<p>The American lobbying landscape has increasingly shifted focus to the federal bureaucracy, yet little scholarship examines interest groups’ involvement in bureaucratic policymaking. In particular, the widening bureaucratic revolving door represents a significant area of scholarly neglect. We test competing claims regarding the bureaucratic revolving door in administrative lobbying using original data on a set of nationally active interest groups’ efforts to influence federal rulemaking through the notice and comment process, joint with publicly available data on registered lobbyists. In line with existing scholarship, we find no evidence of a connection between lobbying influence and the bureaucratic revolving door. We conclude that the disparate advantages of revolving door lobbying may represent the exception rather than the rule, and may be prevalent in regulatory stages that place a higher premium on personal connections, such as pre-proposal rulemaking. These findings contribute to broadening discourse regarding the revolving door and administrative democracy.</p>