Joe Mapes, President
Mapes & Mapes
Mapes & Mapes are trusted by Louisiana legislators
A lobbyist is essentially a consultant that has been hired by a corporation or an association and represents a profession or an industry. We are the professional advocates to the governmental process and to the legislative process on behalf of clients we represent.
This means that we go and speak to legislators on behalf of our clients. First we get educated by our clients about their issues, and then we try to articulate what we’ve learned to decision makers and other influential persons, within the legislative process, that affect their business or industry.
Lobbying is becoming more and more identifiable in the particular process of government and politics. And it is trying to gain access to the process that affects you.
As an example, let us say that there is a commerce committee is going to hear legislation that may affect the industry you work in, one way or another. In other words, this committee regulates your issues. So you would hope to get your voice heard on the committee panel, to the chairman, to the members of the committee. One way to do that is you can actually show up as a witness and sit at the table and fill out a card and say that you’d like to speak for or against a piece of legislation.
Another way to do it is to actually hire a lobbying firm. The lobbying firm is attached to that process 365 days a year and has relationships with the people on those commerce committees.
Those legislators trust the lobbyists, and to be effective at all a lobbyist must be trusted. In our case we are fortunate that we are. And as lobbyists we go and speak for our clients and try to get legislators to understand how various issues affect their constituents back home where they vote, work, live and go to school in their district.
