Changing corporate political practices increase their clout
These economic changes led to dramatic changes in corporations’ business practices, but Powell’s memo emphasized that corporations needed to launch a political campaign against their opponents. After 1971, corporations moved to occupy Washington, D.C., making it the headquarters of their counter-offensive.
The trickle of lobbyists flowing into Washington in the 1970s turned into a flood that all but drowned out the voices of citizens. By 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, special-interest groups had accumulated more than thirty-eight registered lobbyists and $2.7 million in lobbying expenditures for every member of Congress. Between 2000 and 2005 alone, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C., more than doubled, from 16,342 to 34,785, and annual spending on federal lobbying reached $2 billion.
To reinforce its Washington messages, corporations also beefed up lobbying at the state and local levels of government. After losing several key state battles, for example, the tobacco industry began hiring lobbyists in state capitals; by 1994, according to one study, at least 450 state-level lobbyists were working to resist tobacco-related legislation. In 2006, the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative journalism outlet, reported that companies and other organizations spent almost $1.3 billion to lobby state legislators, a 10 percent increase from the previous year. The 40,000 registered state lobbyists outnumbered state legislators five to one, and total spending on lobbying averaged $200,000 per legislator.