Policies are put into place by the government in order to help provide stability and safety for the mass public. In order to make sure that the people, corporations’, and organizations’ special interests are given to the governmental officials, people are hired to provide the officials with information. These people are known as lobbyists.
Lobbying is advocating for a specific point of view, usually those of corporations or individuals. However these points of view may also come from colleges and universities, churches, charities, and even governments. Anyone can really hire a lobbyist, however, it is more likely that a special interest corporation will find themselves a lobbyist to promote things that otherwise would not get promoted (American League, 2006). An example of this would be Big Tobacco.
There are several types of lobbyists working to help persuade legislations and public policy. A consultant lobbyist is an individual paid on behalf of the client. This can include persons like lawyers, accountants, and other such professionals. A company in-house lobbyist is a person hired by a partnership or company in which their lobbying actions are a “significant part of their duties”, meaning that more than 20% of the lobbyist’s time (in a three month period) is activities towards lobbying. An organization in-house lobbyist is an employee of the organization, like a professional association, whose activities are a significant part of their job. (Lobbyist Registry, 2008).
Lobbyists’ persuasion of public policy “in the United States can never be fully determined”, although “non-profit organizations such as the Center for Responsive Politics…[have] attempt[ed] to track money in politics, and its effect on elections and public policy” (Wikipedia, 2008, p. 3). Personally, what can be said about the actual effectiveness of lobbyists on public policy is that they seem to have quite a pull on legislation. Companies like Big Tobacco use lobbyists to persuade not only the public, but also legislators that their product is not as harmful as it seems.
Lobbyists also have the job of informing the legislators about the special interests. They take information from the corporations or organizations they represent, and in turn pass it on to legislation. They are the middle man in the information sharing process.
In the movie, Thank You for Smoking, a lobbyist, known as Nick Naylor, fights that battle. His company, the Academy of Tobacco Studies, fights throughout the movie trying to stop a piece of legislation from being passed in the Senate. The legislation, that would place skull-and-crossbones on every cigarette pack, is harmful to Big Tobacco, so Nick is forced to step in and argue the jurisdiction of this. Nick’s boss, B.R., unhappy with the way teen smoking sales have been going, yells to his team of lobbyists, “We don’t sell Tic-Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And they’re cool, available, and addictive. The job is almost done for us” (Thank You, 2005). When a product that is facing legislation issues is one that is hard to market, someone needs to be the voice of the company. This is where a lobbyist comes in. Nick has to find a way to get cigarettes back on the market, and out of legislative control. Nick travels to Hollywood in the hopes of implementing cigarettes back into the movies. “The message Hollywood needs to send out is ‘Smoking is cool’.” The idea is to put someone in the movie that can be a smoking icon. “Indiana Jones meets Jerry Maguire… on two packs a day” (Thank You, 2005).
While most people would be unsure if a lobbyist for a company like Big Tobacco felt bad for marketing such a horrible product, lobbyists see it as nothing more than a job. “Right there… it all came back to me. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop foreman, the oil driller, the land mine developer, the baby seal poacher…” (Thank You, 2005). If a lobbyist is doing their job, where’s the harm in that?
The harm comes in the form of the elite. The privileged are more likely to hire a lobbyist because they have the resources to. People living in poverty, who really need the voice in government, are unable to obtain lobbyists to influence their legislators, and are therefore powerless. And while this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, at the risk of sounding cliché, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Many privileged people are not going to have the same interests as the poor, and therefore the poor are being left to fend for themselves. Not many elite are going to lobby for national health care, because the taxes will come from their pocket. Not many impoverished are going to lobby for lower trade tariffs because they will not benefit from it.
Because of this, America’s electoral process has been tampered with. The people, who (according to a democracy) have the right and responsibility to elect those who would favor their interests, are being blacked out by corporations whose lobbyists are shifting the truth in order to obtain the desired affect. So, as America continues this trend, the public will become a blip in the special interest category, and corporations will soon control the country.
WORKS CITED
America League of Lobbyists. What is Lobbying? (2006). Resources for the Public. Retrieved 11 February 2008 from
Lobbying. (2008). Wikipedia. Retrieved 11 February 2008 from
Lobbyist Registry. Definitions: Types of Lobbyists. (2008). Nova Scotia. Retrieved 11 February 2008 from
Thank You for Smoking. (2005). Fox Searchlight Pictures.
