There are two basic lobbying strategies: direct and indirect lobbying. The resources of the organization should be contrasted. The following is a menu of tactics available for selection in a direct-indirect lobbying plan. The listing of tactics is from the more effective to the less effective tactics.
Direct Lobbying Tactics
1. Face-to-face personal lobbyist visits to elected officials.
2. Personal visits to the staff of public officials.
3. Bringing influential constituents to meet with public officials.
4. Writing letters to public officials. Personal, individual letters are best.
5. Phone calls to public officials or their staff.
6. Sending e-mails to public officials.
Indirect Lobbying Tactics
1. Grassroots lobbying campaigns.
2. Mass media advertising.
3. Public opinion polls.
4. Mass public opinion molding efforts.
5. Elite opinion molding efforts.
Direct face-to-face lobbying is "the gold standard" of lobbying. Everything else is done to support the basic form. Face-to-face lobbying is considered to be the most effective because it allows the interest to directly communicate its concerns, needs, and demands directly to those who possess the power to do something politically. The lobbyist and the public official exist in a mutually symbiotic relationship. Each has something the other desperately needs. The interest seeks governmental assistance and the public official seeks political support for future elections or political issue campaigns. The environment for such lobbying discussions is usually the spaces outside the legislative chambers or perhaps the offices of the legislators. The legislative arena has characteristics that facilitate the lobbying process. It is complex and chaotic. Out of the thousands of bills that might be introduced in a legislative session, sometimes fewer than a hundred are actually passed. There is never enough time to complete the work on the agenda—not even a fraction of the work. The political process tends to be a winner-takes-all game—often a zero-sum game given the limited resources available and seemingly endless lists of demands that request some allocation of resources. Everyone in the process desperately needs information and the most frequent (and most useful) source of information is the lobbyist. The exchange is simple: the lobbyist helps out the governmental officials by providing them with information and the government official reciprocates by helping the interests gain their objectives. There is a cycle to every governmental decision-making site. At crucial times in those cycles the needs of the officials or the lobbyists may dominate. For lobbyists in a legislative site the crucial moments are as the session goes down to its final hours. For legislators, the closer they are to the next election, the more responsive they are to lobbyists who possess resources that may help them win the next election. In the old days, bribery was very important to many legislators; those days are almost completely gone now. The danger of exposure and personal disaster is too great to risk in today's mass media-dominated society. In today's political world, the public officials' greatest interest is in getting the resources they need to stay in office and lobbyists are crucial to getting those resources.
The important thing to remember is that lobbyists need public officials and the public officials need the lobbyists. As was mentioned earlier, the process is chaotic. Lawmaking could be described as making sausage in the dark. In one aspect, this is very true. Much of what happens in the process is hidden from public view. Deals are made in closed meetings and the public events are often largely symbolic. Many casual observers of the legislative process—think public events, such as committee meetings with interest-group testimony—are crucial to success or failure of a cause. Occasionally it may be, but much more often, the hearings and testimony are staged events to justify the decisions that have already been made by party, legislative, and interest-group leaders. These decisions are important in the public framing of the legislative decision-making process, but the real decisions are usually made by interest-group leaders and lobbyists in private meetings off the legislative floors.
The general rules of direct lobbying are pretty simple. Keep it short in terms of time and the one-page handout with the information you want to communicate to the official. Be clear and direct. Mention the problem, why it is important, what is desired, and what the political implication may be. Provide honest information of either a technical or political nature. Just like location, location, location is the key to a successful business, the key words for a lobbyist are absolute honesty, honesty, honesty. If an interest-group leader or lobbyist is seen as offering dishonest or wrong information, his or her days in that profession are at an end.
The transfer of information process is usually preceded by some preliminary meetings with the legislator's or bureaucrat's staff. This should not be bypassed because in many venues, the staff controls access to a wide variety of information and has a great influence on the official's decisions. Many times, the legislators are inundated with issues in a legislative session and they look to their staff or the party caucuses for guidance on many votes. Thus it is important to learn the ins and outs of the legislative process. There are many veto points in the complex process. There are many places to bury a proposal and many decision points that have to be overcome to make something happen. The legislative process is often a death march of legislation. In short, there are many places a bill can be altered or left to die.
There will be times when you may be invited to give testimony at a formal hearing of a legislative, executive, or regulatory body. Such invitations are seldom random; they are usually carefully planned and set up in consultation with the legislative leaders of the convening body. Often the hearings are done to justify decisions that are already made or to show the various organizations involved that they are really playing an important role in the decision-making process. There are a couple of simple rules for you if you are asked to make such a presentation: (1) write two presentations, one to insert into the written record and one for the oral presentation; (2) one page—keep it short; (3) thank everyone for the opportunity to present before their organization; and (4) make your presentation, give a summary, make a clear request for specific support, and then close.6