Ellington

Yvonne Horton made an unconventional job transition in 2007, joining a lobbying firm after 30 years as a public-school teacher. Horton, 60, is a Bolton native and a 1971 graduate of Jackson State University. She taught social studies at Forest Hill High School for 30 years. After retiring, she took a job at the Talon Group, a Jackson-based lobbying and political consulting firm.

In 2009, she joined the staff of Precious Martin & Associates, a Jackson law firm, where she lobbies municipal and state governments for a variety of clients.

What sort of work do you do at the Legislature?
We have chosen to concentrate not so much on the legislative part of it, as the people-to-people part. When people want contracts, or when people want to get their information out, or they may need to get their product out; they may need to get their technology out; that's what we concentrate on. Now we do some legislative lobbying. But that's not the primary focus.

If you don't lobby legislators, who do you lobby?
For example, I had a client that we were quite successful with when I worked for another firm. I knew his daughter. They had a school that they needed to get additional financing for in order to be able to qualify for federal dollars. And we were successful in putting them with a person who would be able to help them with their financing.

Did teaching prepare you for the work you do now?
Teaching school prepared me for it because I came in contact with many people. I haven't lobbied these people, but I taught (Hinds County) District Attorney Robert Smith in high school. I taught (City Councilman) Tony Yarber in high school. Stan Alexander works for the attorney general's office; I taught him in high school.

It doesn't hurt at all, now, to come from a political family. I have a brother who's in the Mississippi House of Representatives; his name is Walter L. Robinson. Congressman Bennie G. Thompson's mother was my first cousin, and we belong to the same church—we were baptized the same Sunday. It's all about contacts. … I say my job is introducing people to the people they otherwise would not meet. It's lobbying, because that's what the state of Mississippi says it is, but it's as much public relations as anything else.

Plus, if you've got all these former students, they have to listen to what you say, because you once gave them detention.
Exactly. And lobbying is a lot like teaching. Although as a teacher, I'd like to think I was a little more neutral, that I saw both sides of the issue. As a lobbyist, you are educating, you are teaching in a sense, but you're teaching to your point of view.

Lobbyist is almost a dirty word. Have you noticed a change in people's perceptions?
No, not really, because the people I come in contact with either know absolutely nothing about it, and they're interested, and they say, "Oh, that's what a lobbyist does. Well, that's not so bad." Or the other group of people you come to realize the importance of having someone to speak for you when you can't be there to speak for yourself.

How much choice do you get over your clients?
No one has come to me yet with an idea that I couldn't, in good conscience, lobby for. I haven't had to make that decision yet.

What should people know about lobbyists?
I think it goes back to the scandals we had toward the latter part of the Bush administration. People didn't know a lot about what lobbyists did, as far as good and positive; they just heard the negative parts. Bad news makes the news; most of the time good news doesn't. A lobbyist who is working on behalf of retired teachers—that probably wouldn't make the news. People hear "special-interest groups," but going back to George Washington, he may even have called political parties special-interest groups. I guess it depends on what your definition of a special interest is. We have a tendency to fear what we don't know. And most people don't know what lobbyists do. My friends and people I meet ask me that all the time: "What do you do?"

What's the line you give them?
If I'm teasing, I say, "It would only make you jealous and you really wouldn't like it." For people who are serious, I tell them that the majority of my job is putting people with other people they otherwise would not have the opportunity to meet. Many times they explain or present their own case.

What are the parts of the job that keep you excited?
You don't know what's going to happen. And of course with the Legislature, every bill is exciting; sometimes every amendment to the bill is exciting. Especially when they're trying to do away with my 13th check.

Previous Comments

ID

156287

Comment

This is my high school social studies teacher! Nice to see Mrs. Horton doing even better for herself. Don Taylor, who used to be over DHS, was my ROTC instructor and Ennis Proctor at MHSAA was my principal when I was at Forest Hill.

Author

golden eagle

Date

2010-02-25T09:00:23-06:00