The term “lobbyist” refers to any person or group that attempts to sway the actions of a political representative through a sustained effort at persuasion. In the British Parliament of the seventeenth century lobbyists would try to influence members personally as they walked through the lobby of the legislature to cast their votes, hence the origin of the term. In more recent times, lobbying is often accomplished through informal meetings between lobbyists (or their clients) and politicians, financial contributions, or, more publicly through media campaigns and other forms of organized publicity. Although all political pressure groups try to “lobby” politicians in most modern liberal democraeies, the word “lobbyist” is generally restricted to those whose professional livelihoods depend on their skill in directly influencing public policy on behalf of interested parties—such as trade unions, private companies, or industry organizations—who pay them to do so.

Lobbyists have been a part of America’s public life for some time, and probably have always affected political decisions to some extent. In the 1800s they were often referred to as “lobbiers,” and were already under attack. The American poet Walt Whitman called them “lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the Earth.” Then, as now, critics feared the representative political process—whereby legislators try to consider and reflect primarily the interests of the people who elected them—was being subverted through the influence of paid “insiders” like professional lobbyists. In more recent years, opponents have accused powerful and rich lobbies, such as that of the National Rifle Association, of protecting the interests of their clients to the detriment of society Such worries have only escalated in recent years as numerous high-placed political figures—men such as Michael Deaver, the former chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan, or former Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen—left their formal political posts and moved directly into the more lucrative sphere of the private lobbying industry such actions seemingly dissolving fully the barrier between private interest and public good. In 1998 journalists credited lobbyists working for the tobacco industry with sabotaging antitobacco legislation that most of the American public supported.

Despite criticisms of professional lobbyists and of insider lobbying, however, attempts to reform the political system so as to restrict their influence have been largely unsuccessful. In the 1990s, politicians of all ideological stripes found it worthwhile to decry the nefarious influence of money in politics, but little practical progress was made in solving the problem. Constitutionally it is difficult to align any restriction on political lobbying with the commitment to freedom of speech. It is also not clear that all lobbying is necessarily destructive of the democratic process; much lobbying, for example, is undertaken by public interest groups of all ideological stripes. More practically any restriction that might pass constitutional muster would have to be voted upon by the very politicians who now profit so handsomely from the largesse of lobbyists and their clients.

In the summer of 1997, a Senate investigation of lobbyists’ influence in the federal political process provoked relatively little public interest. This had changed by the spring of 2000. The decision of Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona to put campaign finance reform at the center of his appeal during the spring’s presidential primaries sparked national concern over the influence of big money in politics.