Danielle Her Many Horsesis deputy executive director at the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), where she has worked since 2005, beginning as legislative director before being promoted in 2012. The NIGA is a trade association that represents Native American tribes that have casinos or other organized gambling on their lands. In 2011, it reported spending $465,000 on lobbying.

Trade associations make up about one quarter of all of the interest groups active in Washington, because virtually every industry in the United States has one or more trade association to provide information, networking opportunities, and often political representation to their members. The NIGA’s membership includes 184 Native American tribes, many of which also hire lobbying firms to lobby for their particular tribes. These lobbying relationships gained notoriety in 2005 when Jack Abramoff and other contract lobbyists were accused of fraud for overcharging and creating lobbying opposition to their tribal clients.

Her Many Horses has a bachelor’s degree in finance and a law degree from the University of New Mexico.

Beth Leech: How did you begin your career? How did you come to be a lobbyist?

Danielle Her Many Horses: In 1997, when I was just out of college, I began working for a newly elected senator, Tim Johnson of South Dakota. I’ve always been interested in public policy, but I began work as his tribal liaison in his Rapid City office. I worked for him for two-and-a-half years and during that period I fell in love with public policy.

Leech: What did you do as tribal liaison?

Her Many Horses: I helped constituents from the tribe with issues related to things like transportation, roads, education, veteran affairs, and the Missouri River. Constituents would call into the office, and as a congressional staffer, I would try to help them with their federal issues where possible. Sometimes they might need the senator’s office to talk to a federal agency on their behalf, because something was getting stalled for some reason. And I would work directly with the tribe as well to see how things were going and where the senator could be of more assistance.

Going through all of that and learning about the legislative process, I ended up deciding that I really wanted to go to law school.

Leech: Why did you think law school would be useful?

Her Many Horses: My bachelor’s degree was in finance. As I was faced with different issues that tribes were dealing with, I would see proposed or existing legislation—and I did not have the technical expertise to read it. I had trouble understanding the committee reports, legislative history, and case law. I wanted to help the tribes, but realized I didn’t know enough about the law itself.

Leech: So, you went to the law school at the University of New Mexico.

Her Many Horses: Yes, because they have the best Indian law program in the country.

Leech: While you were in law school, were there any internships that helped build toward your becoming a lobbyist?

Her Many Horses: The summer after my first year in law school, I got a wonderful internship with the Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut, which operates one of the largest gaming facilities in the country. Although what I was working on was not gaming-related—I worked on issues related to internal tribal government—I got to see a lot of how things worked, and gaming became very intriguing to me.

Leech: Where did you end up after graduating from law school?

Her Many Horses: I went to work for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice in Window Rock, Arizona. I worked in their Economic Development Unit because they wanted somebody who had a business background and also a law background. So I was a perfect fit. I did contract reviews, looking at different development proposals to see whether the proposals fit within the legal structure of the Navajo Nation. We had to evaluate what federal action might need to happen for a project to take place on Indian lands.

One of the main projects that I was assigned was gaming. They wanted to see what it would take to develop a Navajo Nation casino.

Leech: What did you have to do to see if that would work?

Her Many Horses: Well, I helped make sure that we had the appropriate tribal laws in place, in particular the Tribal Gaming Ordinance. I had to do a lot of work with the different chapter governments, as well as with the Navajo Nation Council, trying to get what they wanted done, while fully complying with the law.

And even though that wasn’t “lobbying” under the legal definition, there definitely was lobbying involved in it. Passing any type of legislation in any government requires consensus building. There always are some people who want something to happen and other people who don’t share that vision. I learned to find ways learn from and educate different shareholders to develop consensus.

Leech: When did you move on from there?

Her Many Horses: In 2005, when I was hired by the National Indian Gaming Association as their legislative director.

Leech: How would you describe the mission of the National Indian Gaming Association? What are you advocating for?

Her Many Horses: Our mission, really, is to protect tribal sovereignty and to ensure that tribes have adequate means and ways to develop sustainable tribal economies.

Leech: And how do you do that?

Her Many Horses: One of the things that has really worked as an economic boost has been gaming. NIGA spends a lot of time and energy making sure that there aren’t any incursions into the tribal right to conduct gaming activities on Indian land.

We work particularly with the National Indian Gaming Commission, which is an independent agency within the Department of the Interior, to ensure there is a proper regulatory balance between the federal government and tribal governments, who are the primary regulators of tribal gaming. We also work with the Department of Interior on trust land acquisition policy and revenue allocation plans. We also work with the Department of the Treasury on bonding and taxation issues, and work with the Department of Homeland Security as well.

Leech: Why does Homeland Security get involved?

Her Many Horses: The Department of Homeland Security is concerned about the fact that casinos draw a lot of people, especially if there is an event like a concert. Any large event like that is a potential target for a terrorist group, and so the Department of Homeland Security becomes involved. Additionally, because of the large amount of security and surveillance that tribal casinos maintain, they work with Homeland Security to make sure that everyone’s adequately trained to recognize potential threats.

Leech: That makes a lot of sense. Maybe at this point it would make sense to talk about a recent issue that you worked on, and you could walk us through how you approached that issue, and the sorts of things you did to advocate on that issue.

Her Many Horses: Our association, the National Indian Gaming Association, has one hundred and eighty-four tribes that are members, and those members really set the agenda for what we do.

Whether the issue is an attempt to limit a tribe’s ability to game on acquired land, or whether the issue is unfair taxation, what we’ve found is that the best strategy for our members, the Indian tribes themselves, is to contact their members of Congress.

Our office might notice an issue first or the tribes might bring an issue to our attention. Then our office will analyze the issue and bring that information back to the tribe so that they can make decisions on how they want to go forward. We do all of their work in conjunction with the tribal attorneys and the lobbyists the tribe has hired, to make sure that we’re all on message.

We also want to make sure that if there is a chance that some issue will move forward on really short notice, we are ready for it. In the upcoming lame-duck session for instance, we are concerned that everyone has all of the information that they need, all of the talking points, and all of the contacts that they need to make sure that nobody’s caught flat-footed.

Leech: And do you contact members of Congress and their staff as well, or do you try to keep that to the members?

Her Many Horses: We make the contacts, as well. We talk daily with different member offices.

Leech:How do you make decisions about whom to target? Obviously, there are a lot of members of Congress, and you can’t talk to everybody.

Her Many Horses: We focus on senators on the Indian Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee, or whichever committee any relevant legislation is going to go through. And in the House, we focus a lot of our activity in the Natural Resources Committee and the Indian Affairs Subcommittee. It really does depend on the issue. There’s a strong Native American Caucus on the House side.

Leech: People who are ethnically Native American?

Her Many Horses: No. There’s only one Native American in the House: Tom Cole of Oklahoma. But there are a lot of members who are interested in supporting tribal issues.

Leech: Are they interested because they have a lot of constituents who are Native Americans?

Her Many Horses: Some because of their constituent base and the states that they’re from, and others because they actually have a genuine interest. If you look at some of their backgrounds and the districts that they’re elected from, there is no possible constituent interest they could have in Indian country, so they must have a genuine concern.

Leech: What percentage of your time ends up being spent on issues that are legislative in nature versus issues that have to do with regulations and the gaming commission?

Her Many Horses: It really can depend. Sometimes the National Indian Gaming Commission [NIGC] is very active in pushing regulatory changes. A lot of the changes that they’re making are good changes that keep up with the industry. I don’t want it to seem like we’re in constant conflict with NIGC, but sometimes they overstep. And then sometimes it’s Congress that’s active.

Leech: It sounds like a lot of the contacts you make in Congress are people who are already in your corner.

Her Many Horses: Yes.

Leech: And why is that? Can you explain to a person who’s not in the lobbying business, why you would spend time talking to people who already agreewith you?

Her Many Horses: A lot of those people who already agree with you are in positions where they can influence a lot of other people, and those other people may not be as inclined or interested. Sometimes there are people who just don’t have tribal sovereignty in their world view. But because we have relationships with other members of Congress, we can have the members who are already on our side talk to those other members on our behalf.

Leech:That makes sense. What people read about lobbyists outside Washington is connected to campaign finance, including the dinners, receptions, and breakfast fundraisers. Do you get involved in that that scene at all?

Her Many Horses: There’s some of that. It is part of the Washington, DC, culture, but they are not daily things for me. I might have a reception here, a reception there.

Our work at NIGA is more focused on stopping by congressional offices and calling congressional offices. We have relationships with members of congress and their staff: talking with them, keeping in touch, learning about where things are moving—or if they’re not. Also important is making sure that our tribal members, the constituents of those members of Congress, are also making those contacts. We’re definitely not a fundraiser-focused, reception-focused kind of organization.

Leech: That leads me to the question of the negative popular opinion about lobbyists, who are viewed as typified by Jack Abramoff. How is reality different from that public perception?

Her Many Horses: As a lobbyist working for a nonprofit association, I can tell you that we’re not all big spenders making more than members of Congress. For many lobbyists, it’s not about how much they have to spend but about what they know. A lot of people who go into lobbying have a lot of knowledge about specific issues.

Leech: As do you.

Her Many Horses: We do have a lot of knowledge here about how Indian gaming works, how it has benefitted tribes, and what is going on in Indian tribes. That knowledge needs to be conveyed to lawmakers who, if they didn’t have that information, might do something that could negatively impact tribal sovereignty and the tribal gaming industry.

Indian gaming employs about 625,000 people. That’s a lot of people whose livelihoods are dependent on the Indian gaming industry. If NIGA and the tribes are not actively making sure that Congress isn’t tinkering in a way that is going to cause Indian gaming facilities to shut down or to lose market share, people are going to lose their jobs.

Our tribal members are very cognizant that they are putting people to work, and they want to protect those jobs and those people. I’ll use my own tribe—the Oglala Lakota Sioux—as an example of the many tribes across the country. We have a very small casino, and we don’t employ very many people. But the reservation where I am from has an unemployment rate of eighty percent. If there are three hundred people who have jobs because of this tribal casino, that’s three hundred people who weren’t working before.

That makes a difference in day-to-day lives. What we’re trying to do is make sure that those people, who may not have been employed before, are continuing to work. The casino industry also employs a lot of retirees who are supplementing their Social Security income. They’re trying to get by, and we want to help them continue to get by.

Leech: So NIGA advocates by explaining to policy makers the impact their potential decisions would have on real people?

Her Many Horses: Yes. They need to know that a decision could affect their constituents, the people who voted for them.

Leech: Why do policy makers listen to you?

Her Many Horses: They listen because we make them understand the issue—not necessarily from the technical aspect, but from the human aspect.

Leech: How is what NIGA does different from the lobbying firms that some tribes hire to represent them as well? I’m thinking of the Jack Abramoff case, which turned out so badly because Indian tribes were defrauded, but obviously not all hired lobbyists turn out like Jack Abramoff.

Her Many Horses: No, not all hired lobbyists are like that. NIGA itself has a hired lobbying firms on retainer. NIGA is a nonprofit organization, so our in-house staff is only a bitty, tiny lobbying shop. But NIGA also hires outside lobbyists from lobbying firms who work on our behalf. They’re very good at what they do.

Leech: What does a lobbying firm bring to the table? What do the hired lobbyists give you? Obviously manpower, right? You wouldn’t have the manpower otherwise, but why would an organization that already has its own lobbyists choose to hire a lobbying firm?

Her Many Horses: Increased access.

Leech: Explain.

Her Many Horses: Many people who go into lobbying are former staff members for people who are still sitting members of Congress, or they’ve worked on congressional committees. Those lobbyists know a number of different members of Congress. They have a very high level of access.

Leech: So, you have the knowledge about the content of proposals that might affect Indian gaming, given your law degree and your expertise in Indian law, but NIGA might sometimes need to hire someone who has expertise in who the decision makers are and who has access to those people.

Her Many Horses: Yes.

Leech: What does your average day look like now that you’re deputy director? When would you get into the office, and what might you do in an average day?

Her Many Horses: Well, let’s see. I would wake up in the morning, put on coffee.

Leech: Very important.

Her Many Horses: Sit there, wait for it to get done, read the Washington Post, read the New York Times.

Leech:Are there any other publications that you read regularly?

Her Many Horses: I also read the inside-Washington publications, The Hill and Roll Call. It is also very important to keep up with the Indian news media.

Leech: About what time do you usually get into the office?

Her Many Horses: Nine o’clock. I’d get in, go through The Hill and Roll Call real quick, and then start reading e-mails.

Leech: What are you looking for as you go through these publications?

Her Many Horses: Anything that’s mentioning Indian tribes, primarily. Anything about tribes, tribal sovereignty, or gaming.

Leech: How many e-mails will you get in a typical morning, do you think?

Her Many Horses: About eighty. I go through them, see which ones need to be responded to, which ones can be deleted. I sit down and make a schedule of everything that needs to get done that day, making note of whether there’s any upcoming travel, and if so, what needs to be prepared for that.

Leech: What sort of travel do you usually do? Are you going out to visit members at their casinos?

Her Many Horses: Yes. We go out to visit member casinos and also to attend conferences put on by regional tribal organizations. The more chances we have to meet more of our members, the better off we are. That way, they know what’s going on here and we can learn if there’s anything else that we need to be focusing on.

Leech: When you go through your e-mails, are most of them coming from the DC area, or are most of them from member organizations around the country?

Her Many Horses: It’s about half and half.

Leech: So you’re slogging through the e-mail—I know about that! Then what?

Her Many Horses: Different things will come up. I’d realize our white paper on economic development needs to be updated, so I would do that.

I’d update and rewrite, then look at it and reread it to see if I’ve glossed over anything or if I’ve been unclear. Then I turn back to whatever’s in my paper inbox: trade magazines, political reports to read, reviews of new regulations that are up for comment.

More e-mails would pop up throughout the day. I would call a member of congressional staff to talk about a current issue. One of the fun things I’m doing right now is planning our legislative summit for July, finalizing our invitation list.

Leech: What will happen at that legislative summit?

Her Many Horses: We will have about twenty different members of Congress come to address their tribal leadership. About two hundred tribal leaders will come to Washington for the two-day summit. One day, we’re having a tribal leader policy discussion, where we’ll discuss what’s going on and develop a strategy for going forward into the lame-duck session. The next day, we’ll have our congressional speakers come over, giving each member ten to fifteen minutes to address the tribal leadership about current issues and longer-term issues.

Leech: And, do you do this every year?

Her Many Horses: We do it twice a year.

Leech: So planning for those conferences takes a lot of your time. In this average day that we are discussing, are we still in the morning or have we moved on to afternoon by this point?

Her Many Horses: Oh, it’s probably afternoon by now.

Leech: Will you typically go out for lunch or do you work at your desk?

Her Many Horses: I work and eat at my desk most of the time.

Leech: Those three-martini lobbyist lunches aren’t for you?

Her Many Horses: No, not for me. I spend about ten minutes running to the little buffet where they sell lunch for $6.85 a pound, picking up something, and coming back to my desk.

Then in the afternoon, there will be more e-mails, more planning for upcoming trips, more updating of different PowerPoint presentations, or writing a white paper that needs to get prepared for Hill meetings.

Leech: Will you spend much of that time on the phone, reaching out to congressional staff?

Her Many Horses: Some of that is done by phone, but a lot of it is done by e-mail. Everyone is very busy, and it’s hard to reach people.

Leech: So, would you reach out to the congressional staff person in charge of the issue area that you are interested in and send a white paper or some other information?

Her Many Horses: Yes. I’d e-mail to say, “We’re currently working on this issue, and I just want to give you an update.” Or, “We’re expecting this, this, and this to happen, and we’d certainly love your office’s support.”

Or I might be responding to an e-mail from them. The staff member might e-mail me saying, “We’ve just received a call with questions about Indian gaming. Can you help us? We need some statistics on how much money tribes are making.” I would compile that information and e-mail it to the congressional office.

Leech: How often do those requests for information come into your office?

Her Many Horses: About twice a week.

Leech: The classic idea of lobbying is that lobbyists are always talking directly to a member of Congress, not to the staff of that member. In a year, how often do you actually interact with the actual member of Congress?

Her Many Horses: That’s why we hold our legislative summits. We get a lot of face time with individual members.

Leech: But in an average week, would you get the chance to meet with a member of Congress in his or her office?

Her Many Horses: Some weeks are very intensive with Hill meetings, so we will have 10 to 15 member meetings that week. The next week may be spent with a lot of phone calls and e-mails with staff people. Each week brings its own challenges and priorities. It is also subject to the schedule of the House and Senate.

Leech: What qualities make for a good lobbyist? What characteristics, training, and background are necessary to be a good lobbyist?

Her Many Horses: From our perspective, it’s really being able to tell the story of Indian gaming. If you can craft the story, tell that story consistently and make it resonate. That is the most important skill.

Leech: What sorts of things help make a message resonate with members of Congress, or staff, or agencies?

Her Many Horses: When you turn an abstract issue into a story about people’s lives. If you can tell a member, “This is how this is going to affect people’s lives…,” it makes a difference. The stories come from our members. That’s why we work so hard to have good relationships with our members—to be very responsive to them.

Leech: Are there other skills that a person needs to be a good lobbyist?

Her Many Horses: A good memory for names and faces.

Leech: Why is that?

Her Many Horses: Because Washington, DC, is like a small college campus. Especially up on Capitol Hill it’s good to be able to have sight and name recognition when you’re just walking down the street or buying a cup of coffee, because you never know when you’re going to be standing in line behind a member of Congress and you could have a couple minutes to chat.

Leech: There you go. So you could take advantage of that opportunity.

Her Many Horses: Yes.

Leech: I have heard Washington described as being an old boys’ club. Is it more of a challenge to get ahead as a woman? Or do you think that’s changed?

Her Many Horses: There has been change, but that old boys’ club is not completely gone. Women are still vastly outnumbered in Congress, and it’s often easier for guys to get along with guys and be able to talk about shared and similar experiences. I think that’s just human nature. But substantively, I don’t think that there’s much difference in how women are treated. As long as the person knows what she’s doing and what she’s talking about, people will have respect for that.

Leech: How about the personal side of being a lobbyist? Is being a lobbyist conducive to family life?

Her Many Horses: I have a two-year-old daughter. Working for a small trade association is not an impediment to me having a good relationship with my daughter. There is a lot of travel and a lot of work and long hours, but I’m not at receptions every night. It’s a much different experience to be an in-house lobbyist for a nonprofit than it would be if I were working for a large lobbying firm.

Leech: What advice would you have for someone who is starting out and thinking that they might want to be a lobbyist or a policy advocate of some kind? What would you say to that person?

Her Many Horses: Know your subject matter. Be prepared for long hours.

Leech: Is it important to have worked on the Hill?

Her Many Horses: It certainly helps.

Leech: How about having a law degree? Is that crucial?

Her Many Horses: I wouldn’t say that it’s crucial, but from my perspective, it’s what I wanted. I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely necessary, but a law degree helps because, for example, the degree would help you get a better committee position. Then later on, when you decide you no longer wish to be in government employment, you can choose to become a lobbyist and you’ll have greater access than you would have had otherwise.

Leech: What’s the best thing about your job?

Her Many Horses: My favorite thing about my job is working with tribes, with the members of NIGA.

Leech: Is there anything you’re not so fond of doing?

Her Many Horses: No. I actually really enjoy all aspects of my job.

Leech: There’s no part that makes you say, “Oh, yes! Now I get to delegate that!”?

Her Many Horses: Filing.

Leech: You have moved out of the entry level most definitely.

Her Many Horses: Yes.

Leech: When you are hiring someone to work as a lobbyist at NIGA, what qualities are you looking for in that person?

Her Many Horses: A good base of knowledge about Indian gaming is one good positive, and also if they’ve worked for tribal government, or a tribal gaming facility, or a different inner-tribal organization. That would mean the name and face recognition curve isn’t as steep. Beyond that, a lot of it’s going to come down to your personal interview.

Leech: Why is that?

Her Many Horses: We’re a very small operation, and it helps to be able to work well with others who are in that small organization.

Leech: Any other particular skills that you would be looking for in such a person?

Her Many Horses: Someone who’s articulate. And very down-to-earth.

Leech: Why is that helpful?

Her Many Horses: Because the members of Congress and the tribes that we work with are very no-nonsense. It’s certainly not about flattery. The more down-to-earth a person is, the more able they are to communicate the narrative of Indian gaming.

This conversation has been interesting because I don’t often think about how different what I do is from how lobbying is viewed by the public. It’s important to talk about. I hope conversations like these can dispel some of the myths about what lobbyists do and how they do it. For me and for NIGA, lobbying is very grassroots-oriented—and not about expensive fundraisers.