From Open Secrets: Federal and state lobbying spending soared to $10 billion during the 2020 election cycle, but state lobbying disclosure remains limited

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Big dollar lobbying efforts are not limited to the federal level. Federal lobbying spending broke $3.7 billion in 2021 — an all-time high — and billions more were spent on lobbying efforts at the state-level.

The two-year 2020 election cycle saw more than $10.3 billion in lobbying spending at the federal level and across the 19 states tracked by OpenSecrets, a new analysis found.

Of that lobbying spending, $5.1 billion came in 2020. In 2020, federal lobbying spending reached $3.5 billion and OpenSecrets tracked about $1.6 billion in lobbying spending across 19 states.

OpenSecrets’ analysis revealed about $3.3 billion in lobbying spending during the two-year 2020 election cycle across 19 states with $1.7 billion in 2019 and $1.6 billion in 2020.

Of the states tracked by OpenSecrets, California saw the most lobbying spending over the two-year election cycle with over $760 million paid to lobbyists in 2019 and 2020. The top spending lobbyist clients in the states tracked were Reynolds American Inc, a U.S. subsidiary of British American Tobacco previously known as RAI, and AT&T, each spending in excess of $15 million over the two years. AT&T spent money in 18 of the 19 states and Reynolds was active in 17 of them.

While these numbers are striking on their own, it only tells part of the story of state lobbying efforts.

Because of variations in data availability, OpenSecrets has only been able to collect spending data from 19 of the 50 states. The $3.3 billion in known spending in 2019 and 2020 is just a portion of the actual, unknown, total.

The issue here comes down to what states require to be reported.