The Partisan Ties of Lobbying Firms

This paper explores how lobbying consulting firms – a neglected institution in the study of lobbying – systematically vary in their partisan identities. We argue the partisan affiliations of a lobbying firm’s founders and its roster of lobbyists reflects its partisan identity, which may be non-partisan, explicitly tied to multiple parties, or nearly exclusively tied to a single party. We deduce two simple expectations from these assumptions. First, we expect that lobbying firms with single partisan ties will earn more revenues when their affiliated party controls a government institution. Second, we expect this relationship between partisan firms to be greater for government institutions that are more institutionally vulnerable to interest group pressure (Moosbrugger 2012). The two-party, bicameral US Congress offers an ideal setting to test these claims. In recent years, majority control of both chambers has been “insecure,” meaning control of each has not only switched frequently, but has been perceived by political elites -- including lobbying firm managers -- as having the potential to switch in any given two-year election cycle (Lee 2016). Majority party insecurity gives lobbying firms an incentive to differentiate their partisan identity to capitalize on opportunities to be tied to a majority party in any given two-year legislative cycle. And, the House of Representatives and Senate are institutionally distinct. The House is more vulnerable because it is more majoritarian, it has more members and organizational units to target, and less internal substantive expertise and legislative capacity to develop effective legislation than the Senate. Using data from national-level lobbying records over nearly a 20 year period, as well as original data collected on the partisan identities of lobbying firms, we put this claim to the test by examining how changes in party control in Congress affects firms’ lobbying revenues. The results demonstrate that partisan ties with the majority party of the House translates into higher lobbying revenues, but ties with the Senate’s majority party make no significant difference for revenue generation. Our findings suggest that the relationship between lobbying firms and parties in government likely generalizes to cases other than the United States.