To be honest, going into my work experience I was uncertain about whether or not I agreed with the practice of lobbying. Like many others, in my mind the practice of lobbying consisted of secret meetings involving large sums of money being transferred to achieve a desired ends. After the first hour or so I realized that lobbying revolves so much more around the actual relationships created between lobbyist and representative.
My day began as I entered the Legislative Building at 9:15 A.M. where I met with Ms. Laura Devivo and Ms. Angel Sams of Devivo and Sams Policy Partners. Soon I found myself following these two to the office of Senator Ralph Hise. The focus of this trip and, as I found out, the entire day was on establishing hospitals in areas where constituents found themselves far away from adequate medical treatment. As explained to me current legislation greatly impedes these areas from effectively presenting a demonstrated need for such hospitals, and our goal was to add a provision in some sort of bill which would counteract and nullify such legislation. Senator Hise was not at his office so we sat in on joint committee targeted at adjusting the NC budget in expectation that he would also be there. He did show up and I was able to watch as Ms. Devivo and Ms. Sams took him off to the side to have a quick conversation with him explaining the need to have the hospital provision in some sort of legislation. These short conversations soon became a motif of my early lobbying experience. Throughout the day we would meet with other representatives such as Representatives Josh Dobson and Justin Burr to have these quick meetings regarding the hospital issue.
However, as I also learned, representatives and senators tend to be very tied up at the legislature building in various meetings and other commitments, so often times a lobbyist has to spend his or her time waiting for these legislators in order to have a brief, sometimes very brief, conversation. This naturally results in downtime when waiting for legislators. Often we spent this time talking with the staff of legislators, other unaffiliated legislators, or even other lobbyists. Today we spent a bit of time talking to Justin Burr’s secretary while waiting for him and at lunch we had a very fascinating conversation with Senator Jerry Tillman.
What a day! Ms. Devivo and Ms. Sams promised me that today was a rather ‘slow’ day for business but I still found their work so intriguing. I can’t wait for what’s to come!
