Meet the People who will be Setting the 2007-2008 Political Agenda
This article from the Washington Post's Federal Page provides an opportunity to "meet" the new senate committee staff directors who will be effectively setting the legislative agenda for the next two years. The committee staff directors often know far more about the issues than the Senators themselves, and are more attuned to the agendas that drive the legislative battles. They are also targeted relentlessly by lobbyists for legislative "adds" --a multi-billion dollar enterprise in Washington....
Senate Committee Staff Directors Set Session Agenda
Tuesday, December 26, 2006; A23
Top Senate Democratic staffers, left to right: Environment and Public Works, Bettina Poirier; Appropriations, Terrence E. Sauvain; Judiciary , Bruce Cohen; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Michael L. Alexander; Armed Services, Richard D. DeBobes; Foreign Relations, Antony J. Blinken; Intelligence, Andrew Johnson; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, J. Michael Myers; and Finance, Russ Sullivan.
Appropriations
Terrence E. Sauvain, 66, graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received a master's degree from George Washington University. A Cleveland native, Sauvain started his public service career in 1965 as a budget analyst for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He joined the Appropriations Committee in 1973. He has worked as the majority staff director once before, between 2001 and 2003.
Sauvain and his wife, Veronica, have three children. He was awarded the University of Notre Dame's 2006 Rev. John J. Cavanaugh Award, presented annually to one of its alumni for accomplishment in public service.
Armed Services
Richard D. DeBobes, the staff director-designate, is a veteran: 26 years in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, attaining the rank of captain, and 18 for the Armed Services committee -- the last three as the top staffer for the incoming chairman, Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.).
The spotlight will be on the committee, not only because it will focus on Iraq, but also because it includes two likely presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and the ranking Republican, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The committee is known for its bipartisanship and, DeBobes said, "there's no reason for that not to continue."
Still, that atmosphere may become strained. DeBobes, 68, is putting together a new three-person investigative team to challenge the administration on detainee treatment.
Budget
Mary Naylor comes to her new post from the office of Democratic staff director, where she has served since 2001, when Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.) became ranking Democrat. Before that, Naylor served as Conrad's deputy chief of staff.
When these profiles were compiled, staffers said Naylor was battling through the snow en route to her hometown of Fargo, N.D., for the holidays.
Naylor, 39, graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in political science. She began work in Conrad's office in 1989, and she served there for three years before embarking on a two-year stint on the staff of former senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.). Then, in 1993, it was back to Conrad's office, where she served as a senior legislative assistant before becoming deputy chief of staff in 1999. She became minority staff director of the Budget Committee two years later.
Environment and Public Works
Bettina Poirier, the first woman to serve as staff director and chief counsel for the committee, has a work history that has placed her in touch with many of the stakeholders in environmental regulation. An environmental lawyer for nearly two decades, she has served for the past six years as senior counsel to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) working on environmental and agriculture issues.
Boxer has said "her focus will be on . . . global warming issues," Poirier said. "We'll be making sure that issue gets a lot of hearings and plenty of discussion so we can look for solutions that come with a lot of benefits" to local economies, providers of technology and labor for efforts to combat the problem.
Beyond that, Poirier, 45, will pursue Boxer's aim of "making sure that children are specifically considered in the environmental laws," such as clean air and water regulations. She points out that while many of its issues are seen as classic Democratic concerns, in fact the committee has a long history of bipartisan cooperation. "We'll look for opportunities to reach and work across the aisle on these issues," she said.
Finance
Russ Sullivan has been in the heart of the committee's business, tax policy, since the tax fights of President Bush's first months in office. Chief tax counsel in those days, he moved up to Democratic staff director in 2004.
Nowhere in Congress will the transition from minority to majority be as seamless as in this committee. Under Republican leadership, Democratic staffers were given wide latitude to explore policy and oversight options, taking their cue from the close relationship between then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking Democrat Max Baucus (Mont.). That bipartisanship is likely to continue.
From 1995 to 1999, Sullivan, 55, was tax counsel and legislative director for then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). He then became the Finance Committee Democrats' chief tax counsel under then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).
Foreign Relations
Antony J. Blinken brings skills as an academic, journalist and policy planner to his new role. A former international lawyer, for the past four years Blinken, 44, has served as the committee's Democratic staff director and as senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.). Prior to that, he served six years on the White House National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.
The committee's "first and most urgent challenge is Iraq," Blinken said. "Putting us on a better path in Iraq would give us much more freedom, flexibility and credibility to deal with other important issues," such as Iranian and North Korean nuclear plans, unrest in Darfur and Afghanistan, and the emergence of China and Russia.
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
J. Michael Myers has worked, on and off, for the incoming committee chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), for 20 years. If the past is a predictor, Myers, 51, will spend next session focused on a long list of issues including immigration and refugee policy, early childhood education, college loan costs and the effort to raise the minimum wage.
While pursuing his master's degree in political science at Columbia University in the late 1970s, Myers worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He came to Kennedy's staff to work on foreign policy issues after six years with the humanitarian relief group Church World Service. During the Clinton administration, Myers worked for nearly two years at the Pentagon's Office of Humanitarian and Refugee Affairs, and worked on immigration and refugee issues in various roles for the Senate Judiciary Committee throughout the mid-1990s. Myers has been minority staff director on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions since 1998.
Homeland Security
Michael L. Alexander, 50, has served on the committee for five years and has worked on intelligence reform, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and issues surrounding disaster relief -- including emergency preparedness, first responders and communications.
Before joining the committee, he was legislative director for then-Rep. Mike Espy (D-Miss.) and served as acting deputy director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights. A native of Griffin, Ga., Alexander worked as a reporter and columnist for the Jackson Advocate in Mississippi before coming to Washington.
He said the top priority for the committee and its incoming chairman, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) is to enact laws that implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Other priorities include improving rail and transit security, oversight of the Department of Homeland Security and securing more funding for first responders.
Intelligence
Andrew Johnson will serve as staff director, one of the most unusual jobs in the Senate. Unlike most other committees, the intelligence panel does not have a majority and minority staff, and it works in great secrecy in an office with no windows and a guard out front.
Johnson, 47, received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Maryland at College Park. Selected as a presidential management intern at the Department of Navy, he worked on contracting issues until coming to Capitol Hill in 1990 to work on defense and international affairs for then-Sen. Jim Exon (D-Neb.). Under Michigan's Levin, he came to the intelligence committee to monitor satellite and geospatial agencies. In 2004, he became the staff director for the committee vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).
Johnson said the committee has much work to do in terms of oversight and restoring a bipartisan tone to its efforts. "The committee has not done its necessary work in understanding and evaluation of national intelligence," Johnson said, referring to the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program and the CIA's system for detention and interrogation.
Judiciary
Bruce Cohen brings 15 years' experience as a litigator and a decade as Democratic staff director and chief counsel on the Judiciary Committee to his new, majority role.
During his early law career, Cohen, who received his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975, practiced in Philadelphia and Washington, where he was a partner in the law firm of Dechert Price and Rhoads, and in Los Angeles, where he was a partner in the law firm of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro. He spent two years in the early 1980s as chief counsel of the subcommittee on juvenile justice, when it was chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Cohen, 56, joined Sen. Patrick J. Leahy's (D-Vt.) staff in 1994 and served as chief counsel of the subcommittee on technology and the law. A year later, he became Democratic chief counsel of the subcommittee on antitrust, business rights and competition, filling that role for a year.
Other Committees
Veterans Affairs: William E. Brew
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry: Mark Halverson
Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs: Shawn Maher
Commerce, Science and Transportation: Margaret Cummisky
Energy and Natural Resources: Bob Simon
Staff writers Al Kamen, Lyndsey Layton and Elizabeth Williamson and special correspondent Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report. Photo Credit: By Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post
