Our clients need a yes or no from the government. We help them get a good answer.
We work the room. We can also tell you who else is in it — every donor, lobbyist, gift and behested dollar attached to the member you need, joined across five disclosure systems that don’t talk to each other.
Name the bill, the board or the opponent. We will show you who funds the members you need, who already lobbies them and who has the relationship. Fifteen minutes, with sources.
supporting and opposing
97 legislators
13 members
Uber Technologies, 2016–2026. The $1.48M it gave 97 legislators directly is about 1% of what it moved through ballot measures. Both are public. They sit in different systems under different spellings, which is why they are rarely seen together. Never summed: the dollars overlap by design, so a total would invent a number that isn’t real.
I’ve been in the room where the final decisions get made.
As a senior legislative staffer, as Chief Deputy at the Board of Equalization, as a lobbyist for the largest utility in California, and now running this firm.
I’ve produced hundreds of pieces of advocacy material. I’ve also read thousands of them from the other side of the desk, which is the more useful education. There is no set of talking points that works on every member you need to reach.
Every one of my clients works with people on Capitol Weekly’s Top 100. If you trust us with a political problem, we’ll use conventional and unconventional tools to get a favorable outcome — and if we think the votes aren’t there, we’ll tell you early and save you the money.
Russell Lowery
Twenty-five years in California and Washington political and policy negotiations, across senior legislative, political, public affairs and lobbying roles.
Nonpartisan work“You operate well in our nonpartisan context. Our members trust you and seek your guidance on our most important issues and initiatives. You are unfailingly reliable and work well with others, even those with different perspectives or priorities.”
April ManattExecutive Director, California Problem Solvers Caucus
The disclosures are public. The connections are not.
California discloses more political money than any other state, in five systems that do not talk to each other. A campaign contribution, a lobbying client, a reported gift, a behested payment and a ballot-measure check from the same company arrive under five different spellings in five different databases. Every record is available to anyone, which is why having them is worth so little. The join is the work. We built it.
We do not allege anything. We organize what California has already disclosed, every figure keeps its source, and it is written for review rather than accusation.
Who already has the relationship
The members you need, ranked by who funds them, who lobbies them and who they take money from — so a coalition gets built out of people already in the room, not people who own stationery.
What the other side is spending
Your opposition’s full footprint across every channel it uses, including the ones that never appear in a campaign-finance search — and the mail houses and media buyers behind its independent expenditures.
Whether your own house is clean
Members of a coalition sometimes fund the other side of the issue they’ve joined you on. Better to know that in the first week than from a reporter in the last one.
The rules that govern your industry get written by people sitting in seats nobody is watching.
California has hundreds of boards and commissions with appointive seats. The Governor’s office publishes vacancies as monthly PDFs, statutory positions as a separate index, and the boards themselves in three volumes of books, one of which is a scan. None of it is searchable. So we made it searchable, and put it where anyone can use it.
The bodies our clients answer to
Twelve boards, live from the registry. Note how many have nothing open and a term ending anyway — watch only the vacancy list and most of this looks quiet.
Terms ending are within the next twelve months. Every row opens that board in the finder.
Not your boards? Pick your issue area.
All 348 bodies, grouped by portfolio. Choose an area to see its boards — who has seats open, and where a term is about to end.
Counts from the Governor’s vacancy report of 3 August 2026; board data refreshed 18 August 2026. Every row opens that board in the finder.
344, not 235
The vacancy report tells you a seat is open, which means you are already late — the appointments office has been working it for months. Term expirations tell you a seat is going to open. That is a year of warning instead of a month, and it is the difference between submitting a name and having a name that’s already known.
Which seats fit your people
What each board decides, what the statute requires of a member, whether it pays, how often it meets, who sits there now and when they roll off. If your industry answers to a board, we can hand you the shortlist and the calendar.
Your lobbyist keeps the retainer. What changes is what they are pointed at.
You are already paying for advocacy. The question is whether it touches how the decision actually gets made. We do not replace your team — we tell you what the board really looks like, so you can direct the people you already have.
Bring us the fight
We map the board around it — who funds the members you need, who already lobbies them, and who has a relationship nobody has thought to use. Fifteen minutes, with sources, before you set the plan.
The seats your organization answers to
2,441 seats across 348 boards, and 344 terms ending in the next twelve months. Tell us which boards govern your issues and we will send you the expirations a year out.
What we do not do
We do not lobby the Legislature directly, and we do not replace the firm you have. If your lobbyist is good, this makes them look it. That is the whole arrangement.
“Lobbying is a delicate balance of influence and communications. I really appreciate Highview’s tactical delivery of the right message to key policymakers at the right time to set the stage and then amplify our lobbying efforts. Their expertise has been invaluable to my clients’ success.”
Jennifer SnyderPartner, Capitol Advocacy
Some fights decide whether you keep the client.
Most of the calendar does not work this way. Then one bill moves the wrong direction, the client starts asking what the plan is, and the honest answer is that the plan has not changed since January. That is the fight worth spending something extra on, and it is the one we take on alongside firms.
While there is still room
Not when things are fine, and not the week of the vote. Call when losing has become more expensive than sharing. There is almost always more room at that point than it feels like from inside the fight.
The board on that one fight
Who funds the members you need. Who already lobbies them, and how deep it actually runs. And the actor nobody looked for — the business partner, the board seat, the local official a member returns calls to. With sources, so you can hand it to the client under your own name.
The client stays yours
You keep the relationship and you present the work. We do not lobby the Legislature directly, and we do not solicit the clients we meet through you. That is the whole arrangement.
Research tells you where to push. This is how we push.
Six things, and they work best pointed at a target the research has already picked out.
Custom coalitions for key votes
Slapping a bunch of logos on a letter is not enough anymore. We build coalitions from people who already have a relationship with the member you need — and we can usually tell you who those people are before anyone starts making calls.
Your list, not a lookalike of it
Most advocacy media buys reach an audience that resembles yours. We advertise to yours — the members, donors, and site visitors already in your database — then report exactly how many of them we reached, how often, and how many came back.
Podcasts and interviews
Legislators, regulators and stakeholders on the record, in their own words. Useful to your members, and useful to the people you’re trying to move — who tend to watch what their colleagues say.
Campaign websites
One place where supporters, reporters and legislative staff can find the argument and the evidence sitting under it. Built for the week a bill moves, not for a brochure.
Where it happens in public
Stakeholders and legislators argue with each other in the open now, and the people you need are reading it. We’ve used that to help stop a bill.
Leave-behinds that get read
Infographics, one-pagers and handouts built for someone with four minutes between hearings and no background on your issue. Complexity is the enemy of a yes.
Lobby firms, trade associations and Fortune 500 government affairs teams.
“We were a smaller association looking to develop a presence in Sacramento. Today, we are the State’s leading voice for rental housing providers in the Capitol and at the ballot box, thanks to Highview Strategies. Their political foresight helped us prepare for threats and secure major policy changes for our members.”
Sid LakireddyFormer President, California Rental Housing Association
“Our affiliates recommended we work with Highview when we needed urgent resolution to a business challenge. Within two days, they facilitated the collaboration of Fortune 500 executives that allowed us to continue our supply operations without disruption. This speaks to their standing in the business community when it comes to building coalitions.”
Tony LinCEO, Lionext Inc.
“Russell is a gold mine for forward-thinking strategies. We may not always like the government hoops we have to jump through to get things done, but we value Russell’s insider experience and ability to make things happen.”
C.C. YinFounder, Asian Pacific Islander Public Affairs Association
Highview Strategies
We are a California public affairs firm. Our clients are trade associations, companies and lobby firms who need a decision to go their way in the Legislature, at an agency, or on the ballot.
Our team has included gubernatorial appointees, chief legislative consultants, Fortune 500 lobbyists and agency regulators — people who have sat on the other side of the table from where you are sitting now. We’ve seen what works and, more usefully, what doesn’t.
From the first conversation you get a candid assessment. If we think the votes aren’t there, we say so and tell you to conserve your resources. We would rather lose the engagement than spend a year of your budget on a fight you were never going to win.
The disclosure database and the appointments registry are our own builds, assembled from California’s public filings and the Governor’s published reports. They exist because the questions our clients ask are answerable in principle and unanswerable in practice.
Tell us what you need decided.
If you want to talk through an issue, a bill, a board seat or an opponent, we’re happy to have that conversation before anyone signs anything.