US Lobbying Disclosure Scraper - Senate LDA

This lobbying scraper turns the official US Senate LDA database into a clean, queryable feed — every federal lobbying disclosure filing, flattened into one row each: the registrant (lobbying firm), the client who paid, filing type/year/period, income/expenses spent on lobbying, the issues lobbied, the named lobbyists, and the government entities targeted — plus links to the filing and source document. Filter by year, registrant, client, or issue; export to CSV, JSON, or Excel.

Built for journalists, opposition & policy researchers, public-affairs / PR firms, and compliance teams who need structured lobbying data — without paying enterprise prices (FiscalNote, Quorum). Official government data, no API key, no anti-bot.

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Why use this

• Authoritative source — the official US Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act API (1.9M+ filings).
• Revolving-door detection — flags every filing that names a lobbyist who previously held a covered government position (with the former role), and a revolvingDoorOnly filter. No other LDA scraper does this — it's the story journalists actually want.
• 0-100 influence_score — an explainable signal (spend + lobbyist headcount + issues + agencies targeted + revolving-door + foreign ties) so you can rank the heaviest efforts, with a minInfluenceScore filter.
• Surfaces the fields others drop — foreign_entities (with country & ownership %), affiliated_organizations, conviction_disclosures, and termination_date — all flattened and labeled.
• Flattened + readable — the LDA API nests lobbyists and issues several levels deep; this surfaces them as clean lists plus a single amount_usd.
• Follow the money — see who paid whom, how much, on what issues, targeting which agencies.
• No key, no proxies — public data; runs for free.

Input

Field	Type	Description
filingYear	integer	Year of filings (e.g. 2024).
registrantName	string	Lobbying-firm name (partial match).
clientName	string	Client (the paying org) name (partial match).
issueCode	string	Issue area, e.g. TAX, HCR, DEF, TEC.
filingType	string	RR (registration), Q1–Q4 (quarterly reports).
revolvingDoorOnly	boolean	Keep only filings with a former-government-official lobbyist.
minInfluenceScore	integer	Keep only filings with influence_score ≥ this (0-100).
maxItems	integer	Max filings. Default 200.
apiKey	string	Optional free LDA key for large runs.

Example input:

{ "filingYear": 2024, "issueCode": "TEC", "maxItems": 500 }

JSON output sample

{
  "filing_uuid": "7866327b-c89...",
  "filing_year": 2024,
  "filing_period": "1st Quarter (Jan 1 - Mar 31)",
  "filing_type": "1st Quarter - Report",
  "influence_score": 71,
  "influence_breakdown": { "spend": 12, "lobbyists": 4, "issues": 4, "gov_targets": 6, "revolving_door": 25, "foreign_ties": 10 },
  "revolving_door": true,
  "revolving_door_lobbyists": [
    { "name": "Jane Doe", "former_position": "Legislative Director, Sen. Smith" }
  ],
  "registrant": "East Capitol Advisors",
  "registrant_state": "DC",
  "client": "CTIA - The Wireless Association",
  "client_state": "DC",
  "amount_usd": 30000.0,
  "income_usd": 30000.0,
  "expenses_usd": null,
  "issues": ["Telecommunications"],
  "lobbyists": ["Jane Doe", "John Roe"],
  "lobbyist_count": 2,
  "government_entities": ["U.S. Senate", "FCC"],
  "foreign_entities": [{ "name": "Example SARL", "country": "France", "ownership_percentage": 12.5 }],
  "has_foreign_ties": true,
  "affiliated_organizations": [{ "name": "Example Holdings USA", "state": "Texas", "country": "United States of America" }],
  "conviction_disclosures": [],
  "has_conviction_disclosure": false,
  "termination_date": null,
  "posted_date": "2024-01-02",
  "filing_url": "https://lda.senate.gov/api/v1/filings/7866327b...",
  "document_url": "https://...pdf"
}

Results render as a clean, sortable table on the Output tab and export to CSV, JSON, or Excel.

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Use cases

• Journalism / oppo research — who lobbied on a bill, for which client, spending how much.
• Public-affairs intelligence — track competitors' and clients' lobbying activity over time.
• Compliance — monitor registrant/client filings and lobbyist rosters.
• Market mapping — aggregate spend by issue area, agency, or year.

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Use with AI agents & automation

Run from the Apify MCP server so AI agents can query lobbying filings as a tool call, schedule runs via Make, n8n, or Zapier to alert on new filings for a client/issue, or sync to Google Sheets. Clean flat JSON drops into research pipelines with no glue code.

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Pricing

Pay-per-event — charged per filing delivered. Source is the free public Senate LDA API (no proxy cost). See the Apify Store page for the current price.

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FAQ

Where's the data from? The official US Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) API at lda.senate.gov — public government data.

Do I need a key? No. Add a free LDA key only for large/high-frequency runs (higher rate limit).

What's amount_usd? The lobbying income (firm hired by a client) or expenses (in-house lobbying) reported on the filing; registrations often have none until the first quarterly report.

Can I export to CSV or Google Sheets? Yes — CSV, JSON, or Excel from the Output tab, or sync via Make/n8n/Zapier.

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