The Citizens United decision brought about the rise of super PACs, and empowered 501(c)(4) public advocacy groups and 501(c)(6) trade associations to participate in (at times secretly-funded) electoral advocacy. The resulting influx of money into the election cycle has considerably altered the political landscape – and D.C. lobbyists have taken note.

As reported by Dave Levinthal at POLITICO, interest groups are utilizing super PACs to ‘twist arms.’

So for some issue interest groups, super PACs are a potentially major complement to — if not upgrade over — traditional, Capitol Hill lobbying in their ability to bring heat on lawmakers and twist their arms toward their agendas.

“If you’re a lobbyist, you’re talking with a legislator and mention you’re forming a super PAC, their ears are really going to perk up just because you said the words ‘super PAC,’” said Shana Glickfield, a partner at public affairs firm Beekeeper Group. “It’s such a big, scary thing — and can give you an extra edge of influence.”

One of the first powerful lobbying firms to create a super PAC for additional influence was the National Association of Realtors, which has since rewarded lawmakers friendly to their agenda with hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisements and air cover. A host of other lobbying groups have done so as well.

As People For noted in our written testimony for the Senate Constitution Subcommittee hearing this past July on the need for constitutional remedies to overturn Citizens United, the power of super PACs is twofold. Not only can special interest groups now spend freely on elections to promote their policy agenda, they can threaten to spend freely, effectively achieving the same result.

Of course, to accomplish its goals, a corporation need not actually spend such sums in every race they are interested in. Far from it. Especially for offices or in areas where electoral races are generally not overwhelmingly expensive – in other words, for most state and local legislative and judicial elections throughout the United States – the implied threat to spend large expenditures against elected officials could easily be enough to “persuade” them to take the “right” position. Conversely, the promise of an enormous windfall in supportive corporate independent expenditures could have an equally persuasive effect.

Such corruption leaves no evidence: no paper trail, no recordings, no ads. But it poisons our nation’s democracy.

Do D.C. lobbyists really need more tools in their arsenal to effectively ‘twist arms’? Are Sacramento lobbyists, Albany lobbyists, Tallahassee lobbyists or any other state-based lobbyists in desperate need of influence?

The obvious answer is no. Yet in the post-Citizens United world, the game is rigged, and those with power only accrue more of it. The people, meanwhile, are left with less and less of a say in government. It’s no wonder the Democratic Party, President Obama, nearly 2,000 public officials, seven state legislatures and over 300 cities/towns, and 1.98 million Americans are in support of a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Citizens United decision.