K Street Tracker: The Realtors spent $27.4 million lobbying last quarter, and Koch more than doubled

By Staff Reporter

Correction, Oct. 21, 2026: An earlier version of this story reported Gilead Sciences’ third-quarter lobbying spending as $6.58 million, based on the company’s original filing, and said Gilead had more than doubled its spending. Gilead filed an amended report on Oct. 21 listing $2.32 million. The story, headline and tables have been updated.

WASHINGTON — The National Association of Realtors reported spending $27.4 million to influence federal policy from July through September, according to its quarterly lobbying report. That is nearly double the $14.58 million it reported for the spring and the largest amount reported by any single filer for the quarter, a Washington Inquisitor review of disclosures filed through the Oct. 20 deadline found.

Koch Government Affairs LLC, which lobbies for the Koch companies, more than doubled its outlay, reporting $6.77 million, up from $2.76 million in the second quarter. It was among the five biggest in-house spenders of the quarter, which ended five weeks before the midterm elections.

The Inquisitor pulled every third-quarter 2026 report in the Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Act database that disclosed $500,000 or more in spending or income. There were 378 after amended reports were matched to their originals, totaling $507.3 million. We compared each with the same filer’s report for the second quarter of 2026 and the third quarter of 2025. The tables below show the results, along with the biggest single-client fees paid to outside lobbying firms.

The top 20

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, usually Washington’s biggest lobbying spender, reported $16.48 million, down slightly from $16.95 million in the spring but up from $13.65 million a year earlier. PhRMA, the drug industry’s trade group, reported $7.04 million, down from $9.03 million in the third quarter of 2025. Meta, Amazon and Lockheed Martin were each within about 3% of their spring totals.

Why the Realtors’ number jumps

The Realtors’ total isn’t directly comparable with most others on the list. Its reports use the Internal Revenue Code definitions of lobbying, method C on the form, which the congressional guidance allows for organizations that already track lobbying costs for tax purposes. Those definitions count some activity the disclosure law alone does not, including lobbying of state officials and some grassroots campaigns. Koch Government Affairs uses the same method. Gilead and Pfizer use method A, the disclosure law’s own definitions.

The association’s spending has followed an election-year pattern. Its reports show $32.01 million for the third quarter of 2024, then $11.2 million to $16.08 million a quarter through 2025, including $10.98 million in the third quarter. This year it reported $15.46 million in the first quarter and $14.58 million in the second before the third-quarter jump.

The report lists bills across 11 issue areas. In housing they include the ROAD to Housing Act, the More Homes on the Market Act, which would expand the capital-gains exclusion on home sales, and the Yes in My Backyard Act. On finance, it lists communications with the Federal Housing Finance Agency about its strategic plan, appraisal modernization and reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It also cites the Direct Seller and Real Estate Agent Harmonization Act, which concerns independent-contractor status for agents. Lobbying reports don’t say how spending is split among issues, and they don’t separate federal from state lobbying.

Koch, Pfizer and a Gilead amendment

Gilead Sciences originally reported $6.58 million for the quarter, which would have been its largest total since at least the start of 2024. On Wednesday afternoon it filed an amended report listing $2.32 million. That is up from $1.59 million in the second quarter but down about 16% from the $2.78 million it reported for the third quarter of 2025. Over the past four quarters, Gilead’s reports total $8.80 million, about 2.5% more than the $8.58 million it reported for the four quarters before that, according to an Inquisitor review of its filings. The amended report lists drug-pricing proposals, including proposals to modify the Inflation Reduction Act; HIV programs such as the Ryan White CARE Act and PEPFAR; tariffs and the Medical Supply Chain Resiliency Act; and corporate tax policy.

“We filed an amended report at 1:32pm ET today, following a mix-up in the numbers used,” Gilead’s Nat Sillin said in a statement to the Inquisitor. “Our Q3 lobbying expenses were $2.32 million. Q3 is down about 16% from last year’s third quarter: $2.32 million against $2.78 million. And over the last four quarters, spending is up about 2.5%. That’s essentially flat.”

Koch Government Affairs reported $6.77 million. Its quarterly reports from 2024 through mid-2026 ranged from $1.71 million to $3.08 million. The new filing covers a wide range: tax and budget issues, pipeline-safety reauthorization, renewable-fuel and electric-vehicle rules, fertilizer duties, “issues related to Venezuelan energy exports” and the ROAD to Housing Act.

Pfizer reported $3.6 million, up from $1.88 million in the second quarter. Its filing cites Executive Order 14297, the administration’s “most-favored-nation” drug-pricing order, along with 340B drug-discount legislation and a Section 301 trade investigation involving Germany. Genentech, a Roche subsidiary, rose to $2.89 million from $1.81 million.

Further down the list, Humana reported $1.52 million on Medicare Advantage, pharmacy-benefit and TRICARE issues. The American Academy of Dermatology Association reported $2.05 million, up from $580,000; its filing lists the tanning-tax repeal bill, sunscreen standards and Medicare physician pay. NPR reported $1.2 million and the Association for Community Public Radio, listed as ACPR, reported $1.01 million on public broadcasting and appropriations. Neither had a second-quarter report above our threshold.

The biggest outside retainers

Payments to outside firms are reported by the firm, client by client. Thirteen single-client engagements reported $500,000 or more in income for the quarter. Ballard Partners had six of them.

A few entries stand out. Checkmate Government Relations reported $750,000 from Binance Holdings for work on digital-asset policy and “executive relief,” the same amount it reported for the second quarter. It also filed two third-quarter reports for Noosheen Hashemi on “educating federal policymakers including AI and foreign relations”: a termination report, posted Oct. 18, giving an Aug. 1 end date and $500,000 in income, and a regular report posted Oct. 20 listing $750,000 with no termination. The filings don’t explain the difference, and the table uses the later report. Valcour reported $850,000 from the Serbian telecommunications company Telekom Srbija on “issues related to telecommunications,” also unchanged from the spring.

Ballard’s six include $750,000 from NeroBreeze Limited, a company owned by Switzerland’s Centalion Group, which registered in October to “promote investments and transparency” in energy, and $750,000 from Health Edge Investment Partners, hired through a law firm, on False Claims Act enforcement. The Inquisitor reported on that engagement Oct. 19. A filing doesn’t indicate that a client has done anything wrong, and a fee reported in a quarterly report can cover more than lobbying.

What isn’t here yet

Some big filers had not posted third-quarter reports when we pulled the data early Wednesday. The Business Roundtable, which reported $6.95 million for the second quarter, and CVS Health, which reported $3.57 million, had no third-quarter reports in the database. Late and amended filings will change the totals, so the year-over-year comparison above is preliminary.

The Inquisitor sent requests for comment to the National Association of Realtors, Gilead Sciences, Pfizer, Ballard Partners and Checkmate Government Relations on Wednesday afternoon, after this story was first published. Responses received are included above; this story will be updated with any others.

Method: We queried the Senate LDA API for 2026 third-quarter reports, and for 2026 second-quarter and 2025 third-quarter reports, with at least $500,000 in reported income or expenses. Where a filer submitted an amendment, we used the most recent version. In-house filers report expenses and outside firms report income from each client, so the two figures are shown separately. The LDA asks filers to round to the nearest $10,000. A filer below $500,000 in a quarter shows as a dash, which does not mean it spent nothing. The underlying data is available from the Inquisitor on request.

Photo: The 1500 block of K Street NW in downtown Washington. AgnosticPreachersKid / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.