ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, I provided evidence that interest groups are willing to contribute significant amounts of money to legislators who may support them only rarely. Usually these contributions are given to gain access. Those donations may then be the basis for a relationship between legislators and lobbyists: a cooperative relationship for which legislators are willing to act as critical votes when necessary. However, it remains to be determined whether the relationship between John Doolittle and the CTLA was unique. In this chapter, I present a series of cases that portray the relationship between contributions and critical votes in a more general setting. Although information regarding the connections created between legislators and lobbyists cannot be detailed here in the manner they were in the Doolittle case, these case studies will provide additional evidence regarding how contributions affect critical votes, but not noncritical votes, in various issue areas and contexts.
