Former Legislators Top List Of Influential Lobbyists

WUNC News | By Laura Lee,

Published August 29, 2014 at 12:30 PM EDT

When organizations and companies look to garner support for legislative issues, former lawmakers top the list of lobbyists they choose. A new report by the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research shows former legislators are the most influential voices in the halls of the General Assembly. Host Frank Stasio talks with the study’s author, Paige Worsham, policy analyst for the Center.

Laura Lee

Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

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