The 369% Premium: Hard Proof That the Revolving Door Pays

Measuring What Everyone Already Knew

Everyone in Washington knows the revolving door matters. Former congressional staffers become lobbyists. Former agency officials join K Street firms. Former White House advisors cash in. It's the worst-kept secret in American politics.

But until now, quantifying the exact value of that revolving door has been difficult. Academic studies have approached it from various angles — Blanes i Vidal, Draca, and Fons-Rosen (2012) found that lobbyists who previously worked for a senator experienced a 24% drop in revenue when that senator left office. The implication: a significant chunk of a lobbyist's value comes not from expertise, but from who they know.

We can now quantify it across the entire industry. OpenLobby's database contains 7,746 lobbying firms with detailed information about their employees' prior government service. Here's what the data shows.

The Revenue Gap

The gap is massive. Firms with at least one revolving door lobbyist average $8.25 million in total revenue across our tracking period. Firms without average just $1.76 million. That's a 369% premium.

The client gap is even more dramatic. Revolving door firms average 11.8 clients versus just 2.4 clients for firms without government connections — a 4.9x multiplier. Clients are paying for access, and they know exactly what they're buying.

The Firms Cashing In

The top revolving door firms in our database are a masterclass in monetizing government service:

BGR Government Affairs — $294.8M

BGR tops the revenue chart at nearly $295 million and 522 clients. Their revolving door roster reads like a Washington org chart. Pete Landrum served as Senior Defense Policy Advisor to Senator Jeff Sessions. Mark Tavlarides was Director for Legislative Affairs at the National Security Council and Senior Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. David Boyer held positions at the FDA, HHS, the White House Liaison office at DoD, and the Department of Labor. Brent Del Monte was Legislative Director for Representative Tom Bliley and Senior Counsel on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

That's not a lobbying firm. That's a shadow government.

Cornerstone Government Affairs — $276.8M

Cornerstone has the most extensive revolving door network, with 601 clients. Tony Essalih served as Chief of Staff and Legislative Director for multiple House members, including Representatives Culberson, Archer, and Hastings. Laura Bozell was Legislative Assistant to Representative McCrery and Professional Staff on the Ways and Means Committee under Chairman Camp.

The Ways and Means Committee writes tax law. If you were a company trying to get a tax provision changed, who would you hire — a lobbyist who once wrote tax provisions on that committee, or someone who didn't?

Williams and Jensen — $109.9M

Susan Hirschmann was Chief of Staff to the House Majority Whip — one of the most powerful positions in Congress. She now lobbies. Eric Stewart was Chief of Staff and Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Commerce. Joel Oswald served as Legislative Assistant to Senator Enzi and Professional Staff on two Senate Banking subcommittees.

These aren't junior staffers who spent a summer interning. These are people who sat in the rooms where deals were made, who have the personal phone numbers of the people who still sit in those rooms.

The Academic Evidence

Our findings align with — and dramatically extend — the academic literature:

• Blanes i Vidal et al. (2012): When a lobbyist's former senator boss leaves office, that lobbyist's revenue drops 24%. The authors concluded that "ichkonnections to powerful politicians are a major driver of the returns to lobbying."
• LaPira and Thomas (2017): Found that revolving door lobbyists are more likely to lobby on issues related to their former government service, and command higher fees for doing so.
• Bertrand, Bombardini, and Trebbi (2014): Showed that lobbyists' political connections — measured by campaign contribution networks — are a stronger predictor of revenue than issue expertise.

Our 369% premium finding suggests the gap is even larger than prior studies estimated, likely because we're measuring at the firm level across all issues, rather than at the individual lobbyist level on specific legislation.

Why the Premium Exists

The revolving door premium isn't mysterious. It's straightforward economics. Ex-government lobbyists provide three things that are genuinely valuable:

1. Access: They can get meetings that others can't. A former Chief of Staff to the Majority Whip can call current leadership staff directly. A former Senate committee staffer can walk into a member's office and be seen immediately.
2. Intelligence: They know how the legislative and regulatory process actually works — not in theory, but in practice. They know which staffers draft which provisions, which members care about which issues, and where the real decisions are made.
3. Credibility: When a former senior government official advocates a position, it carries weight that a hired consultant's advocacy doesn't. "I used to work on this issue at the agency" is a powerful opener.

All of this is legal. All of it is disclosed. And all of it is deeply corrosive to democratic governance.

The Libertarian Diagnosis

Reformers typically propose solutions like longer cooling-off periods (currently 1–2 years for most officials), stricter lobbying bans, or even lifetime bans on lobbying for certain positions. These proposals miss the forest for the trees.

The revolving door exists because government officials have enormous power to allocate. The former Chief of Staff to the House Majority Whip is valuable as a lobbyist because the Majority Whip controls the legislative calendar and shapes every bill that reaches the floor. The former Defense Policy Advisor is valuable because the Pentagon spends $886 billion a year.

You can ban every former official from lobbying for life, and you'll achieve two things: (1) making it harder to recruit talented people into government service, and (2) driving the influence industry into less transparent channels. The connections don't disappear because you pass a law. They go underground — into "strategic consulting" firms that technically don't "lobby" but accomplish the same goals.

The only way to reduce the value of the revolving door is to reduce the value of what government officials control. If the government spent less, regulated less, and had less discretionary power, the connections of former officials would be worth proportionally less. The revolving door is a symptom, not the disease.

47% of All Firms

Perhaps the most striking number in our analysis: 3,656 of 7,746 lobbying firms — 47% — employ at least one lobbyist with prior government service. Nearly half the industry is built on government connections. And those 47% of firms capture a wildly disproportionate share of revenue.

The remaining 4,090 firms — the ones without revolving door employees — split the leftover market at an average of $1.76 million each. They survive on expertise, relationships built from the outside, and lower-margin work. They are, in effect, the minor leagues of lobbying.

The message to every congressional staffer, every agency official, every White House advisor is clear: your government service is an investment. Put in your years, learn the system, build your contacts, and then monetize it all on K Street. The data proves the payoff.

Explore the Data

OpenLobby's revolving door tracker lets you search every lobbyist's prior government service. See which firms hire the most ex-officials, which government positions are most common, and how the revolving door connects to spending on specific issues.

Our firm directory includes revolving door counts for every firm, so you can compare firms with and without government connections yourself.

The revolving door will keep spinning as long as government power makes it profitable. Our job is to make sure you can see it spinning.