Or rather, the lobbyists working with them know what they are doing
The lobbyists are just bagmen. A big part of what they are paid for is obfuscating who actually wrote the legislation and on whose behalf they did it.
They do, and they very much view it as a threat to the centralized power of the USG.
At the very least, it's a legislative shake down opportunity. Form a team 'for' and a team 'against,' and each gets paid to 'fight' by their respective consitutency.