Hill Climbers

...In fact, of the 10 members of the DCCC's 1992 top political staff, nine landed great jobs after the election, ranging from Al Gore's office to Robert Reich's to AA jobs on the Hill...

...And, you know, four out of those six had been communications majors in college," says Dan Meyer, Gingrich's chief of staff...

...Why did you put a hold on this...

...even answering phones for the distinguished freshman from DeFu-niak Springs, Florida, would be something...

...Duberstein has two associates from the Democratic camp: Michael Berman, who advised Carol Browner on her confirmation as director of the EPA, and Steve Champlin, the former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus...

...The experts: Don't want to chat up reporters or shill for a member who's chiefly interested in pushing his "re-elect" (Hillspeak for winning electoral margin) up above 60 percent...

...If you've spent five or 10 years with a committee or a high profile member—which is thought to be about average for this track—you naturally form what this magazine has long called "survival networks" of lobbyists, staffers, and politicians...

...With some jobs disappearing, good fortune and friendships—always important in building political careers—are especially critical...

...If you're on the inside, even with the freshman from DeFuniak Springs, your instinct is to do what it takes for you to get ahead—and that's what's got the rest of us worried...

...35 percent were noted for their expertise at spin...

...The DCCC put her in the mix of people who get to know members at their most vulnerable: re-election time...

...So how did Thomas get to hang out with the cast of the evening news...

...When The Wall Street Journal's Jeffrey H. Birnbaum checked back in 1990 on staffers who had worked on the 1986 tax reform act, he 30 The Washington Monthly/June 1993 found half of them lobbying...

...An aide to Senator Bennett Johnston, Hudson quietly watches over the Commodity Supplemental Feeding Program, a small project that feeds poor pregnant women and the at-risk elderly...

...Colleges used to teach history...

...It shouldn't, but Hudson's spent a career making government work...

...Taxpayers are paying for these guys to learn the ropes and do the apprenticeships that they then go out and sell," says Pamela Gilbert, director of Ralph Nader's Congress Watch...

...She, along with Craig Hanna, Gephardt's "body man" who spends the day at the Leader's side, has a top-flight job: arranging, with the speaker's office, the legislative calendar...

...On "Good Morning, America...

...28 The WashingtonMoivtMY/Jmejafli ra Hudson's footsteps...

...What's less apparent but more important for government is what successful Hill staffers do after they've reached the top...

...My staff has the power to do that," Metzenbaum said, walking away...

...Research assistance for this article was provided by Nicholas Joseph and Ann O'Hanlon...

...And in fact, many bright, ambitious Hill staffers never get to the substance of policy at all, attracted as they are to the mechanics of media politics...

...so transferable that, as in one recent case, people who worked in Harris Wof-ford's insurgent Democratic Senate campaign one season turned up doing press for the GOP the next...

...Her name doesn't ring any bells...

...This means Hill climbing is getting a bit tougher...

...You can't get any closer to the action than Marty Thomas, one of Gephardt's two floor assistants...

...Through Tom O'Donnell, Gephardt's chief of staff, whom Thomas had worked for at the DCCC in 1988...

...In the SenJune 1993/The Washington Monthly 29 ate, where members have a larger stage on which to strut and fret, three-person press offices aren't unheard of...

...Most staff answer constituent complaints about how this or that federal agency has screwed them...

...In the best cases, communications operations market policy to sell a bill or a candidate with a coherent "message...

...Like Laura Hudson, these longer term staffers, usually a step older, have learned the arcania of a particular policy area...

...Communications—speechwriting, travel, and spinning local and national reporters—gives you a lot of access to the member, and that's one way of feeling powerful," says a former staffer...

...That kind of experience is at a premium because if you understand a district, you understand a member...

...The key is who you work for and where that member is headed," says Randal Ihara, a former aide to Senator Robert Byrd...

...the younger senator demanded...

...She has the decidedly unglamorous title of staff director of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, but anything affecting Medicaid comes through that subcommittee...

...They shouldn't get in the door first because of the money they contribute or past relationships while everybody else has to sit in the waiting room...

...When the House is in session, she helps manage the bills and troubleshoots for members with conflicts when a vote is scheduled or when debate time is at a premium...

...After all, Lyndon Johnson first came to Washington as a secretary, and where do you think George Stephanopoulos cut his teeth...

...Government isn't...

...Of 170 former key congressional staffers tracked this spring by National Journal's CongressDaily/A.M., 115 have moved to the administration (many following bosses like Gore, Lloyd Bentsen, Leon Panetta, and Mike Espy...

...A Ph.D...

...He knows the score, the players, the fight...

...As Clinton tries to control lobbyists and negotiate the congressional shoals, the things that hamstring government in general are the things that the Hill culture implicitly and explicitly encourages...

...One rising Hill communications staffer is Laura Quinn, a veteran of policy shops and presidential campaigns who is now with Senator Jay Rockefeller...

...He started out on the Hill, too...

...and longtime Democratic strategist, O'Donnell is a political bigfoot who, according to one observer, "is absolutely tuned in—all day, every day...

...As the health care interests ponder the coming war over a national health plan, such firms, with their deep understandings of how the institution works, won't be begging for work...

...at the moment, the people at the very top who leave have just a one-year moratorium on lobbying their old offices...

...The preoccupation with public relations is much larger than politics, of course: This spring, Newt Gingrich's office was hunting for a mid-level staff person and interviewed six applicants...

...But faced with the prospect of paying college tuitions (as Mike House was) and with maintaining an upscale Washington life, some staffers find the possibility of going downtown alluring...

...Thomas, by the way, just turned 30...

...You'll take any Capitol Hill job, anything at all...

...While such care-and-feeding staffs are probably secure, the General Accounting Office, which does the lion's share of oversight, is on the block as well, though its staff has grown at one-tenth the rate of personal and committee staffs since the seventies...

...Well, somebody's got to be back writing tax laws and funding Head Start...

...For one thing, Capitol Hill, even more than the rest of politics, is driven by youth...

...Before you get carried away with visions of tete-a-tete cloakroom sessions with Mitchell and Foley, consider what you're up against...

...The unfortunate truth, though, is that what begins as public service becomes experience that's valuable in the law firm or interest group market...

...Now, all but a handful have designated press people...

...No matter how important your position in a personal office, it's probably not very important in the grand pecking order...

...But what permanent Washingtonians understand as automatic ticket-punching can be a haymaker to the work of government, especially when so many staffers keep their time on the Hill short...

...Because media relations jobs are high profile, reporters (who are often similarly generalist in outlook and mostly interested in handicapping the political game) tend to view them as powerful positions...

...Twenty percent of the staffers who made the subjective list had explicit press or political positions...

...That's one reason for the dizzyingly high turnover rate on the Hill...

...the humming energy of campaigns quickly evaporates if your boss isn't on the media make...

...Even among experts and committee staff, Hudson and Nelson are exceptions that prove this cultural rule: "Hill jobs are dead ends unless you want to be a Hillbilly for the rest of your life," says Tom Korologos, a veteran Republican lobbyist...

...So you see someone like Robert Leonard, the highly respected chief counsel and staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee, leave this year to practice law and lobby in a city he got to know in his 18 years with the committee, the last 11 at Rosentowski's side...

...The problem with the revolving door, and with survival networks generally, is that government is already keenly responsive to concentrated interests...

...The days when press secretaries would sit around and just return reporters' phone calls left the capital with Spiro Agnew...

...given the right cultural currents, there's no better place to legislate smartly and monitor what government is really up to...

...Every culture has its archetypes, and the young tend to follow well-traveled paths...

...The fun of running for office—the focus groups, the polling, the negative research—is only tangentially connected to, say, passing national health insurance or confronting deficit spending...

...Only a third of staffers stay in their jobs for longer than two years, even at the highest levels...

...So how will this latest era of congressional reform affect Hill climbing...

...Metzenbaum looked at his colleague blankly...

...what's rarely asked is why Congress doesn't do a better job of overseeing those agencies in the first place...

...Quinn's resume is a tour through the Democratic party of the eighties: She's worked for the Brookings Institution, Tom Bradley, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Joe Biden, and Carl Levin...

...He's joined forces with Tom Ryan, a former staffer with the House Energy and Commerce committee...

...Congress is full of similarly wonderful policy jobs...

...If you come to Congress shortly after finishing school or a campaign, you grow older, and over the years, family obligations mount...

...This is a company town, and you punch as many tickets as possible...

...Restrictions are lax...

...There's Karen Nelson, for example, whom you've probably never heard of, but who, according to The Almanac of the Unelected, knows more about Medicaid than anybody else in Washington...

...Some cuts came this winter when the House killed its select committees, which were staffed by the kinds of older, substantive professionals whom we actually need more of...

...Politics is fun," says one Clinton campaign alumnus who has also worked on the Hill...

...Senators Boren and Domenici think 15 to 25 percent sounds about right...

...Still, these guys aren't doing poorly financially: In the House, personal staffers can make up to $105,000, and committee staff can go to $120,000...

...The committees expose you to the right people and to the dynamics of the districts and the states," says Rob Engel, the DCCC's 1992 political director...

...The closer you are to the action, the better off you are...

...While many staffers are lawyers or academics who want to spend a few years doing something other than practicing or researching, there is a professional level...

...Communications wizards: You could try the flashiest segment of the political job market: press and communications...

...in the Senate, the ceiling is upwards of $130,000...

...by 1986, 226 did...

...Meanwhile, there are 20,000 other staffers competing for power in 535 personal offices and endlessly balkanized committees and subcommittees—266 in all...

...Last year, embarrassed by rubber checks and a House Post Office that gave away stamps but charged for cocaine, incumbents made a solemn vow: Hey, we'll cut the staff...

...She has it all," says one Senate Democratic staffer...

...the bulk of the rest—50 in all—left for lobbying or consulting jobs...

...The folks who answer the mail are in the clear, and it's unlikely that the top political and press operatives will suffer in even the most Bastille-like of revolutions...

...I was amazed that so many of them had that kind of thing in their backgrounds...

...Put a familiar face on the concentrated interests—a former staffer, a guy you used to know over at the campaign committee or from Energy and Commerce—and thinking out a vote may be a lost cause...

...What moves many of the best and brightest staffers to give up their work and cross the line to private interests...

...She spends a lot of time chatting up the Republicans, checking political pulses for her boss...

...Another key Gephardt staffer, communications director Laura Nichols, also came from the DCCC...

...While O'Donnell and his people are top drawer, the downside of putting too much stock in campaign experience is that governing can get confused with campaigning...

...But press skills divorced from conviction are transferable...

...Here's a brief tour of the bestiary of Hill animals—who rises to the top and what they do once they leave...

...That's the only way to make it at that level...

...In 1970, 54 House offices had a press secretary...

...Once you're on the premises, moving into the big game means you need to go after jobs with the leadership or prominent committee chairmen...

...If you were an interest that needed to navigate Washington, who better to go to for a map to the capital's folkways...

...A lot of young people get hooked on the campaign stuff and can't get off it," says Quinn...

...For younger operatives whose interests aren't as focused, the call of the hustings can box them in...

...What we all lose in this transitory world of re-election politics, playing the press, and private expertise-peddling is having more Hudsons around...

...And you have more and more speechwriters vying to win a scrap of attention on the news or C-SPAN...

...The politicos: The quickest way to get a foot in the door is to come to Washington with a member you've known "since he was at 2 percent name recognition with a 5 percent margin of error," as Texas Congressman Dick Armey says...

...Fuming, he confronted the ancient Ohio senator...

...The Duberstein Group is a prototypical case: Kenneth Duberstein, its president, was Reagan's last chief of staff and guided the nominations of David Souter and Clarence Thomas through the Senate...

...More and more members of Congress, and virtually all senators, are creating press departments because they recognize the connection between their free media and their re-election prospects," says David Dreyer, who started as an unpaid House intern, became Gary Hart's legislative director and worked for Coehlo and Gephardt before becoming Clinton's White House director of communications planning...

...it's where the details of governance meet the political world...

...How else do you expect me to keep up with anything...

...She ran errands for Gephardt at the 1990 budget summit that probably cost Bush his presidency...

...A few years ago, for example, a junior Democratic senator found out that Howard Met-zenbaum had held up one of the younger man's bills...

...When Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, set out to list "The Fabulous Fifty: Hill Staffers with the Real Power," spin control was a factor along with knowledge, access, and muscle...

...Hill CM For House and Senate staffers on the mc Here's how even the best-Mentioned^ by Jon Meacham It s been a terrible six months—months of religiously reading the classifieds in Roll Call and explaining to congressional office managers how your political science major, combined with that volunteer campaign work last fall, uniquely qualify you to draft legislation...