What Is a Lobbyist - Tom Manatos
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Lobbying is one of the most discussed and least understood features of American political life. Tom Manatos was employee number four at the Internet Association, the trade group that launched alongside Google, Amazon, and early Twitter, before becoming the in-house government affairs lead at Spotify and then Block. He has worked on both sides of the process: as Capitol Hill staff who received the calls from advocates, and as the person making those calls on behalf of major companies navigating regulation.
His account of how political access actually works covers the mechanics that most explanations skip: how staff relationships matter more than member relationships, why state government is often more accessible than Congress, and what a business owner with domain expertise can actually do to get their knowledge in front of the people writing the laws that affect them.
TL;DR
A lobbyist is a professional who builds relationships with elected officials and their staff, provides expert testimony, and advocates for a client's preferred policy outcome — most effective ones are former government staff
Lobbying works through access built on electoral relevance, not on the direct exchange of money for votes
Federal individual campaign donations are capped around $2,700 per election cycle; bundling 10 people at $1,000 each opens more doors than a single max contribution
State governments produce legislation at far higher volume than Congress, with fewer staff resources — making them the highest-leverage entry point for operators with domain expertise
Super PACs allow unlimited independent political spending but cannot coordinate with candidates, and high spending alone does not guarantee policy outcomes
Business owners can get their expertise in front of policymakers without hiring a lobbyist — through referrals, state-level engagement, or association with a trade or nonprofit organization
Table of Contents
Guest Snapshot
Name: Tom Manatos
Current role: VP of Policy at State Affairs; Founder, Tom Manatos Jobs, the leading job board for government and policy careers
Relevant background: Former senior Capitol Hill staff; in-house government affairs roles at Spotify and Block (Cash App, Square)
Credential relevant to this episode: Built and ran lobbying strategy for major technology companies across music licensing, financial services regulation, and digital assets; employee number four at the Internet Association, the trade group representing Google, Amazon, Twitter and other major platforms
Additional context: Hosts a platform that tracks the constant staff churn in Washington, one of the best-positioned practitioners to describe how the relationship layer of the lobbying system actually functions
What Is a Lobbyist: Definition and Role
A lobbyist is a professional paid to advocate for a client's preferred policy outcome before legislators, regulatory agencies, or government officials; through direct meetings, expert testimony, coalition-building, and campaign fundraising.
The term comes from the physical lobbies of legislative buildings, where advocates historically gathered to intercept lawmakers between sessions. Today the profession is formal and regulated. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, any individual who is compensated to make more than one lobbying contact with a covered federal official within a 90-day period must register with Congress and file quarterly reports detailing their clients, compensation, and the specific issues they are working on.
What a lobbyist is not, under that legal framework, is a bagman. Political donations flow to campaign accounts, not to officials personally, and are spent on advertising, staff, and voter outreach. The official benefits politically from the fundraising relationship, not financially. That distinction is not merely semantic — it shapes the nature of every interaction in the system.
What Does a Lobbyist Actually Do
A lobbyist builds and maintains relationships with elected officials and their staff, provides research and expert testimony, drafts legislation, and coordinates advocacy campaigns — in exchange for compensation from clients who want someone dedicated to influencing specific policy outcomes.
The job is less glamorous and more relationship-dependent than most descriptions suggest. Tom Manatos's account from this episode is instructive on one point that surprises most outsiders: in practice, lobbyists rarely talk directly to the elected official. They talk to the staff. Congressional and agency staffers are the people who research bill language, draft amendments, evaluate outside input, and advise the member on how to vote. A lobbyist who has earned the trust of the right staffer on the right committee — someone who will return a call when a bill is moving and bring a concern to the member's attention — is often more effective than one who can get a 20-minute meeting with the member.
The revolving door, the pattern of Capitol Hill and agency staff moving into lobbying roles, is not incidental to the industry. It is the industry's core operating mechanism. Former staff bring three things that cannot be replicated from the outside: personal relationships with current officials, detailed knowledge of how the legislative process moves in practice, and an understanding of which offices are genuinely open to outside input on which types of issues.
Tom's career trajectory illustrates this directly. He moved from Capitol Hill staff to the Internet Association, where he helped onboard the first Twitter lobbyist and set up the DC presence for multiple early tech companies, to Spotify, where he spent years embedded in the music industry alongside the company's Nashville relationships, to Block, where he navigated financial services regulation across Cash App, Square, and the broader fintech landscape. Each transition deepened both his relationships and his industry knowledge, compounding his value to clients navigating specific regulatory environments.
The work itself divides roughly into three categories. Inside lobbying is direct engagement with officials and staff — meetings, testimony, bill drafting, comment letters on proposed regulations. Outside lobbying is constituent activation — organizing users, customers, voters, or members to contact their representatives and create the electoral pressure that makes inside access meaningful. Coalition work involves aligning multiple organizations around a shared legislative goal, which is often how smaller players access the same channels as major corporations.
What Is Lobbying, and Why It Works the Way It Does
Lobbying is the organized effort to influence government decisions through direct meetings, campaign contributions, and constituent pressure. It works because elected officials respond to anything that affects their reelection, not to expertise alone.
Tom's framing of how legislators make decisions is the most practically useful part of this episode. Politicians care about three things: reelection, reelection, and reelection. That is not cynicism — it is the design of a representative democracy, and it is the lens through which every lobbying interaction needs to be understood.
The implication for a business owner or executive who wants to be heard: domain expertise is not sufficient as a form of access. An operator with 20 years of experience in a regulated industry who calls their congressman with a genuine policy concern is unlikely to get a callback unless they have an existing relationship or can demonstrate electoral relevance — that they represent voters, donors, or a constituency the member cannot afford to ignore. The same operator who arrives with 10 friends willing to donate at a fundraiser will have the member's attention at the dinner table.
The other mechanic that surprises most outsiders is who inside the system actually matters. Lobbyists — and by extension any business owner trying to engage the system independently — primarily interact with staff, not members. The staffer who handles financial services issues on the House Banking Committee, the legislative director in a Senate office who works on technology regulation, the agency career staff who write the actual regulatory language — these are the relationships that move outcomes. Members vote. Staff shape what they vote on.
This is also the system's structural defense against the crudest forms of capture. A member who is visibly owned by an industry will eventually hear about it from constituents and face a primary challenger. The balance is imperfect and does not always hold, but the constraint is real. Money concentrates access. It does not reliably override electoral math.
Political Donations: What They Cost and What They Buy
Federal law caps individual campaign contributions at approximately $2,700 per primary and $2,700 per general election cycle per candidate — not a floor for obtaining access, but an outer limit on what any single person can give to a specific campaign.
At a large group fundraising event, $25 gets you in the room with the member present. That creates an opening. A business owner can introduce themselves, mention their industry and their district, and express interest in a substantive conversation. It is not a private dinner. But it is an introduction that would otherwise not exist.
The more effective individual-level move is bundling. An operator who organizes a fundraiser and brings together 10 colleagues at $1,000 each has delivered $10,000 to the member's campaign. The member knows exactly who organized that. The next request for a direct meeting — to discuss a specific regulatory issue, to share technical expertise on a bill moving through committee — is likely to get a response. Tom was explicit about the mechanics: tell a member you can put together a fundraiser, and they will show up to your house for a dinner where you can talk through whatever you actually care about.
It is worth being precise about what the donation buys. It does not buy a vote. It buys an introduction and the standing to make a follow-on request. The elected official still has to weigh the ask against their electoral calculus — whether supporting your preferred position helps or hurts their next primary. A member in a competitive district with organized opposition on your issue will take the meeting and then do what their voters require. The access is real. The policy outcome is not guaranteed.
Donations to a candidate's campaign go to the campaign fund and are spent on advertising, staff, mailers, and voter outreach — not to the official personally. Federal law prohibits personal use of campaign funds. This matters because it clarifies the nature of the relationship: the official benefits politically from your fundraising, which creates goodwill and access, but they are not personally enriched by it and their overriding incentive remains staying in office.
What Is a Super PAC, and What It Cannot Guarantee
A super PAC is an independent political committee that can raise and spend unlimited funds on election-related advertising — but cannot coordinate directly with a candidate or their campaign, and high spending alone does not guarantee a policy outcome.
The Citizens United decision created the legal framework in 2010. Before it, independent political spending by corporations and advocacy groups was tightly restricted. After it, super PACs proliferated as the primary vehicle for large-scale electoral influence by organized interests. The no-coordination rule is the structural constraint: a super PAC can run ads supporting or opposing a candidate, but cannot tell the campaign where to run them or what message to pair with them.
In practice, candidates and super PAC operators communicate their priorities publicly, and the constraint is frequently circumvented in spirit if not in law. The more important point for understanding the system is that the financial relationship between a super PAC and a candidate is visible — the candidate knows who is spending and what position they hold — but the outcome is still not guaranteed.
Several current examples illustrate the limits. The crypto industry built Fair Shake, which had raised approximately $193 million for super PAC activity by early 2025, targeting legislators who opposed crypto legislation and backing those who supported it. Meta has launched super PACs on both sides of the aisle focused on artificial intelligence policy. Anthropic committed $20 million to a pro-AI super PAC. In each case the theory is that sustained financial support will make the preferred policy position more politically sustainable for friendly members.
The outcomes are not guaranteed. The crypto industry spent over $100 million in the prior election cycle and as of this episode had not passed its primary legislative goal. As Tom put it: it's not a silver bullet in any of those vectors. For business owners thinking about where to direct their energy, super PACs are a tool for large-scale industry campaigns. The levers more accessible at the individual level remain direct relationships, bundled donations, and constituent-based advocacy through trade associations or nonprofits.
Why Is Lobbying Legal
Lobbying is protected under the First Amendment's right to petition the government for redress of grievances — and courts have consistently upheld organized advocacy as a form of protected speech, regulated by disclosure requirements rather than prohibited.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 is the primary federal regulatory framework. It requires registered lobbyists to file quarterly reports detailing clients, compensation, and the specific issues they are working on. The Foreign Agents Registration Act covers those representing foreign interests. Beyond those disclosure requirements, the substantive activity of lobbying — communicating a policy position to a government official — is not regulated in its content.
Efforts to more dramatically restrict lobbying have repeatedly been struck down on First Amendment grounds. Tom acknowledged the tension directly in this episode: campaign finance reform efforts have been blocked in the name of free speech, which happens to benefit the interests most capable of organizing and funding that speech. Whether that is a reasonable trade-off is a political question without a clean answer. What is not in dispute is that the system will continue to function this way, and operators in regulated industries are navigating it regardless of how they feel about its design.
The practical implication for business owners is that lobbying is both legal and increasingly necessary in industries where regulatory decisions have seven-figure consequences. The question is not whether to engage the system but how to do so in a way that is proportionate to your goals and realistic about what participation actually delivers.
How to Lend Your Expertise to Policymakers
The most common frustration among executives in regulated industries is watching policy get written by people who do not understand its second-order effects — and feeling unable to reach the people who need to hear it.
The structural reason is different at the federal and state levels, and that difference is the most actionable insight from this episode. In Congress, committee staff consider themselves domain experts and are not reflexively looking for outside input, particularly from sources without an established relationship or organizational affiliation. At the state level, that staff capacity simply does not exist. A state legislator drafting a bill that touches a specific industry may have no one on staff who has ever worked in that industry. They are writing consequential law with limited ability to evaluate what it will actually do.
Tom's own state representative drafted legislation that affected his wife's business and sought her input directly; not through a lobbying firm, not because of a campaign donation, but because they had a relationship as community members before the bill was introduced. That is the model.
For operators with genuine technical expertise, the clearest path in is building a relationship at the state or local level before a bill is introduced. Find the relevant committee. Locate a staff member or member you have a plausible path to through a shared network. Understand that the window between bill introduction and committee vote at the state level can be weeks. Operators who are paying attention and have pre-positioned themselves as credible resources can be genuinely useful to legislators who lack the staff capacity to get outside input through formal channels.
For goals that are broader or longer in duration, the most effective mechanism is associating with a trade association, nonprofit, or advocacy coalition that already has constituency standing. Tom's example from this episode was the 1099-K fix — the reversal of a tax reporting threshold that had been lowered from $20,000 to $500, which would have created filing obligations for millions of Americans who resold a ticket, sold a used couch, or received payment through a digital platform for any reason. The coalition that fixed it included Cash App, eBay, PayPal, Rover, and others. They organized their users to contact members of Congress, framed the issue as a constituent problem rather than a corporate one, sustained that engagement for three years, and eventually got the fix into a Republican tax bill. No single company could have moved that outcome independently. The coalition framed it correctly, activated the right voters, and gave members political cover to act.
When Lobbying Works and When It Doesn't
High spending does not guarantee policy outcomes. The structure of the electoral calculus matters more than the amount of money deployed, and the clearest predictor of lobbying success is whether the advocacy effort is attached to a constituency that can actually affect reelection.
The 1099-K example works precisely because the fix was not expensive relative to major super PAC campaigns, and because the constituency was real, identifiable, and non-partisan. Millions of ordinary Americans would have received confusing tax forms for events that were not taxable. Members of Congress in both parties could support the fix without meaningful political risk. The coalition sustained the engagement for three years — through two IRS delays and ultimately into the tax bill — because it kept the constituent pressure consistent.
Lobbying tends to fail when it tries to override a member's primary electoral calculus on a visible issue where constituent opinion is organized on the other side. Cannabis rescheduling has been stalled not only because of industry opposition but because long-tenured members with established positions have been able to block it. Some of those members are retiring, which is why Tom sees a path forward. The dynamic is generational as much as it is financial.
The model that works for operators who are not in the business of professional advocacy: identify the specific issue, find the trade or nonprofit organization that has standing on it, attach your expertise and your network to their advocacy effort, and let constituent activation do the work that money alone cannot. As Tom put it: if you can bring a force to bear — a bloc of voters in a member's district who are directly affected by the policy — you have leverage that does not depend on a check.
Memorable Quotes
"Money can get you an audience with an elected official. It can get you frequent audiences. But there's no guarantee that elected official is gonna take the position you're asking them to take."
"State capitals are churning out legislation and new regulation probably a hundred times that of the federal government."
"There's no trade association for the debt."
"Unless you have a relationship already with that elected official, they're not gonna call you back. You have to bring power to bear."
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a lobbyist?
A lobbyist is a professional paid to advocate for a client's preferred policy outcome before legislators, regulatory agencies, or government officials. Effective lobbyists are typically former government staff who bring established relationships, institutional knowledge, and credibility with current officials. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, any individual compensated to make more than one lobbying contact with a covered federal official within 90 days must register with Congress and file quarterly disclosure reports.
What does a lobbyist do?
A lobbyist builds relationships with elected officials and their staff, provides expert testimony and policy research, drafts legislation, organizes coalition support, and coordinates fundraising activity — all in service of influencing specific policy outcomes for clients. In practice, most of this work happens with legislative and agency staff rather than directly with elected officials, because staff are the ones who shape what members actually vote on.
What is lobbying?
Lobbying is the organized effort to influence government decisions — through direct meetings with legislators, campaign contributions, constituent mobilization, or expert testimony — by individuals, corporations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups. It is protected under the First Amendment and regulated through the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which requires registered lobbyists to file quarterly reports on their clients and activity.
What is the lobbyist definition under federal law?
Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, a lobbyist is any individual who is employed or retained by a client for financial or other compensation and makes more than one lobbying contact on behalf of that client within a 90-day period, if lobbying activities account for 20% or more of their time for that client. Lobbying contact means any oral, written, or electronic communication to a covered legislative or executive branch official regarding legislation, federal regulations, or government programs.
How much does it cost to get access to an elected official?
Entry to a large group fundraising event can cost as little as $25. A more targeted event where attendees have contributed the individual federal cap — approximately $2,700 per primary and $2,700 per general election cycle — provides direct access to the member for a sustained conversation. The most effective individual-level move is bundling: organizing 10 people to each contribute $1,000 creates a $10,000 package that typically earns a direct dinner with the member.
Can a business owner influence government policy without hiring a lobbyist?
Yes. The most accessible routes are building a relationship through a shared network before a bill is introduced, engaging at the state level where staff resources are thin and domain expertise is genuinely valued, attending a group fundraising event to establish an introduction, hosting a bundled fundraiser for a small group of colleagues, or associating with a trade association or nonprofit that already has constituency standing with the relevant legislators.
What is the difference between a PAC and a super PAC?
A PAC (political action committee) collects money from individuals within defined legal limits and can donate directly to candidates' campaigns. A super PAC, established after the Citizens United decision, can raise and spend unlimited funds on election-related advertising independently — but cannot donate directly to candidates or coordinate with their campaigns. Super PACs can spend on behalf of candidates without restriction on the amount, making them the primary vehicle for large-scale political spending by corporations, industries, and advocacy groups.
Episode Resources
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Conclusion
Tom Manatos's most clarifying point is also the least comfortable one for operators who have built something significant. If you do not have an existing relationship with an elected official, and nothing that meaningfully affects their reelection, they are not going to call you back. Expertise is not the currency of political access. Electoral relevance is.
For operators in regulated industries watching policy get written by people who do not fully understand its consequences, the path forward runs through relationships built before a bill is introduced, constituencies organized around a specific and defensible correction, and the patient work of associating expertise with organizations that already have standing. The system is more accessible than most business owners assume — but it rewards preparation over reaction, and relationships over reputation.
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