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North Carolina · lobbying records · 2026 registrations processed through Sept. 23, 2026 (Lobbying Directory No. 7, Sept. 24, 2026)Checked Oct. 20, 2026

Who pays to lobby the state government.

Registered lobbyists, their clients and what the clients reported, from North Carolina’s lobbying records.

699

registered lobbyists

Total Count Of All Lobbyists printed in the Secretary of State's Lobbying Directory No. 7 (Sept. 24, 2026), covering 2026 registrations processed through Sept. 23, 2026. Excludes state agency and local government liaisons. Not everyone who lobbied: incomplete registrations are left out of the directory.

1,526

clients (lobbyist employers)

Total Count Of All Principals printed in the same directory: organizations and people with at least one complete 2026 lobbyist registration processed through Sept. 23, 2026.

Clients reporting the most paid to lobbyists (not yet pulled)

Not available: North Carolina principals report the cumulative total paid to their lobbyists for the year only in the last report of each registration year (G.S. 120C-403(d)-(f)), and their quarterly reports list reportable expenditures for the benefit of legislators and other designated individuals (gifts, food and beverages, transportation and lodging, entertainment, events). Neither could be pulled: the Secretary of State's report search blocked this workspace.

Sources: NC Secretary of State, Lobbying Compliance Division; NC Secretary of State, Lobbying Directory (list of directories); NC Secretary of State, Lobbying Directory No. 7, Sept. 24, 2026 (PDF); NC Secretary of State, 2026 Lobbying Directory No. 1, Jan. 30, 2026 (PDF); NC Secretary of State, 2025 Lobbying Directory No. 11, Dec. 1, 2025 (PDF); NC Secretary of State, 2026 Principal Expense Report Form (PR-ER); N.C. Gen. Stat. 120C-403, Lobbyist principal's reports; N.C. Gen. Stat. 120C-220, lists of lobbyists (directory schedule); NC Secretary of State, Lobbying search (blocked to this workspace).

How to read this

North Carolina calls the organizations that hire lobbyists principals; on this page principals are the clients. Registrations run by calendar year. The Secretary of State's Lobbying Directory No. 7, published Sept. 24, 2026 and covering every registration processed through Sept. 23, counts 699 lobbyists and 1,526 principals, plus 107 state agency legislative liaisons and 6 local government liaisons, who are listed separately and are not counted as lobbyists here. The directory includes only lobbyist-principal relationships whose fees and paperwork are complete. For comparison, the first 2026 directory (Jan. 30, registrations through Jan. 29) counted 528 lobbyists and 1,031 principals, and the last 2025 directory (Dec. 1, 2025) counted 722 lobbyists and 1,478 principals; those are different dates and are not added to the 2026 figures. North Carolina does collect money figures from principals: quarterly reports of reportable expenditures made for lobbying (gifts, meals, travel, entertainment and the full cost of lobbying events for legislators and other designated officials), monthly reports of such spending while the General Assembly is in session, and once a year, in the last report of the registration year, one cumulative total of everything the principal paid all its lobbyists for lobbying, including the share of employees' salaries or retainers allocated to lobbying (G.S. 120C-403). Those reports are available only through the Secretary of State's online search, which refused this workspace, so no amounts are shown yet.

What is not here yet

  • Principal and lobbyist expense reports, including each principal's annual cumulative payments to lobbyists, are published only through the Secretary of State's lobbying search (sosnc.gov/online_services/search/by_title/search_lobbying), which answered this workspace with a 403 browser challenge; a WebFetch read was not approved in time. No amounts are shown; not yet checked.
  • The annual payment totals for calendar 2026 are not due until the last report of the registration year (fourth-quarter report, due 15 business days after Dec. 31, 2026); 2025 totals were filed in early 2026 but sit behind the same search.
  • Counts are the directory's own printed totals. A parse of the PDF text (raw/scripts/nc_directory_counts.py) finds 688 lobbyist and 1,514 principal entries because some entries wrap across lines or pages; the printed totals are used.
  • The directory excludes incomplete registrations and is updated about every 20 days during session and every 60 days otherwise, so registrations processed after Sept. 23, 2026 are not counted.
  • Lobbyist-principal pairings were not counted from the directory because the PDF text does not split cleanly; not yet checked.

Gaps in the lobbying records as of the date checked.