An Exodus From Congress Tests the Lure of Lobbying

Lee Drutman's work was referenced in an Atlantic article about how the wave of congressional retirees may just make their way to K street.

The so-called revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, the downtown D.C. home of many lobbying shops, has been spinning for decades. But it sped up dramatically during the 1990s and peaked early in the next decade, according to studies conducted by the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen and researchers at Georgia State and Exeter universities. In the 1970s, just a handful of retired lawmakers were lobbying. Between 1998 and 2004, however, 43 percent of the nearly 200 House members who left office became lobbyists, Public Citizen found; among departing senators, the percentage reached 50 percent. This increase coincided with the rise of corporate lobbying as a whole. As Lee Drutman wrote in The Atlantic in 2015, between the middle of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st,  the industry grew “from a sparse reactive force into a ubiquitous and increasingly proactive one” totaling more than $2.5 billion in annual revenue.