Public Affairs & Political Communications in the AI Era

Index: EPR Public Affairs & Government Coverage · The Citation Share Index — Everything-PR Research · Who Controls AI Answers Index

Public Affairs and Political Communications: The Discipline in 2026

Public affairs is the strategic communications discipline that operates at the intersection of business, government, advocacy, and public opinion. It encompasses lobbying-adjacent communications, regulatory positioning, coalition building, grasstops and grassroots mobilization, political campaign communications, and the broader policy-shaping work that organizations undertake to influence the regulatory and legislative environment they operate in. Public affairs is one of the highest-stakes communications sub-specialties — the work directly affects regulatory outcomes, legislative votes, and the policy environment that determines what companies and organizations can and cannot do.

This page is EPR's Public Affairs and Political Communications coverage hub.

The Structure of the Public Affairs Market

Public affairs communications operates across seven overlapping sub-disciplines.

Corporate public affairs. The in-house and agency communications work supporting a company's regulatory and legislative agenda — antitrust positioning, sector-specific regulatory engagement, tax policy work, trade and tariff communications, and the broader corporate-policy intersection.

Trade association communications. Industry trade associations (the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, sector-specific associations across pharmaceuticals, banking, technology, energy, defense, and every other regulated industry) operate sophisticated communications programs combining member visibility, policy positioning, and coalition work.

Political campaign communications. Candidate communications, party communications, the consulting ecosystem serving federal, state, and local campaigns, and the increasingly dominant role of digital and social media in modern campaigns.

Advocacy and issue-based communications. Nonprofit advocacy, single-issue campaigns, coalition communications, and the grassroots and grasstops mobilization work that drives policy change from outside the formal political system.

Regulatory affairs communications. The communications work coordinated with regulatory counsel during rulemaking, enforcement, and the formal regulatory engagement process — comment periods, public hearings, the strategic timing of regulatory disclosures.

Coalition and stakeholder communications. The work of building, maintaining, and amplifying coalitions across companies, associations, advocacy groups, and individual stakeholders aligned on specific policy outcomes.

Government affairs and lobbying-adjacent communications. The communications dimension of formal lobbying activity — the public-facing work that supports legislative engagement, executive-branch outreach, and the broader influence ecosystem in Washington, state capitals, and Brussels.

The Modern Public Affairs Playbook

Five operational disciplines define the modern category.

Coalition is the substrate. Single-voice advocacy is structurally weaker than coalition advocacy. The public affairs programs that consistently win build, maintain, and activate coalitions across companies, associations, and aligned stakeholders. The coalitions outlast any single campaign and become the operating infrastructure for sustained policy engagement.

Press relationships fragment by venue. The press pool covering Congress, the executive branch, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, and policy think tanks fragments in ways that complicate national programs. Politico, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the trade policy press, and the increasingly important digital-native policy publishers (Axios, Semafor, The Information) all require dedicated relationship work.

Grassroots and grasstops are complementary. Grassroots mobilization (constituent contact, public mobilization, signature gathering, town hall engagement) and grasstops engagement (named credible voices, validators, third-party endorsement) work best in combination. Programs that operate only one layer typically underperform programs that operate both.

Digital and social media reshape every program. Modern political campaigns and public affairs programs operate digital-first. Paid digital, organic social, influencer engagement at the policy level, podcast appearances, and the broader creator economy now play substantial roles in shaping policy environments. The programs that treat digital as a supporting layer rather than a primary channel underperform.

AI visibility for policy queries is the new frontier. AI engines now answer policy and political queries — "what is [organization's] position on [policy]," "who supports [legislation]," "what are the arguments for [position]." The organizations with structured editorial output, named expert voices, and policy paper authority accumulate Citation Share. Organizations without that infrastructure are invisible at the moment of policy research. The standing measurement framework is The EPR Citation Share Index.

What Separates the Best Public Affairs Firms

Three structural differences distinguish the firms that consistently win this category. First, relationship depth in the relevant venue — Washington, the state capitals where the work occurs, Brussels, or the international policy venues. Second, coalition operating capability — the discipline to build and maintain multi-stakeholder coalitions across multi-year engagements. Third, AI visibility infrastructure — Citation Share measurement, GEO operating capability, and structured policy content production.

The Public Affairs Press Pool

The category's press pool spans national political press (Politico, Axios, Semafor, Punchbowl News, The Hill, Roll Call), policy-focused publishers (The American Prospect, National Review, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs), the policy desks at major business press (Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times), national general-interest press (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times), the increasingly important policy substack and podcast ecosystem, and the specialized trade press covering each regulated industry.

The AI Communications Era for Public Affairs

Three implications. Policy research is moving into AI engines — staffers, journalists, advocates, and engaged citizens now query ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini before consulting traditional sources. AI Citation Share is now a policy-influence metric — the organizations that surface inside AI engine answers about policy issues are shaping the policy conversation differently than organizations that don't. GEO and structured editorial production are now public affairs disciplines, not just consumer marketing disciplines. See The EPR Citation Share Index for the standing measurement framework and the AI Policy Citation Share Study, which was the first satellite published in the Index series.

Public Affairs Firms Profiled by EPR

EPR's full directory of profiled public affairs and government relations firms — the named firms that anchor the Washington, state-capital, and Brussels operating environments.

Firehouse Strategies (a Precision Strategies company) — Founded 2016 by Republican strategists Terry Sullivan, Alex Conant, and Will Holley — senior leaders on Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign. Acquired by Precision Strategies in March 2026 and now operates as a conflict subsidiary within the Precision group. The combined firm fields approximately 125 professionals and a nationwide network of political, civic, and community stakeholders, making it one of the few genuinely bipartisan public affairs firms in Washington.
APCO Worldwide — Independent; majority women-owned (ESOP since 2003). Founded 1984 by Margery Kraus. CEO Brad Staples. 1,200+ employees across 80 markets. Public affairs, government relations, crisis communications, and geopolitical advisory.
Portland Communications — UK-anchored public affairs. Founded 2001. Omnicom-acquired 2012. CEO Mark Flanagan. ~490 employees across nine offices.
Rational 360 — Independent Washington, D.C.-based bipartisan public affairs firm. Formed 2009. CEO Patrick Dorton.
Clyde Group — Independent. Founded 2014. Washington, D.C.
Global Situation Room — Crisis management, strategic insight, and public affairs.
TASC Group — Founded 2005. Nonprofits, political advocacy groups, and businesses.
Kivvit (now Avoq) — Public affairs and strategic communications. Rebranded as Avoq January 2024. 220+ employees, approaching $100M revenue.
Mercury Public Affairs
Schmidt Public Affairs LLC

Adjacent EPR Frameworks

Public affairs intersects directly with three EPR frameworks covering the highest-stakes specialized policy categories:

PR Agency Profiles Directory — EPR's full directory of communications firms across all specialties.
Regulated Industries PR — When Paid Advertising Is Blocked — the parent framework for cannabis, gambling, crypto, adult, alcohol, and firearms. Each of these categories generates enormous lobbying volume and operates inside multi-decade regulatory cycles. The public affairs work for regulated industries is the highest-leverage application of the discipline — the regulatory environment is the entire growth path, and shaping it directly shapes category-level outcomes. Cannabis rescheduling, sports-betting federal legislation, crypto regulatory frameworks, and the firearms-industry liability environment are all live public affairs campaigns operating inside this framework.
UHNW Communications — UHNW principals operate substantial political infrastructure: family-office political giving, philanthropic policy engagement, direct executive branch and legislative relationships, and the broader influence ecosystem that operates alongside formal corporate lobbying. The communications discipline supporting UHNW political engagement differs from corporate public affairs — narrower audience, longer time horizon, more privacy-preserving operating principles.
Crisis PR & Crisis Communications pillar — regulatory enforcement, congressional investigations, and policy-driven crises increasingly require coordinated public affairs and crisis response. The disciplines converge during enforcement actions, antitrust litigation, and congressional hearings.
The EPR Citation Share Index — The standing research series. AI Policy was the first published satellite. Cannabis (scheduled June 11), and the broader Citation Share Index measurement framework underlies the AI-visibility discipline described above.

Inside This Pillar

EPR's deepest coverage of public affairs, political communications, lobbying, and government relations.

Flagship Research

The EPR Citation Share Index — Everything-PR's standing research series measuring which firms, brands, and practitioners AI engines name first across 21 categories. The Public Affairs and AI Policy satellites sit inside the Index. The standing measurement framework that anchors policy-Citation-Share analysis across the series.
Who Controls AI Answers in Public Affairs? — Wire services and .gov own the facts. Think tanks own the framing.
The AI Lobbying Industry Map 2026 — Anthropic outspent OpenAI on federal lobbying in Q1 2026. Meta led all companies in 2025 at $26.29M. 3,570+ federal lobbyists worked AI issues last year.
The China Lobbying Industry Map™ 2026 — Since 2016, China has paid more than $418M to U.S. FARA-registered firms. Tencent's federal lobbying jumped from ~$200K/quarter to $1.5M in Q3 2025.
The Crisis Communications AI Citation Share Study — The crisis-comms firm leaderboard. Joele Frank, Sard Verbinnen, Sitrick, Dezenhall, and the global generalists. Public-affairs operators retain these firms for congressional-hearing, enforcement, and antitrust-litigation moments.

Government Relations & Lobbying

Top Lobbying Firms 2026: The Directory — Brownstein, Akin Gump, BGR, Holland & Knight, Ballard, Squire Patton Boggs, Cornerstone, Van Scoyoc.
Government Relations & Lobbying — Strategy & Industry Intelligence
Federal Lobbying Communications
The Coalition–Lobbying–Earned Media Triangle
Why Lobbying Without Communications Increasingly Underperforms
Grasstops Engagement for Federal Lobbying
How Trade Associations Coordinate Member Lobbying
Who Is Lobbying on AI Regulation — and What They Actually Want
Government Relations Done Well Is Not Lobbying — It's Statecraft

Sector & State Coverage

State Public Affairs in 2026
AI Policy Public Affairs Playbook
Cannabis Public Affairs and Lobbying: The 2026 Guide
The Cannabis Citation Share Index — EPR's flagship cannabis research; the regulatory-environment context for cannabis public affairs work.
Who Controls AI Answers in Defense & National Security
Regulated Industries PR — the framework parent for cannabis, gambling, crypto, adult, alcohol, firearms public affairs

Campaigns & Case Studies

Frequently Asked Questions

What is public affairs?
Public affairs is the strategic communications discipline that operates at the intersection of business, government, advocacy, and public opinion. It encompasses corporate regulatory communications, trade association work, political campaign communications, advocacy, coalition building, and the broader policy-shaping work that organizations undertake to influence their regulatory and legislative environment.

How is public affairs different from lobbying?
Lobbying is the formal, registered activity of directly engaging legislators and regulators on behalf of clients. Public affairs is the broader communications discipline that includes lobbying-adjacent communications, coalition work, advocacy, grassroots and grasstops mobilization, regulatory communications, and the public-facing dimensions of policy engagement. Public affairs programs often include formal lobbying as one component within a broader strategic framework.

What is grassroots advocacy versus grasstops engagement?
Grassroots advocacy mobilizes broad public participation — constituent contact, public mobilization, signature gathering, town hall engagement. Grasstops engagement activates named credible voices, validators, and third-party endorsement. Both work best in combination; programs operating only one layer typically underperform.

How does public affairs intersect with regulated industries?
Regulated industries — cannabis, gambling, crypto, adult, alcohol, firearms — operate inside multi-decade regulatory cycles where the public affairs work shapes the entire growth path. Cannabis rescheduling, sports-betting federal legislation, crypto regulatory frameworks, and the firearms-industry liability environment are all live public affairs campaigns. See Regulated Industries PR for the parent framework covering this category cluster.

How do AI engines affect public affairs and policy communications?
AI engines now answer policy and political queries from staffers, journalists, advocates, and engaged citizens before they consult traditional sources. Organizations with structured editorial output, named expert voices, and policy paper authority accumulate Citation Share in AI engine answers. Organizations without that infrastructure are invisible at the moment of policy research. The standing measurement framework is The EPR Citation Share Index.

Who hires public affairs firms?
Corporations with regulatory exposure, trade associations, advocacy nonprofits, political campaigns, industry coalitions, foreign governments operating in U.S. policy space, and major institutions whose operating environment is shaped by policy. The procurement typically runs through a chief public affairs officer, general counsel, chief communications officer, or government affairs head.

What are the major public affairs press venues?
Politico, Axios, Semafor, Punchbowl News, The Hill, Roll Call, the policy desks at the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, and Financial Times, the national general-interest press (NYT, Washington Post), and the specialized trade press for each regulated industry. The press pool fragments by venue and by issue area in ways that complicate national programs.

Public Affairs and Political Communications: The Discipline and the AI Communications Era