Walk the hallways of the General Assembly Building, and you’re sure to run into lobbyists stopping by a state senator’s or delegate’s office.
And although the more spacious hallways seem less crowded with lobbyists than the narrow, twisting passages in the Pocahontas Building that housed legislative offices before 2024, there are more of them — just over 1,100 — as clients spend more money than ever.
Spending on lobbying is up 72% over the past three gubernatorial and House election cycles, from the 2017 to 2025 cycles, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis of state Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commission data found. The total reached a record $24.3 million, with the number growing roughly twice as fast as the inflation rate.
Virginia politics: It's big business, and business is good
While some of the biggest teams have been players for years — electric utilities, hospitals and doctors, local government — the biggest special interest working the halls of the General Assembly building these days is the gaming sector: gambling businesses spent $3.6 million before and during the 2025 legislative session, according to the most recent data available.
A lot of that went into battling one another: casinos and charitable gaming fought hard against moves to legalize slot machine-like skill games. Formal legislation never emerged, as it had in 2024 and again in 2026, while a 2025 effort to write legalization into the state budget came to nothing. Skill games legalization made it through the legislature in 2024 and 2026, only to be vetoed.
Horse-racing interests, meanwhile, had concerns about legislation to create a single state gaming commission to take over oversight that is now split between the Lottery, the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Racing Commission. That bill died.
“It is no coincidence that interests at the highest risk of financial impact from certain legislation are at the top of the list of biggest spenders,” said Steve Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.
“Making sure something you don’t want doesn’t happen is more important than proposing something new,” he said.
But new issues — gaming, for instance, or the online commerce that draws legislative attention — are one reason for the growth of lobbying.
“The more other firms lobby to advocate for their interests, the more competition for the attention of legislators increases, the higher the costs of lobbying become,” said Alex Keena, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“Gaming, healthcare, electric utilities, pharmaceuticals, banking and alcohol are all sectors where legislation can dramatically affect profits, market share or regulatory obligations. In that sense, increased lobbying spending reflects the increasing value of decisions being made in Richmond,” said Olusoji Akomolafe, a Norfolk State University political scientist.
On healthcare, where hospitals, doctors, nurses and medical services spent $1.9 million, their efforts helped convince legislators to kill a bill that would have increased the limit on medical malpractice insurance payments for damages to children harmed by medical errors. Hospitals also opposed ending the state certificate of public necessity program, which requires state approval for new facilities and expansions, and which critics say protects hospital monopolies. That idea also died.
“They can get to 139 others a lot faster than I can,” said state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, who proposed both measures, referring to the 100 House members and 39 other state senators.
“When I’m up at a podium making my case, they’re in delegates’ and senators’ offices on a daily basis telling them why my bill stinks,” he said.
Stanley’s been a strong supporter of skill games, most recently winning cases that allow one version of them, though other legislators took the lead with legislation.
“I think on skill games, the casinos had like 54 lobbyists, one for every three legislators,” he said. Casinos were concerned that legal skill games would allow mini-casinos in convenience stores and truck stops, cutting into their business.
Even so, Stanley sees lobbyists as more of a help than a hindrance.
“You know, in my area, it’s hard to get (internet) service. So I called a telecom lobbyist and asked what can we do, and just this week we had a sit-down with local officials and have a way forward,” he said.
“The best thing I know is that I know what I don’t know … (lobbyists) can educate you in ways you could not do on the fly,” he said.
Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, who pushed hard for a gaming commission and has been cautious about expanding gambling in Virginia, has interacted with many gaming lobbyists.
“I do appreciate the good lobbyists who are truly subject matter experts and can be very helpful with their knowledge and expertise,” he said.
“The good lobbyists will tell you both sides of the issue and who you can go to to get the other side’s perspective. But as a legislator, it’s important not to rely solely on their input,” he said.
Interests on all sides of electric utility regulation spent $1.7 million, with the biggest chunk, $329,995, coming from Dominion Energy. Here, Dominion was battling proposals to make it easier for big users to shop around for power. This idea died.
Another failed bill would have allowed the State Corporation Commission to approve locations for solar and wind facilities if local governments would not — local governments opposed this, along with several other measures imposing state dictates on land use. Local governments' lobbying totaled more than $936,000.
Virginia is a wide open market in politics
Data centers, which spent more than $715,000, fended off a series of measures to tighten land-use rules in their locations. Tobacco interests spent more than $508,000 as the General Assembly enacted a measure to license vape retailers, which Big Tobacco sees as a way to crack down on sales of illegal devices that compete with its efforts to sell e-cigarettes that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards.
But pharmaceutical interests, after spending more than $460,000, couldn’t stop the General Assembly from passing the Prescription Drug Advisory Board measure to cap medication prices in the 2025 session; this measure previously died with then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s veto. A revised version passed this year but met the same fate.
Scott Johnson, a well-regarded lobbyist who represents several healthcare interests, says he’s found lobbyists build trust by giving legislators straight answers about why their clients think a law needs changing, or doesn’t, but especially by also explaining what opponents will say and how to get in touch to hear from their lobbyists.
“It’s all about character, integrity and credibility,” he said.
“If there’s not another lobbyist on the other side, I’ll still tell a legislator what constituency groups are saying — I’ll say, there’s a letter to the editor about this, you might want to get in touch,” he said.
But, he added, “The fact is, you probably have to have a lobbyist to have your voice heard,” he said.
It’s a misconception that business lobbyists crowd out others’ voices, said Greg Habeeb, a former legislator whose law practice now includes lobbying.
“For any landlord lobbyist speaking on a landlord-tenant bill, you’ll see someone from the (Virginia) Poverty Law Center and other tenant advocacy groups. … On electricity, there’s any number of environmental and ratepayer advocates speaking out,” he said.
Lobbying has been an essential part of lawmaking for a while, and isn’t necessarily something bad, said Keena of VCU.
“The right to access legislators and communicate your interests is vital for democracy to work, and actually, this right, the right to petition, is enshrined in the First Amendment, for good reason,” he said.
“The problem is when money becomes the primary means of accessing legislators. This gives monied interests a big advantage over less affluent public interest and consumer rights groups in shaping public policy,” he said.
Political scientists’ research, meanwhile, shows lobbying is not a kind of quid pro quo bribery, Keena said.
Instead, it’s a kind of subsidy for legislatures.
“Because legislators are understaffed and are always limited in their time and resources, lobbyists step in to offer free resources in the form of extra staffing, reports, bill writing,” Keena said.
“They do the hard work of drafting the bills, analyzing economic impact, assessing district impact, articulating electoral incentives, etc., for friendly legislators, so it is very easy for them. Their goal is not always to shift how a legislator votes, but to get well-positioned legislators to prioritize their issues — for example, by giving a bill a hearing in committee, or by getting undesirable language removed during markup,” he said.
But the growth of lobbying, like the huge expansion in election campaigning money, is generating a different kind of influence than in years past, Keena said.
The old idea that campaigning and lobbying operated in separate spheres isn’t the case these days.
“It is very clear that in recent decades, powerful monied interests have used both campaign contributions and lobbying in tandem as a strategy for a) installing business-friendly legislators on both sides of the aisle, and b) using lobbying as a tactic for advancing their interests,” Keena said.
“This is a long-term strategy that pays off over the course of decades,” he said.
