Lobbying Disclosure Scraper — revolving-door detection & Senate LDA data, $5 per 1,000 filings

Turn the official US Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) database into a clean, filterable lead feed of who's lobbying whom, for how much, and — the part no other scraper does — which lobbyists previously held a government job (revolving door). $5 per 1,000 filings, pay only for results delivered.

What does it do?

This actor pulls federal lobbying disclosure filings straight from the official Senate LDA API and flattens the deeply nested JSON into one row per filing: the registrant (lobbying firm), the client who paid, filing type/year/period, income and expenses, the issues lobbied, the named lobbyists, and the government entities targeted. Every filing is scored with an explainable 0-100 influence score and flagged for revolving-door lobbyists — people who moved from a covered government position straight into lobbying — plus foreign ties and prior conviction disclosures. It's built to replace manual digging through lda.senate.gov or a $10k+/year subscription to FiscalNote or Quorum.

Why use it / who's it for

• Investigative journalists & oppo researchers who need to answer "who lobbied for this bill, for which client, and did any of the lobbyists used to work in government" without reading hundreds of PDFs.
• Public-affairs and PR firms tracking competitors' or clients' lobbying footprint — spend, issues, and agencies targeted — over a quarter or year.
• Policy researchers & think tanks mapping which industries are spending the most on which issue codes (tax, healthcare, defense, tech).
• Compliance and government-affairs teams monitoring their own registrants, clients, and lobbyist rosters for accuracy and disclosure gaps.
• Anyone replacing an enterprise lobbying-intelligence subscription ($10k+/year tools) with pay-per-result access to the same underlying public data.

How to use it

1. Optionally set a filing year (e.g. 2024) — leave blank for the most recent filings.
2. Optionally filter by registrant name (lobbying firm), client name (who paid), or issue code (TAX, HCR, DEF, TEC, etc.) — all partial-match.
3. Turn on revolvingDoorOnly to keep only filings naming a lobbyist who previously held a covered government position — the core investigative angle.
4. Optionally set minInfluenceScore (0-100) to filter out small/routine filings and surface only the heaviest lobbying efforts.
5. Set maxItems and run. Export the dataset to CSV, JSON, or Excel, or pull it via API/MCP into your own pipeline.

Output fields

Field	Description
filing_uuid	Unique filing identifier
filing_year, filing_period, filing_type	When the filing covers and what type it is (registration / Q1-Q4 report)
influence_score	Explainable 0-100 score (spend + lobbyist headcount + issues + agencies + revolving door + foreign ties)
influence_breakdown	Point-by-point breakdown of the score above
revolving_door	true if any named lobbyist previously held a covered government position
revolving_door_lobbyists	List of {name, former_position} for each revolving-door lobbyist
registrant, registrant_city, registrant_state	The lobbying firm and its location
registrant_contact, registrant_phone	Registrant's listed contact person and phone
client, client_state, client_description	The organization paying for lobbying
amount_usd, income_usd, expenses_usd	Reported lobbying spend (income for hired firms, expenses for in-house lobbying)
issues, issue_count	Issue areas lobbied (e.g. Telecommunications, Taxation)
lobbyists, lobbyist_count	Named individual lobbyists on the filing
government_entities	Agencies and chambers targeted (e.g. U.S. Senate, FCC)
foreign_entities	Foreign entities with an interest in the filing, with country & ownership %
has_foreign_ties	Boolean flag for quick filtering
affiliated_organizations	Organizations affiliated with the client, with state/country
conviction_disclosures, has_conviction_disclosure	Any disclosed lobbyist convictions
termination_date, posted_date	Filing lifecycle dates
filing_url, document_url	Links to the LDA API record and source PDF

Example output

A real sample from a live run:

registrant	client	filing_year	filing_type	issues	influence_score
RWE OFFSHORE WIND HOLDINGS, LLC	RWE OFFSHORE WIND HOLDINGS, LLC	2024	Registration	Budget/Appropriations, Energy/Nuclear...	37
VENN STRATEGIES	INVENERGY LLC	2024	Registration	Energy/Nuclear	33
ALSTON & BIRD LLP	TRAUMA CENTER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA	2024	Registration	Health Issues, Medicare/Medicaid	41
REACT19	REACT19	2024	Registration	Health Issues, Medical/Disease Resear...	6

Input example

{
  "filingYear": 2024,
  "issueCode": "TEC",
  "revolvingDoorOnly": true,
  "minInfluenceScore": 40,
  "maxItems": 500
}

Every field is optional — running with no input pulls the most recent filings across all registrants and clients.

How much does it cost?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.005 per result ($5 per 1,000 filings), effective 2026-07-16. You're charged only for filings actually returned — no subscription, no charge for empty runs. New Apify accounts get roughly 1,000 free results per month on the platform's free tier, enough to test revolving-door detection and influence scoring on a real issue area before paying anything. A 5,000-filing research pull costs $25; a 20,000-filing year-long sweep costs $100 — a fraction of a FiscalNote or Quorum seat.

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape lobbying disclosure data?

Yes. This actor only reads the official public Senate LDA API (lda.senate.gov) — the same disclosure data lobbying firms and clients are legally required to file. There's no login, no paywall bypass, and no private data involved.

How fresh is the data?

Filings come from a live query to the Senate LDA API at run time, so results reflect whatever has been posted to lda.senate.gov as of the run — typically within a day of the official filing. Re-run periodically (or schedule via Make/n8n/Zapier) to catch new filings for a client, registrant, or issue.

What exactly counts as "revolving door"?

A filing is flagged revolving_door: true when at least one named lobbyist has a covered_position on record — meaning they previously held a government position covered by the Lobbying Disclosure Act (e.g. congressional staff, executive-branch role) before becoming a registered lobbyist. The former role is included in revolving_door_lobbyists.

Do I need an API key?

No. It runs on the public LDA endpoint with no key required. You can optionally add a free Senate LDA API key (from lda.senate.gov/api/register) only if you're running very large or frequent pulls and hit rate limits.

Can I filter for the biggest or most sensitive lobbying efforts only?

Yes — set minInfluenceScore to skip routine, low-spend filings and keep only the heaviest efforts, or combine it with revolvingDoorOnly to surface high-influence filings with a former-government lobbyist attached — the exact combination investigative teams look for first.

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