FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Washington Government Relations Group
^This is the website for the Washington Government Relations Group which is the premiere membership organization for black lobbyists. Up until the mid 90s their membership was less than 50 members. As of 2009 per this article Their membership was around 450 which was up from 200 members in 2004. For perspective, there are an estimated 12,337 federal lobbyists working today in Washington which is down from the record 15,137 in 2007. The total registered population of federal lobbyists however is around 30,000 according to this article which cites PoliticalMoneyLine.com. In other words, black lobbyists constitute slightly more than 1% of the total federal lobbyist population.
What does this mean?
To answer that one first needs to understand what a lobbyist actually does. I'll borrow the definition from Wikipedia:
Lobbyists in the USA (known colloquially in Washington as "K Street") exist in a capacity to sway a legislator's vote/support/opposition for bills, propositions, etc in favor of the position that the lobbyist's client shares. Lobbyist firms typically create year long contracts with their clients and are paid anywhere between $5,000 to 25,000/month depending on the size of the private company/interest group.
Lobbyists are typically privately funded but can also be funded with public money. In fact, 40 of the 50 states have no regulations whatsoever on using public money for lobbying.
So who are these "special interest groups" that often spend upwards of 500,000/year on federal lobbyists? The simple answer is they can be anybody and can lobby for anything. One example of a black special interest group is the NAACP; per Open Secrets.org the NAACP has spent around half a million every year on federal lobbying for the last 8 years.
The flipside of special interest groups are the interests of the lobby firms themselves. For example, there are 100s of civil rights lobby firms. When it comes to black owned lobby firms of any kind however you can count them on one hand, and two of the most notable - Watts Partners and PCT Government Relations - merged into the practice JC Watts in 2010. Pictured below are the respective founders Elroy Sailor, J.C. Watts and Raymond Millian:
JC Watts lobbies on behalf of a variety of industries from agriculture to homeland security and their client list includes a number of Fortune 500 companies from AT&T to Microsoft.
So what is the point of all of this info? Lobbyists are essentially the direct line from the public to government representatives when it comes to legislature. These lobbyists are in the White House every day developing personal relationships with elected and unelected officials. These relationships are critical to making lobbying actually work on behalf of the clients.
The drop in the bucket of black lobbyists is mirrored by the drop in the bucket of black clients and black lobbying dollars from any sector (private, public, government).
And yet, this matter is not discussed in the MSM... there are no articles whatsoever about this topic on CNN, MSNBC or Fox
Let's talk about it.
^This is the website for the Washington Government Relations Group which is the premiere membership organization for black lobbyists. Up until the mid 90s their membership was less than 50 members. As of 2009 per this article Their membership was around 450 which was up from 200 members in 2004. For perspective, there are an estimated 12,337 federal lobbyists working today in Washington which is down from the record 15,137 in 2007. The total registered population of federal lobbyists however is around 30,000 according to this article which cites PoliticalMoneyLine.com. In other words, black lobbyists constitute slightly more than 1% of the total federal lobbyist population.
What does this mean?
To answer that one first needs to understand what a lobbyist actually does. I'll borrow the definition from Wikipedia:
Lobbyists in the USA (known colloquially in Washington as "K Street") exist in a capacity to sway a legislator's vote/support/opposition for bills, propositions, etc in favor of the position that the lobbyist's client shares. Lobbyist firms typically create year long contracts with their clients and are paid anywhere between $5,000 to 25,000/month depending on the size of the private company/interest group.
Lobbyists are typically privately funded but can also be funded with public money. In fact, 40 of the 50 states have no regulations whatsoever on using public money for lobbying.
So who are these "special interest groups" that often spend upwards of 500,000/year on federal lobbyists? The simple answer is they can be anybody and can lobby for anything. One example of a black special interest group is the NAACP; per Open Secrets.org the NAACP has spent around half a million every year on federal lobbying for the last 8 years.
The flipside of special interest groups are the interests of the lobby firms themselves. For example, there are 100s of civil rights lobby firms. When it comes to black owned lobby firms of any kind however you can count them on one hand, and two of the most notable - Watts Partners and PCT Government Relations - merged into the practice JC Watts in 2010. Pictured below are the respective founders Elroy Sailor, J.C. Watts and Raymond Millian:
JC Watts lobbies on behalf of a variety of industries from agriculture to homeland security and their client list includes a number of Fortune 500 companies from AT&T to Microsoft.
So what is the point of all of this info? Lobbyists are essentially the direct line from the public to government representatives when it comes to legislature. These lobbyists are in the White House every day developing personal relationships with elected and unelected officials. These relationships are critical to making lobbying actually work on behalf of the clients.
The drop in the bucket of black lobbyists is mirrored by the drop in the bucket of black clients and black lobbying dollars from any sector (private, public, government).
And yet, this matter is not discussed in the MSM... there are no articles whatsoever about this topic on CNN, MSNBC or Fox
Let's talk about it.
