Interest Groups and Lobbyists

The nearly 2,000 interest groups and individuals registered to lobby in our state exert powerful influence in their respective narrow, special scope of interest, but rarely do they concern themselves with the state’s general long-term interests.

The National Rifle Association doesn’t get involved in housing issues, and the realtors don’t weigh in on protecting access to AK-47 assault rifles.

And neither group has time or money to devote to the state’s overall future. They focus instead, laser-like, on the respective issues their members pay them to worry about.

            Middle-class citizens like you and me each likely have two, three or more groups advocating for us. In my case, I am or have been a member of veterans’, newspaper industry, AARP and professor groups.

Who do you pay dues to? Most of them lobby in your behalf, even church groups.

            Groups are highly specialized today. Farmers are represented not just by the Farm Bureau but also by corn growers, specialty croppers, hog producers.

            Most groups have counter groups, e.g. business versus labor. When I was in Springfield, almost all bills had both proponents and opponents.

            According to an assessment a few years ago by political scientists, the most influential groups in Illinois are the doctors, school teachers, AFL-CIO, manufacturers and chambers of commerce, realtors, bankers, trial lawyers, retail merchants, and farmers.

            Today we would add to the list the public employee unions (AFSCME and SEIU in particular), hospitals, the gun lobby and motorcycle riders (ABATE).

            Most of those groups also rank near the top in the size of their campaign contributions to politicos. Surprised?

            Those that lack big money, like the motorcycle riders and gun owners, can make up for it with grassroots work and the burning intensity of their members’ feelings for their causes.

            Poor people lack the money to organize in big interest groups, but they have big numbers, which the Democratic Party and some unions try to represent.

Only rarely do interest groups unite broadly to smite down an issue, but they did so a few years ago to defeat a call for a constitutional convention, and in the early 2000s to bury a gross receipts tax proposed by then-Gov. Blagojevich.

            Lobbyists are the strategists, tacticians, and public faces of their groups to the elected officials and bureaucrats they try to influence.

            They are advocates in the public arena, just as lawyers are advocates for individual plaintiffs and defendants.

As very smart Springfield lobbyist Jim Fletcher once remarked: “Lobbyists are like antibodies. When a new idea enters the political system, we swarm to it and kill it.” The known status quo is far better than an unknown future.

            Lobbyists [(I was one for a while; wasn’t very good at it)] are sometimes perceived by the public to manipulate the political system, as if pulling the strings on elected puppets who supposedly dance to their tunes. It’s rarely as simple as that.

            [In addition to lobbyists who work full-time for their companies and associations, many lobbyists hire themselves out on contract, representing many clients at once, often making very good livings at what they do.]

            In addition to the money, numbers and intensity of those they represent—which give them ready access to most elected officials—lobbyists add critical skills in getting the right information in the right format to the right persons at precisely the right time.

[Sounds easy, but isn’t, and often takes a savvy gained from years in the political trenches.]

            Money has probably done the most to tarnish the lobbying game. There is an aura that special interests have to pay to play, and there is something to that. Otherwise why would they spend the big bucks?

            Elected officials need it to run for office, which has become embarrassingly costly—more than a million dollars per candidate this year in some hotly contested state lawmaker contests—for positions that pay less $80,000.

            A century ago, there was by all accounts a legislative “jackpot” in Illinois put together by the interests. After the biennial session ended, lobbyists doled out the money according to how well the lawmakers had supported their interests during the springtime of legislating.

            Today, with stricter laws and better oversight, lawmakers won’t take a dime personally, yet plead for big donations for their campaigns.

            [Gajillionaire Gov. Bruce Rauner has added a new wrinkle. Having already personally committed $20 million or more to the campaigns of others, Rauner is now both inside the game as governor and also a one-man interest group, doggedly pursuing a business-friendly, anti-union agenda.]

My summary point is that, while interest groups are overall powerful political players, they will never be transformative of the state’s overarching, general, long-term interests. And we shouldn’t expect them to be. After all, they represent our special interests.