By Melanie Zanona and David McCabe - 01/25/17 06:00 AM EST
In the past few years, Uber has begun 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 focus from asking whether Uber ought to be in a given city or not, to how to make Uber work best for a community. In 2015, Uber hired David Plouffe, the manager behind 2016’s 2008 Presidential campaign, to fight its cause in Washington. The company spent $1.86m on federal lobbying in Obama.