flowed to candidates for the Kansas House of Representatives and state Senate ‒ $12 million in today’s dollars. About 70 percent of that money came from groups managed, represented or influenced by lobbyists, businesses, political action committees, political parties, and out-of-state contributors.
Today the money and intensity of campaign finance rolls on. The names may change but the mission, acquiring influence, is the same. One potent angle is to permit ‒ encourage ‒ certain lobbyists to bundle campaign money from their clients. It’s a legal way to sidestep and cash in on contribution limits ‒ $1,000 per election cycle for state Senate candidates, $500 for House candidates.
A fulltime lobbyist for a single client may persuade that business to give the limit, but a contract lobbyist with 15 clients has the potential to generate 15 such contributions; this lobbyist goes to a candidate with ten or 12 checks. The candidate may not remember all the donors but he (she) will remember the lobbyist who gave the money.
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The state’s 2022 lobbyist directory, part of the Governmental Ethics Commission web site, scrolls on for 55 pages, an alphabetical list of hundreds of lobbyists registered at the Capitol. Beneath their names are the organizations they represent. Some lobbyists have only one client ‒ such as Emily Bradbury (page 4), executive director of the Kansas Press Association.
Other lobbyists may report two or three clients. Still others who own or work for large lobbying firms, may represent dozens. Depending on the client, a lobbying contract can be worth $10,000 or $50,000 or more, depending on the power and the cause involved. O’Neal Consulting (page37), the lobbying firm of former House Speaker Mike O’Neal, listed 14 clients including the National Football League, Walmart Stores, and Koch’s Kansas Policy Institute.
Everyone and everything, it seems, has a lobbyist in Topeka. Wheat growers, ranchers, feed lots, farmers and implement dealers are among other agriculture interests. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, bankers, hospitals, pharmacies, Realtors, cities and counties, oil and gas companies, school districts, colleges and universities, law enforcement, small business, grocery stores, beer distributors and liquor dealers, pawnbrokers, casinos and pot sellers are among scores of interested groups.
Causes have lobbyists; among them, pro-life and pro-choice, pro-pot, anti-pot, parental rights, mental illness, the disabled and handicapped, the poor, wind energy, solar energy, anti-tax, fair tax, fair housing. And more.
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Influence-peddling in campaign finance can be found in lobbyist-financed hospitality, entertainment, gifts and recreation. Legislators are invited to special “conferences” at posh resorts, to basketball arenas and football stadiums, to an array of cozy events washed with serious labels such as tax equity or education reform.
The legislator will remember the hospitality. It’s hard to say no to the person who bought dinner. Or that splendid vacation. Or those wonderful seats at the big game.
Lobbyists are often asked to supply liquor and food for legislators’ receptions, dinners, private parties. “You don’t say no,” a lobbyist once told me. “It’s an opportunity to do a favor and be remembered for it.”
