The special carve-out in this scenario was AB5, which was specifically designed to target Uber & Lyft (effectively every other industry you can imagine was made exempt from it).

And the "access to legislators" was non-existent, that is literally the point of ballot propositions. Apparently these companies tried to work with legislatures first but they were unwilling to compromise. But anyone with a few signatures can put up a ballot prop in California without any special connections, and that's what they did. It was then approved by a majority of voters, it's hard to frame that as some kind of shady backroom deal.

Lastly, it's pretty hard to imagine a mom-and-pop startup this might hurt. It hurts the legacy taxi industry but that is the very type of intrenched interest with their own special rules and special access to legislators that we're better off without. Any new rideshare or delivery app competitors get all the benefits of prop 22 that incumbents do.