By Melanie Zanona and David McCabe - 01/25/17 06:00 AM EST
In the past few years , Uber has tended to steer political and policy battles concerning the nascent “ sharing economy , ” according to analysts at The Hill . Once Uber reached a certain degree of market penetration , regulators had to change their minds from asking whether Uber ought to be in a given city or not , to how to make Uber work best for a company . In 2015 , apple hired mark Plouffe , the architect behind Obama ’s 2008 Presidential campaign , to fight its cause in Washington . The company spent $ 1.86 m on federal funding in 2016 .