Every year, a small but growing number of Colorado General Assembly members and candidates announce they won’t accept campaign contributions from lobbyists. In 2025, legislation was introduced that would have prohibited lobbyists from making campaign contributions altogether. It’s an easy applause line. It also rests on a false premise: that lobbying itself is somehow corrupt.
I spent much of my career in public service, working in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and most recently in the Polis administration. Today, I’m a registered lobbyist. I use the same policy expertise, relationships and experience I developed in government to advocate for clients I believe in. Clients who create jobs, strengthen communities, and share my values.
Lobbyists in Colorado represent local hospitals, manufacturers, small businesses, cities, counties, school districts, veterans’ organizations, environmental groups, labor unions, chambers of commerce and nonprofits. We help lawmakers understand how proposed legislation will affect the people and organizations they represent. In many cases, we are the subject matter experts legislators rely on to understand highly technical policy.
Advocacy isn’t corruption. It’s participation.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly protects the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Lobbying is one of the oldest and most recognized ways Americans exercise that right. Excluding lobbyists from political participation simply because of their profession sends exactly the wrong message.
This issue is personal for me. As a woman of color, I’ve experienced more than my share of having my voice discounted, questioned or dismissed. That’s one of the reasons this trend troubles me.
☀ MORE IN OPINION
Our democracy should encourage more people to participate rather than create new categories of people whose voices are treated as “less than” because of what they do for a living. We don’t strengthen public trust by deciding some citizens deserve a seat at the table while others do not.
The inconsistency is hard to ignore. Corporate executives, business owners, labor leaders, individuals and countless others whose interests are directly affected by government decisions can contribute to political campaigns. And they should be able to. Yet a registered lobbyist, whose job is simply to advocate on behalf of a client before the government, is somehow deemed inappropriate. Equal participation in our political system should not depend on your job title.
Rejecting lobbyist donations is even harder to justify in Colorado, because Colorado already has some of the lowest campaign contribution limits in the nation. An individual can contribute just $225 per election cycle to a state House or Senate candidate. That’s not $225 per month or per year. It’s $225 for an election cycle. That isn’t enough to buy influence. It is enough to publicly support a candidate you believe will exercise good judgment.
More importantly, direct campaign contributions are among the most transparent forms of political participation.
Outside spending from independent expenditures and super PACs is another matter. While Colorado has stronger disclosure laws than many states, outside spending has grown substantially and often dwarfs what any individual can legally contribute to a candidate.
Reasonable people can disagree about campaign finance laws. We can argue contribution limits should be higher or lower, or that public financing should play a larger role. Those are all worthwhile debates.
But we should stop pretending that refusing a lawful, transparent $225 contribution from a registered lobbyist somehow makes a candidate more independent or more ethical.
Character isn’t measured by whose checks you refuse. It’s measured by whether, when difficult votes arise, you have the integrity to put your constituents and your principles first.
Democracy works best when more people participate, not when we decide certain voices deserve to be stifled simply because of their job title.
Kara van Stralen, of Denver, is the founder and principal of Vista Strategies and serves on the boards of the Colorado Lobbyist Association and the YMCA of Metro Denver.
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