On May 3, 2024, a bill was introduced in New Jersey with an oddly intimate purpose: allow cancer doctors to refer patients to a pharmacy inside their own practice. Regional Cancer Care Associates operated such a pharmacy. Patients taking complicated drug regimens liked the continuity. The state Board of Pharmacy, after years of permitting certain arrangements, had taken a different view of the law. The model was suddenly in doubt.
The client called The Zita Group. The West Trenton government-affairs firm found sponsors in both parties and helped put a bill into motion. Then came the part that tells you more about lobbying than a photograph of any handshake could: the Attorney General’s Office opposed the introduced version.
The first plan had failed its first important test. So the firm and its client negotiated amendments that preserved the pharmacy while answering conflict-of-interest concerns. Both chambers ultimately voted yes without dissent. Governor Phil Murphy signed the measure on October 30 - less than six months after introduction.
The useful skill was not pushing the original answer harder. It was discovering which part of the answer had to change.The operating idea behind the oncology bill
A map, not a megaphone
The Zita Group occupies a particular corner of the consulting market. Its customers are organizations for which government is not scenery. Government is a buyer, rule-maker, funder, licensor or obstacle. The published client list jumps from Accenture, Google Cloud and JPMorgan Chase to NJIT, the Brewers Guild of New Jersey, Garden State Equality and United Way of Northern New Jersey. A meal-kit operator and an optometrists’ society may have little to discuss at dinner. In Trenton, each needs to understand who decides, on what calendar and under which constraint.
The firm sells three overlapping services. Government affairs includes tracking bills, drafting language, briefing staff and working through agencies. Public affairs means building coalitions, organizing grassroots support and shaping a message that can survive outside the conference room. Business development means helping companies understand public procurement, frame an RFP and meet the officials who administer the work.
That sequence is the business model. There is no app and no self-serve tier. Clients pay for judgment, political intelligence, writing, introductions and sustained execution. The most useful outside measure is New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission data: The Zita Group reported $3.83 million in governmental-affairs receipts for 2024, fifth among the state’s multi-client firms. Those receipts are not the same as audited company revenue, but they locate the practice in its market: established, concentrated in New Jersey and large enough to keep returning to the top five.
Three clocks, one method
Speed is only impressive when the clock matches the problem. The oncology measure took under six months. The firm’s craft-beer campaign took two years. Its automatic-voter-registration effort reached enactment within the first 100 days of the Murphy administration. Each outcome required a different rhythm.
Opposition prompted negotiated amendments, followed by unanimous passage in both houses.
Sponsors, communications and grassroots pressure carried a new operating framework into law.
Agencies, voting-rights groups and legislative leaders aligned early in a new administration.
The brewery file began with restrictions that limited what producers could do on-site and at events. Working for the Brewers Guild, the firm identified legislative champions, scheduled meetings, coordinated communications and mobilized brewers. Comprehensive reform passed in January 2024. This was not a dramatic pivot caused by a single conversation. It was a campaign built to outlast a crowded calendar.
The costs at stake can be more legible than the firm’s own fees. It helped keep a proposed 10 percent alcohol-tax increase out of the fiscal 2026 budget. It secured a $1 million fiscal 2025 appropriation for joint health insurance funds facing old COVID-testing expenses. It worked on amendments tied to a proposed 700-megawatt power project. In this trade, the invoice is private; the avoided tax, restored budget line or preserved license is the public arithmetic.
The reluctant lobbyist
Patrizia “Trish” Zita did not begin with the ambition to own a lobbying firm. She expected law school. An internship in the New York legislature changed the route, and work in the New Jersey Assembly taught her how decisions moved from the inside. When a mentor suggested lobbying for the Chemical Industry Council of New Jersey, she hesitated.
The surprise came in the boardroom. Before Zita could persuade legislators, she had to persuade her own members that their position was not perfectly correct. The useful change of mind was hers: lobbying was not merely asking outsiders for favors. It was forcing the client’s argument to withstand scrutiny before carrying it outside.
In 2007 she and Adam Kaufman left Capital Public Affairs to establish Kaufman Zita Group. Kaufman retired in 2021, and the business reintroduced itself as The Zita Group the following year. The new name advertised something that had long been unusual in the upper ranks of Trenton influence: the firm was founded and led by a woman.
What the rest of us can steal
You do not need a statehouse credential to borrow the useful parts. First, define the desired outcome before defending the current proposal. Regional Cancer Care wanted continuity for patients; the original wording was only one route. Second, identify the person or institution that can stop you and learn the objection in its strongest form. Third, assemble allies whose interests overlap without pretending they are identical. Finally, choose a clock that fits the work. A budget request and an industry rewrite are not the same campaign.
Keep the outcome firm and the route flexible. If the evidence is weak, the coalition has no shared interest or the proposed result cannot survive public scrutiny, relationships alone will not rescue it.
That last condition matters because The Zita Group competes with other well-connected firms, in-house government teams and national agencies. Its distinction is less a proprietary technique than a concentration of New Jersey experience: former executive-branch officials, legislative staff, lawyers, campaign operatives and people who have watched policy collide with administration. Competitors can copy the sequence. They cannot instantly copy the accumulated map.
Zita once described a career as a zigzag rather than a straight line. The same geometry appears in the work. A vetoed marriage-equality bill helped set up the legal challenge that preceded recognition. An opposed oncology bill became an amended, unanimous law. The line bends because somebody listens closely enough to learn where it can.