DonCairo

A lot of lobbyists are former staffers. So they have a very intimate knowledge of the procedures and how to write pieces of legislation and had already existing relationships established with the elected officials themselves.

The lobbyists can write the first draft of the legislation themselves and work with the staffers in the office on edits and the language in the bill.

Lobbyists dont call the general number for a Senator. They have a relationship with the Legislative Assistants and come in for meetings. So they either have the direct lines of the people they need to talk to, or if they're calling me its only to direct them to someone else.

Senior Citizens.

Also I worked for a democrat so the majority of people that called in tended to be more conservative.

For starters i'd say start with the Senators/Congressmen that you're able to vote for. The only thing we really required from people to record their calls was their zip code. If they wanted a response from the Senator (in written form) we would take down their postage information. So if you recently moved. If you call a Michigan senator with a California zipcode and address you're not going to get any follow up from the office.

For your first question, I cant obviously speak for the other 99 senators but I would almost always include a specific example of a call I received from a constituent when reporting it to the Senator. So if you voiced your opinion or concerns about an issue i took notes on it to bring to the meeting if i felt like it also captured a lot of what other people were saying.

Honestly the thing that bothered me the most was that I felt like although not everything that is done on the Hill is shady and bad, it could have been a lot worse because most of my generation is extremely politically lethargic (im now 28).

Obviously there is going to be a lot of people that are very passionate about the way that their government operates and the shit that goes on, but so far in my life most of the people i've come in contact with since i've left DC just chalk everything up to "bullshit" and dont care. I cant say I blame them because they havent seen too much reward for the time and effort it takes, but it just makes for an extremely vicious cycle that ultimately ends badly