In 2024, corporations, trade associations, hospitals, insurers, utilities, and assorted other interests paid a combined $76,829,795 for private lobbyists to press their interests in the North Carolina General Assembly. That figure, based on public data from the Secretary of State’s Lobbying Compliance Division, held essentially steady against the $78.3 million spent in 2023, but the broader trajectory is unmistakable. In the four years from 2021-2024, overall spending on lobbyists in the North Carolina state legislature grew by about 21%, from $63.6 to today’s $76.8 million.
Nor is that growth evenly distributed. A small number of very large players drive a heavily disproportionate share of the overall spending, and another steadily growing share of the rest comes from local governments who are increasingly using taxpayer money to lobby their own state government.
A handful of principals do most of the spending
In 2024, 1,159 registered principals — the entities that pay lobbyists, as distinct from the lobbyists themselves — reported spending at the General Assembly. The distribution among them is extremely top-heavy. The top 100 principals alone accounted for $26.2 million, or roughly 34 percent of all lobbying spending in the state. Put differently, fewer than 9 percent of registered principals account for more than a third of the money.
This and the data that follows can all be followed in this linked Google Sheet.
The top ten lobbying principals, in order, were:
- Duke Energy: $957,622
- NC Chamber of Commerce: $866,121
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina: $796,805
- Centene Corporation: $792,218
- NC Farm Bureau: $764,151
- Rex Hospital: $545,000
- Hospital Corporation of America (HCA): $537,513
- Philip Morris International: $496,018
- NC REALTORS: $486,625
- Exela Pharma Sciences: $484,388
The composition of that list is not surprising, but it is clarifying. Three of the top seven are health-care entities: an insurer, a hospital system, and a managed-care company that contracts with the state’s Medicaid program. Duke Energy, the state’s monopoly electric utility, sits at the top. The NC Chamber, the dominant voice for large corporate interests, is second. A tobacco multinational rounds out the top eight. Each organization’s business model is highly sensitive to what the state legislature does or declines to do, and makes lobbying a high return-on-investment activity.
A note on the data: The Secretary of State’s lobbying disclosures operate on a substantial reporting lag. Quarterly filings, annual reconciliation and a compliance review process that means full-year 2024 figures are only becoming usable now, well into 2026. North Carolina’s lobbying disclosure regime is, by virtually any measure, less timely than what comparable states publish. Thus, the figures we see today are describing lobbying spend in legislative sessions that are already history.
Local governments lobbying the state — with our money
The category that has steadily grown is lobbying by local governments. Counties, cities, and towns across North Carolina increasingly hire private contract lobbyists to represent their interests in Raleigh, paid for in every case with local taxpayer dollars.
In 2024, 25 county governments spent a combined $1.6 million on contract lobbyists at the General Assembly. City and town governments spent an additional $2.4 million. Altogether, local governments in North Carolina spent a little over $4 million of public money lobbying the state legislature.
In addition to county governments, 49 cities and towns around the state also paid for their own contract lobbyists:
Legally speaking, in the State of North Carolina, local governments are statutory creatures of the state. This means that local authority over issues like zoning, regulation and taxation are almost entirely at the discretion of the state legislature. With state lawmakers frequently making policy over issues of state-versus-local control, it’s understandable that local governments and elected leaders would want representation. That, after all, is a large part of why advocacy organizations like the NC League of Municipalities and the NC Association of County Commissioners exist.
Of course, that is also why lawmakers themselves exist: to represent the interests of their districts. Pitt County, along with the City of Greenville and Town of Farmville, collectively spend more than $300,000 of taxpayers’ money on contract lobbyists. Franklin County alone spends $222,000. It is reasonable to ask what these jurisdictions are buying that their elected representatives cannot deliver on their own.
What the numbers mean
Across the political spectrum, most voters view the lobbying industry with varying levels of disgust. Not without good reason, lobbying is widely seen as an exercise of unearned, frequently corrupting influence on elected leaders and a way that special interests convert money into political favor. Americans rank lobbyists themselves at the rock-bottom on the list for “honesty and ethical standards in professions,” below car salespeople and members of Congress.
Reading through the uses to which $76 million was spent on lobbying in the North Carolina state legislature, it’s not difficult to understand what has engendered that level of public cynicism. A monopoly energy utility, insurance corporations, hospital firms, a tobacco company and a group of the biggest corporations in the state can each afford to retain professional advocates in Raleigh year-round. By contrast, a neighborhood association, a renters’ coalition and most ordinary people cannot. In innumerable ways, North Carolina’s system of representative government has warped itself around a handful of Raleigh-based lobbying and law firms - and accepted the erosion of trust as the price of doing business.
