How Business Leaders Can Influence Politics Without Running for Office
Written By: Ryan Morrison
Based on a Navigating Wealth conversation with Tom Manatos.
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Most business leaders have opinions about the policies that affect their industry. Few know how to translate those opinions into influence. Tom Manatos has spent 20 years navigating the gap between the two: as a senior staffer on Capitol Hill, as employee number four at the Internet Association (where he helped onboard Google, Amazon, and the first Twitter lobbyist), as head of government affairs at Spotify, and now at Block. His view of how political power works is practical, occasionally cynical, and genuinely useful for anyone who wants to engage with the system rather than watch it from the outside.
Business leaders can engage with the political process through three main vectors: building a direct relationship with an elected official by offering domain expertise on issues they care about; making political donations that open doors to initial conversations (federal individual limits are approximately $2,700 per primary and $2,700 per general election); or joining an advocacy organization whose constituency overlaps with their interests and whose members already have political relationships.
Key Takeaways
Every elected official's primary motivation is reelection; understanding this is the starting point for understanding how political engagement works
The fastest path to a first conversation with a federal elected official is a political donation, followed immediately by an offer of domain expertise on an issue they care about
State and local governments move faster, pass more legislation, and are more accessible than federal government; for most business owners, they are the more actionable starting point
Super PACs allow unlimited political advertising spending but cannot legally coordinate directly with a candidate's campaign; Meta, Anthropic, and the crypto industry's Fair Shake super PAC are all deploying this structure in 2026
Real lobbying happens primarily at the staff level, not the member level; relationships with the right committee staffer are often more valuable than access to the member themselves
The Organizing Principle: Why Reelection Explains Almost Everything
Before anything else in political engagement, there is one principle worth internalizing: every elected official, from city council member to US Senator, is primarily focused on staying in office. Everything else flows from this.
This is not cynicism. It is the structural logic of representative democracy. An elected official who loses their seat stops being able to do anything at all. Reelection is therefore not a distraction from their work. It is the precondition for their work. Understanding this makes political behavior, which often seems irrational or corrupt from the outside, significantly more legible.
The practical implication is direct: to get a politician's attention, you must demonstrate that you can either help or threaten their reelection. The currencies that do this are votes (the ability to mobilize constituents who will vote for or against them), money (donations that fund the ads and staff that win elections), and expertise that helps them serve their constituents better and thereby strengthens their reelection case. Everything a business leader can bring to the table maps onto one or more of these.
Tom Manatos puts it plainly: politicians care about three things: reelection, reelection, and reelection. The comment is partly a joke and entirely accurate. Lobbying efforts that succeed are almost always the ones that connect their ask to one of these currencies. Efforts that fail tend to be the ones that rely on the merits of the policy alone.
Watch the Full Conversation
This article draws on a Navigating Wealth conversation with Tom Manatos, where we discuss how political access works, how donations open doors, what super PACs do, and where business leaders can have the most practical impact on the policies that affect them. Watch the full episode for the broader discussion.
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Tom Manatos spent over a decade as a senior staffer on Capitol Hill, including roles with senior Democratic House leadership. He was employee number four at the Internet Association, the trade association formed by Google, Amazon, AOL, and Yahoo that he helped build into a major force in technology policy. He later ran government affairs at Spotify, where he built their Washington presence from the ground up, and now serves in a senior government affairs role at Block, Jack Dorsey's fintech company. He also runs TomManatosJobs.com, a widely used resource for people trying to enter government and policy careers.
How to Get Access to an Elected Official
The first thing most successful business leaders discover when they try to engage with government is that their success does not automatically get them a meeting. A cold call or email from someone an elected official does not know will rarely get a response. The system runs on relationships and demonstrated political relevance, not on credentials or the merit of the request alone.
There are three approaches that reliably work. The first is a personal network connection: someone who already has a relationship with the official and is willing to make an introduction. In a relationship-driven system, a warm handoff is worth more than any formal pitch. If a business leader has a college friend or former colleague who knows the official, or someone in their network who has already made a political donation and has the official's ear, that connection is the fastest path in.
The second approach is a political donation at a fundraising event. At the federal level, a ticket to a large group fundraiser can cost as little as $25 and gets a business leader in the same room as an elected official. A maxed-out donation to a smaller dinner event, in the range of $2,700, creates a setting where a real conversation is possible. The donation is not a purchase of policy outcome. It is a signal of political relevance that earns the right to introduce yourself and explain your expertise.
The third, and often most powerful, approach is the bundling strategy: organizing a group of peers to donate together. If a business leader brings 10 people who each donate $1,000 to a congressional campaign, that bundled $10,000 is enough to bring a member of Congress to a dinner at their home for a genuine, extended policy conversation. The elected official shows up not because they are bought, but because a group of organized, politically active constituents is worth knowing.
The expertise offer closes the loop. Once the door is open, the most effective thing a business leader can say is: here is what I know, here is why it matters for your constituents, and here is what I am asking you to consider. A franchise operator who has expanded into dozens of markets and can explain exactly what drives franchise investment back to a declining main street is offering something valuable. That combination of access and expertise is the basic unit of effective political engagement.
How Political Donations Work and What They Buy
Political donations at the federal level are tightly regulated. An individual can donate approximately $2,700 to a candidate's primary campaign and another $2,700 to their general election campaign. A spouse can donate the same amounts. These limits are set by the Federal Election Commission and updated periodically.
The money goes into the candidate's official campaign account and cannot be paid to the elected official personally. It funds the apparatus of running for office: television and digital advertising, campaign staff, mailers, and voter outreach. The incumbent's campaign committee, which is always fundraising, uses this money to maintain the operation that keeps them in office.
For business leaders who want to operate at a higher level, there are additional structures. Executives can donate to party committees (the DCCC for House Democrats, the NRCC for House Republicans, the DSCC for Senate Democrats, the NRSC for Senate Republicans) at higher limits than candidate-specific donations. An executive who makes a large donation to a party committee builds a relationship with the party infrastructure, and the relevant member of Congress gets credit for having made that introduction happen.
Corporations cannot donate directly to federal candidates. They can, however, form a Political Action Committee (PAC) that aggregates donations from employees or members and contributes to candidates within legal limits. And for larger-scale influence, they can create or contribute to super PACs, which operate under entirely different rules.
What a donation buys, in every case, is an initial conversation and an ongoing relationship, not a guaranteed policy outcome. The elected official still has to weigh whether taking the donor's position helps or hurts their reelection with actual voters. An official who visibly does whatever a large donor asks risks being cast as "bought" by their opponents, which is itself a reelection threat. The influence is real; the guarantee is not.
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Super PACs, Citizens United, and Unlimited Political Spending
The Citizens United ruling in 2010 established that corporations and unions have First Amendment rights to spend unlimited money on political speech. The practical result was the creation of super PACs: political committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts on political advertising, as long as they do not coordinate directly with a candidate's official campaign.
The distinction between coordination and influence is the central tension in super PAC law. A super PAC cannot call a candidate's campaign and say "we're running an ad saying X in district Y, do you want us to target Z voters." But the candidate knows exactly which super PACs are spending money on their behalf, who funds those super PACs, and where those funders stand on the issues. The law prohibits explicit coordination. It cannot prohibit the knowledge of who is supporting whom and why.
The scale of super PAC spending in 2026 illustrates how seriously the largest companies are taking this structure. Meta has created two super PACs, one supporting Democrats and one Republicans, and is targeting approximately $65 million on state-level races to elect candidates favorable to artificial intelligence regulation. Anthropic has announced a $20 million super PAC focused on AI-friendly candidates. Fair Shake, the super PAC backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and other crypto companies, has already raised $193 million for this election cycle after spending over $100 million in the last one.
The "pay to play" framing that dominates public discussion of super PACs overstates the directness of the influence and understates the genuine constraints. An elected official who is seen as completely aligned with a single large donor risks alienating the voters they need to win. The influence shapes the environment and the relationships; it does not mechanically determine the outcome.
Where Lobbying Works and Where It Does Not
The clearest way to understand where political engagement works is through two contrasting examples from Tom's career.
The first is the 1099K threshold change. When Congress lowered the threshold for issuing a 1099K tax form from $20,000 to $500 as part of a COVID-related spending bill, the unintended consequence was that millions of Americans reselling a couch on eBay or reselling concert tickets on Ticketmaster would suddenly receive tax forms they did not expect and would potentially owe taxes on transactions that were not taxable events. Companies including Block, eBay, PayPal, and Rover organized a coalition, brought the issue to Capitol Hill, and found a naturally sympathetic audience: staffers who had personally received confusing 1099K forms from platforms they used themselves. The issue was bipartisan, the affected constituency was enormous and visible, and the fix was technically straightforward. After three years of effort, including two IRS implementation delays and a final legislative fix in the Republican tax bill, the threshold was restored. This is lobbying working as intended.
The second example is the federal deficit. There is no trade association for fiscal responsibility. There is no super PAC funded by people who want to see entitlement reform. There is no constituency of voters who will reliably punish an elected official for failing to reduce the debt. The largest drivers of the deficit (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) are programs with fierce constituencies who will vote against anyone who touches them. The deficit is a policy problem that almost everyone agrees needs to be addressed and that almost no elected official has a political incentive to address. It goes undone not because of corruption but because of incentive structure.
The lesson is structural: lobbying works when you can activate real constituents who will express their views to the officials who represent them, when the issue is nonpartisan or genuinely bipartisan, and when the change does not require an elected official to take a position that threatens their primary voters. It struggles everywhere else.
State and Local Government Is Where Business Owners Can Have the Most Impact
Federal politics gets the headlines. State and local governments get things done.
State legislatures pass legislation at roughly 100 times the rate of Congress. They are also significantly more accessible. A state representative in most markets does not have a large staff filtering their communications, does not require a six-figure donation to get a real conversation, and is making decisions on issues that directly and immediately affect local businesses, property values, zoning, and regulation. The cost of a meaningful political donation at the state level is often under $500.
The downside is scope: state-level policy affects a smaller population and a narrower geography. But for a business operating in a specific market, the policies that most directly affect day-to-day operations are almost always state and local, not federal. Data center developers in Northern Virginia, franchise operators navigating local zoning, fintech companies facing state money transmission licensing: all of these are primarily state and local stories, not Washington ones.
Tom's own example is illustrative: his wife's business was directly consulted by a state representative on a piece of legislation that affected it, because they had already built a relationship with that representative as business leaders in the community. The representative needed expertise and knew where to find it. That kind of direct, practical engagement with state and local government is available to most business owners in ways that federal engagement is not.
The school board example is perhaps even more instructive. A group of parents in one community organized around a policy decision about school district boundaries that threatened both their children's education and their home values. Over two election cycles, they mobilized enough frequent voters to remove the entire school board. The policy was reversed. No donations, no lobbyists, no super PAC. Just organized constituent pressure at the local level, which is the most basic form of political engagement and still one of the most effective. For business owners who have built local franchise networks or community-facing businesses, this model of constituent activation is directly available.
Where do business leaders compare notes on political engagement, regulatory strategy, and how to navigate the policies that affect their industries?
Long Angle members include founders and executives who have built relationships with elected officials, worked with advocacy organizations, and navigated the policy environment for their businesses. The environment is soliciation-free. No one in the room is running for office or trying to raise money from you.
What Bipartisanship Looks Like Behind the Scenes
The visible political environment makes bipartisanship appear nearly extinct. The reality inside the legislative process is more complicated.
The Senate's 60-vote threshold (the filibuster) structurally requires bipartisan legislation to pass. Any bill that is not passed through the narrow reconciliation process must clear 60 votes, which in a 100-seat chamber means it must attract meaningful support from both parties. Every major bill that becomes law under a divided government is technically bipartisan, almost by definition. The visible polarization is primarily a primary election phenomenon: members run to their base to win a primary, then have to govern from a position that requires some degree of cooperation. They often try to make as little noise about that cooperation as possible.
The Music Modernization Act is a useful example. When digital streaming platforms needed a legal framework for paying songwriters and publishers, the legislation required genuine bipartisan co-sponsorship. In the House, Hakeem Jeffries (now the Democratic House Minority Leader) and Doug Collins (now the Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Trump) sponsored it together. In the Senate, Orrin Hatch and Dick Durbin, perhaps the most ideologically distant pair imaginable, partnered on it. The issue was genuinely noncontroversial, all industry stakeholders had been brought to agreement in advance, and the legislation moved cleanly.
The other structural reality that most outsiders do not appreciate is that lobbying happens primarily at the staff level, not the member level. Members of Congress are busy, visible, and often unavailable. Their staff (legislative directors, policy advisors, committee staff) are the people who read proposed legislation, draft amendments, and advise the member on how to vote. Building a relationship with the right committee staffer on the issue you care about is often more valuable than getting a meeting with the member themselves.
The challenge is churn. A House office typically employs around 30 people, and when a member loses unexpectedly, all 30 are suddenly out of work. Senate offices, depending on the state, employ 50 to 300. Staffers move constantly between offices, between committees, and between the public and private sectors. Tracking where the right relationships are at any given moment is ongoing work, which is part of why professional government affairs practitioners earn their fees and why Tom's jobs board exists. For high-net-worth investors thinking about how regulatory and political risk factors into their overall portfolio strategy, understanding who the key staffers are on the committees that oversee your industry is a form of due diligence that most individual investors never do.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can a business leader get access to an elected official?
The most reliable paths are a warm introduction through a shared personal or professional network, a political donation at a fundraising event that creates a natural opportunity for introduction, or a bundled fundraiser where the business leader organizes a group of peers to donate together. At the federal level, a group donation of $10,000 or more is typically enough to bring a member of Congress to a private dinner. At the state and local level, access is significantly easier and less expensive to obtain.
How do political donations work and what are the limits?
Federal law limits individual donations to approximately $2,700 per primary campaign and $2,700 per general election campaign per candidate. A spouse can donate the same amounts. Corporations cannot donate directly to federal candidates but can donate to party committees and create Political Action Committees (PACs) that aggregate employee donations. All donations go into the candidate's campaign account and are spent on campaign operations, not paid to the official personally.
What is the difference between a PAC and a super PAC?
A Political Action Committee (PAC) raises money from employees or members within legal limits and donates to candidates within FEC contribution limits. A super PAC, created after the Citizens United ruling in 2010, can raise and spend unlimited amounts on political advertising but cannot directly coordinate with a candidate's official campaign. Super PACs typically run independent ads supporting or opposing candidates rather than donating to campaigns directly.
Is lobbying legal for business owners?
Lobbying is legal and protected under the First Amendment right to petition the government. Any citizen, business, or organization can contact elected officials to express views and advocate for policy positions. Professional lobbyists who receive compensation for this advocacy must register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Business owners advocating for their own interests do not typically need to register as lobbyists unless they are being paid to advocate on behalf of others.
Why is it easier to influence state government than federal government?
State legislatures pass roughly 100 times more legislation than Congress, move faster, operate with smaller staffs that have less filtering capacity, and are significantly more accessible to constituents. Political donations at the state level are often far below federal limits and can produce a real conversation with a decision-maker. The tradeoff is that state-level policy affects a narrower geography and population. For most business owners, however, the regulations that most directly affect their operations are state and local rather than federal.
What is Citizens United and what did it change about political spending?
Citizens United v. FEC (2010) was a Supreme Court ruling that held that corporations and unions have First Amendment rights to spend unlimited money on political speech. The practical result was the creation of super PACs: independent political committees that can raise and spend unlimited amounts on elections as long as they do not coordinate directly with a candidate's campaign. The ruling fundamentally changed the scale of money in politics and created the environment in which companies like Meta, Anthropic, and the crypto industry's Fair Shake super PAC can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence election outcomes.
Final Thoughts
Political engagement often looks opaque from the outside: a world of relationships, money, and insider knowledge that does not respond to the normal logic of business. Tom Manatos's 20 years inside it suggest that it is more legible than it appears, once you understand the organizing principle. Every elected official wants to stay in office. Everything else is a variation on that theme.
Business leaders who have expertise the political system genuinely needs, who are willing to make the relationships and occasionally the donations that open doors, and who start at the state and local level where access is real and impact is fast, are in a stronger position to shape the policies that affect them than they may realize. The system is not fair. It is not fully clean. But it is learnable, and it responds to organized, well-resourced, well-connected engagement.
Political strategy and civic engagement are exactly the kind of topics that benefit from peer intelligence, not just expert advice.
Long Angle's Trusted Circles bring together 6 to 8 members matched by life stage and net worth, meeting monthly in a confidential setting with a facilitator who is also a financial professional. For members thinking through how to engage with the policies that affect their businesses and investments, the High-Intensity Builders circle is where those conversations happen.
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