Over the Hill How seniors fare in youthful, wonky world
By The Hill Staff
Posted: 12/01/04 12:00 AM [ET]
Susan Magill has worked for Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) for 22 years, rising from legislative assistant to deputy legislative director to legislative director to her current position of chief of staff.
She is one of the few members of the predominantly young and ever-changing congressional staff to make a career of her tenure on Capitol Hill.
Most congressional aides who are past retirement age or have spent decades on Capitol Hill share a few things in common. They are largely female. Many have worked for the same member for the majority of the time. All of them are deeply committed to their work.
Christopher D. Costa
Taking a stand: From left to right, Sharon Larkin, Ginny Worrest, Jane Bergen
Jane Bergen and Sharon Larkin have worked for Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) for 33 and 35 years, respectively. Bergen handled military casework for a short while; she was a legislative correspondent for many years and is now the mailroom coordinator. Larkin has worked in constituent correspondence for the duration of her career.
About five other aides to Hollings — who is leaving the Senate after 38 years — have also worked in the office more than 25 years.
“It feels like a family here,” said Bergen, a 53-year-old Charles-ton, S.C., native. “We still stay in touch with people from the early ’70s.”
Bergen started working for Hollings shortly after graduating from now-defunct Marjorie Webster Junior College. She had volunteered in his office while in school and was advised to apply upon graduation. She worked in Hollings’s law firm until an opening in his Senate office became available in April 1971, and she has worked there ever since.
Larkin, 56, said she has stayed on Hollings’s staff for so long because “you feel like you’re part of history working up here” and because the working environment is so pleasant. “When you hear how corporate America works, you wonder how you could thrive,” she said.
Larkin joined Hollings’s office in February 1969 after graduating from high school. She said the application process was much simpler back then. “[Hollings] said, ‘Would you like the job?’ and I said, ‘OK,’ and my career was launched,” Larkin said.
Ginny Worrest, a senior energy- and environmental-policy adviser to Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) who has worked as an aide in the Senate since 1988, said she has had “the opportunity to move” but has stayed on Capitol Hill because she relishes the opportunity to “make a difference.”
Worrest — who would not divulge her age, only that she is eligible to retire — added that her household income is such that a more lucrative job in the private sector was not really tempting.
“I admire those younger (Hill) staffers who have large families to support,” she said, praising the monetary sacrifice of those who aren’t as fortunate financially.
Worrest came to Washington from the district office of former Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) when her husband was offered a job in Washington. She previously worked on political campaigns in Oregon and ran the student health center at Oregon State University. After Packwood resigned in 1995, she took the position with Snowe in 1996.
Magill, a Roanoke, Va., native, said she has stayed in Warner’s office for so many years because she “loves the legislative process” and has “a great boss.”
Her first position on Capitol Hill was as an aide to former Rep. Manley Butler (R-Va.), which she began in 1973. She also worked on the House Committee on Aging, which has since been abolished.
Most senior staffers agreed that working with a young group of people is often interesting and energizing.
“It’s not that I’m getting older,” Magill said. “They’re getting younger all the time.”
She added that hiring “smart, eager young people” is “one of the great joys of this job.”
Larkin, a native of Grand Forks, N.D., said the staff turnover rate on Capitol Hill has dramatically increased over the years. “I don’t think people think of this as a career job.”
Another aspect of working on Capitol Hill that has changed dramatically over the past three decades is the technology, the senior staffers said.
“It’s gotten a lot busier in the computer and BlackBerry and cell-phone world,” Magill said. “That means the work never stops.”
Larkin remarked that the Internet now plays an important role in day-to-day work.
“Before, everything was so manual,” she said. “We started with typewriters and carbon papers.”
Larkin added that the ability to create databases has made her job corresponding with constituents easier and less time-consuming.
Worrest said the Internet makes everyone’s job harder because it provides access to more information than was readily available 10 or 20 years ago.
Several senior staffers also concluded that Congress has taken a decisively more partisan tone in recent years.
“There seems to be more division,” Worrest said. “There’s less comity than there has been in the past.”
She added that in the past there have been more Republicans willing to “build bridges.”
Magill said a positive change that has occurred over the years is the influx of female staffers, particularly in higher ranking positions.
Of the senior staffers interviewed, only Larkin has her retirement in sight. She will leave when Hollings retires in January.
“We’re going out together, hand in hand,” she said.
