My godfather was a 17 term congressman starting in the 70's, he always said for most issues there were lobbyists on both sides of the issue and if you voted how

My godfather was a 17 term congressman starting in the 70's, he always said for most issues there were lobbyists on both sides of the issue and if you voted how you wanted you'd get checks. When one side doesn't have money vote how you want and throw a fundraising party and invite the people you voted with. If you were hard up for money, you could just play at being undecided or persuadable and watch money roll in. The biggest problem was it simply takes a lot of TIME to get money from lobbyists because they want to see your staff and sometimes you. Much of his time in congress was pre-internet so there are two big changes 1. ability of people to see where you are getting money is a lot easier, creating a cost for teasing money out of say big oil companies. 2.Also this was before the flood of dark money, which puts pressure on needing to raise money.