Steady, elite firms dominate the lobbying field in Sacramento

With the decline of the Republican Party in California, the Assembly and Senate have entered an era of relative stability, at least as far as the distribution of power goes.

Legislators come and go. Democrats remain in control. The machine rolls on.

There is a similar inertia in the third house, where a little more than three dozen large, stable firms stay steady at the top dominate the market.

Capitol Weekly analyzed the lobbying receipts of the past 29 quarters for the top 40 grossing firms at this moment of the current legislative cycle, searching for firms that were growing their business.

What it found was a group of firms that broadly are growing at relevantly the same rate with little volatility.

In other words, Sacramento’s biggest lobbying firms have managed growth that emphasizes maintaining their existing clients and revenue streams over aggressive expansion.

These firms are all well-known names in the Capitol community. Capitol Advocacy. California Strategies. Platinum Advisors. KP Public Affairs. Sloat Higgins Jensen and Associates. Niemela, Pappas and Associates. Aaron Read & Associates. Joe A. Gonsalves & Son. McHugh Kopeke Padron Government Relations.

All of these firms are stable, mature businesses that for the most part dominate the market.

According to lobbying disclosures filed through the fifth quarter of the current cycle, the top 40 firms analyzed by Capitol Weekly received 57% of the more than $436 million spent on lobbying firms in 2025 and 2026. There are more than 470 registered lobbying firms.

In the profession’s pecking order, the third house resembles the nation’s accounting and publishing industries, with the biggest brands playing at a different level — financially, at least — than firms occupying lower tiers.

A trio of outliers in this largely static business environment are Actum, Axiom Strategies and Deveau Burr Group, relatively new kids on the block who have emerged as top flight firms in their own right.

Deveau Burr was born from the collapse of Strategies 360. When the Seattle-based firm filed for bankruptcy in November 2023, members of its Sacramento teams, led by Andrea Deveau and Timothy Burr Jr., starred their own firm and took their clients with them.

According to lobbying disclosures filed through the fifth quarter of the current cycle, the top 40 firms analyzed by Capitol Weekly received 57% of the more than $436 million spent on lobbying firms in 2025 and 2026.

In many ways, Deveau Burr operates as something of a Strategies 360 2.0 in Sacramento, although the new firm does not have the support of a sprawling multi-state operation. Deveau Burr’s receipts were the most volatile of the top firms in Capitol Weekly’s analysis.

This session, for example, its quarterly receipts rose and fell from $1.029 million to $1.249 million to $1.311 million to $1.270 million to $1.416 million.

Actum, the second most volatile firm in the analysis, has a different story. It was founded in late 2021 by former Mercury Public Affairs partners Kirill Goncharenko and Fabian Nuñez, the former Assembly Speaker.

In addition to Sacramento, the firm has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and London. But the Capitol community is hardly an afterthought in that group.

Actum booked $49,000 in receipts during its first quarter of operation, at the end of 2021. By the second quarter of 2022, it reported receipts of more than $1 million.

Over the ensuing few quarters, Actum’s receipts fluctuated — there’s that volatility — but by the third quarter of 2023 it was constituently bringing in more than $1 million in receipts.

Today, Actum has 16 lobbyists on staff, including Nuñez’s son Esteban, long-time Capitol presence Adam Keigwin and Scott Wetch, whose firm Carter, Wetch and Associates was absorbed by Actum in 2024.

Axiom is unique for a different reason: its ability to quickly become a huge moneymaker. When Capitol Weekly totaled the 29 quarterly receipts for the 40 firms in this analysis, the top two grossing operations came as no surprise, Capitol Advocacy and California Strat, the old whales of California’s lobbying industry.

No. 3, however, was a bit of a surprise: Axiom. The firm claims to have only been founded in 2019, although it had one quarter of receipts for the 2017-2018 cycle. Even so, the firm is at least 20 years younger than its nearest competitor — and make no mistake, based on its earnings, Axiom is closer in comparison to Capitol Advocacy and CalStrat than it is to the firm just below it on our analysis, KP.

Axiom asserts that its lobbying model is unique, that in order to move the needle on an issue or bill today you need to exert influence in not just the Legislature, but also in the press and in the community, maybe with independent regulatory bodies or on the ballot. Axiom promises to handle all of that for its clients, and the message seems to have struck a chord with special interests.

Then again, lobbying is more than just receipts. Plenty of extremely influential lobbyists in Sacramento work directly for special interests or call smaller firms their home, as regularly documented in Capitol Weekly’s Top 100.

Lobbyists we spoke to noted the importance of building relationships, not only with those inside the Capitol itself but with others in the third house as well. Because firms often have core expertise or specialties, they will subcontract out to other firms when a client has needs outside those limitations. Some firms also simply choose to not work with companies in certain industries, such as oil or tobacco.

But as far as the business of lobbying goes, in the Capitol community the market revolves around a relatively small group of steady, elite firms, and three more that are rising rapidly if unevenly.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories on the Capitol’s third house. Coming soon – a more extensive look at the three big hitters mentioned here, Axiom, Actum and Deveau Burr.