Can lobbyists sway editorial boards?

Nearly every week, lobbyists come to The Hart-ford Courant for a hearing with editorial writers. These special-interests representatives are not just the Gucci-loafered, registered power-brokers who haunt the statehouses. They include school board members, animal activists, third-party candidates for office, local business executives, and on and on.

Their objectives, of course, are to sway editorial writers toward their causes. But are these trips worthwhile? Do lobbyists, in fact, make any difference?

That question has been extensively studied in political science circles as it applies to Congress, but not in journalism circles as it applies to journalists.

Yet what political scientists say about the influence of special interests on lawmakers will sound awfully familiar to any editorial board member who has sat through weekly meetings with local worthies and foreign dignitaries.

For a law school course on government, I read dozens of treatises on lobbyists and their impact on lawmakers in Washington. Then I talked with editors at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and, of course, my own newspaper. They pretty much agreed on a couple of points: Special interests have become a part of editorial writers' professional lives, just as they have become a huge factor in Washington. Lobbyists can influence lawmakers and writers, but not as much as their enemies fear they do. They don't talk lawmakers or editorial writers into adopting entirely new positions. They can, however, help lawmakers and editorial writers shape policy positions in subtle, incremental ways.

Lobbyists are increasingly issue specialists, and so are the government staffs they deal with.

"As government activities and regulations have grown, the value of policy specialists who understand the complex Washington environment has appreciated," wrote Hugh Heclo in his essay "Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment." Later in the essay, he writes, "Academia, think tanks, and people with specialized credentials have been gaining in importance."

The demands of interest groups are eating up legislators' time. Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana, complained to Jonathan Rauch, author of Demosclerosis: "It's to the point where there are so many causes organized ... that there's very little space left;" He compared himself to an overbooked dentist jumping from chair to chair.

Editors at the Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Hartford Courant estimate that they see some 200 lobbyists yearly. For example, on March 26,1999, the day I interviewed John Fund of the Journal, the United Nations had just opened its session in New York, and representatives were asking for editorial board meetings. These visits were in addition to what Fund described as the usual meetings with "heads of state, CEOs, military guerrilla leaders."

For some dignitaries, visiting editorial boards was "a great way to justify a trip to New York." For others, it was a painful but necessary stop. "We're one of the Stations of the Cross' Fund said.

Lobbyists prefer friends to enemies.

"Organized interests [lobbyists] are more likely to lobby their allies in committee than their opponents or undecided members," write Marie Hojnacki and David D. Kimball in "Organized Interests and the Decision of Whom to Lobby in Congress," American Political Science Review, December 1998.

They also observe: "A group moves beyond its allies and lobbies legislators who are not among its usual supporters only when it has strong ties to their legislative districts."

So agreed Fund of the Journal. He said that editorial page visitors come not with delusions of changing the Journal's editorial positions, but with hopes of modifying them or introducing ideas they're reasonably sure the Journal will be interested in hearing.

"They know where we're coming from. They're not going to try to sell us on a business subsidy They'd be wasting their time' he said.

"They may influence us around the margin in a marginal contest," he said. "But if they're going to ask for an expansion of HUD mortgage guarantees, that's not going to fly."

Lobbyists provide ammunition.

"A group lobbies committee allies in order to provide them with arguments, issue interpretations and information that make the strongest case for the group's position," write Hojnacki and Kimball.

That echoed The New York Times' associate editorial page editor, Robert B. Semple Jr., who has won a Pulitzer for his writing on the environment. In an interview in March 1999, Semple said he was often visited by conservation groups, which provided him with valuable information.

"I keep what's useful," he said.

That month, for example, representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture came to "educate me on a small program to conserve farmland and wetlands that are disappearing, by offering incentives," Semple said. Another delegation visited to remind him of the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill, whose 10th anniversary was coming up.

My tiny study of editorial writers and special interests is far from scientific. But the parallels in political science literature strike me as an intriguing issue for an enterprising journalist, graduate student, or professor to investigate more rigorously. (Please see "Apply for the Pulliam Fellowship," page 47.)

Carolyn Lumsden is Commentary editor for The Hartford Courant. She was a journalism fellow at Yale Law School in 1998-99.