MASSACHUSETTS HAS ELECTED a Black governor, a Black attorney general, Black state senators and state representatives. There are Black heads of departments and secretariats. 

There are not many Black lobbyists on Beacon Hill. Among those of us whose profession is to communicate the interests and needs of businesses, organizations and communities, Black faces are few and far between. It’s a dynamic worth reflecting on during this Black History Month, while the backlash against efforts for racial equity is being led by the nation’s president.

As lobbyists, we play a crucial role in the State House. We have institutional knowledge and process expertise that most organizations, and many legislators, don’t have. It’s a genuine source of power, and that power is why so many on the outside of the political arena look askance at lobbyists. It’s a power that has a much bigger impact than the fundraising and check-writing that draws media attention and condemnation. 

Unfortunately, the same disproportion that exists in the distribution of Black corporate CEOs (0 percent of the 24 Fortune 500 companies based in Massachusetts), legislative joint committee chairs (4.6 percent), physicians (5.2 percent) and lawyers (2 percent) in Massachusetts exists among the cohort of professional lobbyists. In key institutional roles, Black people in durable positions of power are scarce. 

Durability is an important point here. DEI programs, positions, and approaches are under active attack. The largest employer in the nation, the federal government, has eliminated their internal use and is requiring agencies to investigate to ensure that remnants of DEI aren’t hiding under other names and labels. 

This builds upon the reality that the surge of interest in promoting racial equality that followed the murder of George Floyd was already receding prior to the presidential election. The American pattern of addressing race issues in fits and starts has played itself out again.

Lobbyists, particularly contract lobbyists, are durable members of the political and policy infrastructure. We have often served within the Legislature and/or the executive branch and have seen leaders and policy priorities come, go and come back again. We utilize our relationships, our understanding of committee and regulatory processes, and our awareness of shifting political dynamics to influence policy outcomes.

This is where the dearth of Black lobbyists has an impact. Every individual brings a unique lens to their work. That lens is shaped by our lived experience, our professional acculturation, and our sense of ourselves in an intergenerational narrative. If politics is the art of the possible, the lens we bring to the work shapes what we consider or imagine to be possible. 

Right now, there aren’t very many people working in the State House with an expansive view of Black possibilities. What’s worse, and what has had a negative impact on the Commonwealth as a whole, are the missed opportunities for innovative policy change informed by a Black lens in critical policy areas like education, public health, criminal justice reform, and housing.  

We squandered the political opportunity that the conjunction of the COVID pandemic and the national reflection on the murder of George Floyd provided to reimagine and make real the possibilities for community-informed and community-centered change. 

For example, a different lens on the possible might have offered free online tutoring for families in communities that were vaccine hesitant. That could have increased trust, civic engagement, and vaccination rates. It could have been part of a meaningful effort to address the racial educational achievement gap. It could have demonstrated that public health is more than obedience to the latest dictum from the authority figure of the moment. It could have used ARPA funds in a way that had a lasting impact on the communities hit the hardest by COVID.  Instead, they offered gift cards.

It takes more than good or innovative policy approaches to bring ideas like that to reality. It takes knowing the what, where, and when of the policy conversations that dictate the choices that legislators vote on. It takes knowledge of who has the political capital to push for a given policy change and who has the political interest to do so. It takes a lobbyist. 

Being a lobbyist is challenging, and not for every temperament. It’s particularly challenging as a contract lobbyist reliant on identifying, landing, and retaining clients who need help navigating an opaque and frustrating system. 

A large part of the job is convincing people that you can make sense of a system that seems nonsensical, and that you can do so in a way that advances their interests. For those who don’t come across as part of the standard political elite, this can be a high hurdle to clear.

This dynamic is recognized by the cohort of people whose professional path might otherwise lead them into lobbying. Look at the regularity with which white former elected officials go into lobbying and compare that with their Black and Latino colleagues. The same dynamic can be observed with legislative and executive branch staffers.

I love lobbying, and I am grateful every day for the unlikely chain of events that brought me to this profession. I’m keenly aware of how rare the opportunities that I have had are. But they shouldn’t be rare. We shouldn’t accept a system that makes it so rare for Black talent to be mentored and developed into viable participants in an essential part of our political system.  

In the end, Massachusetts bears the loss of opportunity, creativity, and innovation. At a time when the federal government is openly hostile to our political establishment and threatens to defund significant sectors of our economy, we could use the talent.

Daniel Delaney is the CEO of the Delaney Policy Group, Massachusetts’s only state-certified minority business enterprise lobbying firm. He owns and operates it with his wife, Andrea Delaney. He served as legislative director at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for five years under the Patrick Administration and was chief of staff and research director for the Joint Committee on Public Health under former state representative Peter Koutoujian.