We all know that School House Rock’s version of how a bill becomes a law is no longer the whole truth. Now, policies often pass because they’re tacked on to a must-pass piece of legislation, a budget, or a reconciliation bill. So what does that mean for staffers? How do they do their jobs effectively if they now need to work a different process than what they learned in elementary school? For that, I spoke with Jason Smith, a veteran Senate staffer who has worked for Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington State, and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. We talked before he took a job with Sen. Fetterman, so when he talks in the interview about how much he loved working in the Senate, know that he was a few weeks away from returning to it. An edited transcript of the interview is below. Jason Smith Chris, it's a it's a real pleasure. I appreciate you having me. And I'm happy to be here. Chris Oates Well, let's just start off, how did you get involved in the political world? Jason Smith It was a little bit of a strange story. So I'm originally from New Jersey, and my parents were not political people. But I was always interested in politics and policy, even at the local level. So you know, in, in high school, I was volunteering with my local Democratic Party to do poll watching. In college, I was on the local planning board because I thought land use policy was really interesting. And after I graduated from law school, that while in college, I interned in the Senate office of John Corzine, who would later become governor of New Jersey. But following law school, I was already to start my career as a real lawyer and my best friend who we actually went to college with called me and said, hey, there is a Senate campaign going on in Alaska. Do you want to go on an adventure? We need a lawyer. We need someone who can do research. And I said, Sure. And I took a break. I told the firm that I was going to go work for that. I needed to push back and they said, Sure. And I went up to Alaska, and I started working for the Democrat in a three way race. And I knew we were going to lose the whole time. But we got to experience firsthand what a real Senate campaign is, and there, I met Senator Begich he was a Democrat from Alaska, at the time, and it was not his race, but I met him and a bunch of his staff and said, Wow, I really like these people. They're not what you might think of a stereotypical political people. They have heart, they have a soul, and they care about actual Alaskans. I think I want to do this. For real I, you know, I think I want to go work in the Senate. And, you know, we lost the race to Senator Murkowski. But I told Senator Begich and his people, Hey, if you ever have an opportunity, if you ever have an opening that might be suitable for me, let me know. Two years later, his chief of staff called me and he said, you know, we have this job on the steering committee that I think you might be interested in. I said, Great, I'll take it. And he said to me, well, don't you want to know what it is? Or how much money it is? And I said, well, I need to get my foot in the door. I like you people. I trust you. out, you know, I'm sure I can figure it out. Chris Oates 2010 was not a good year for Democrats, and also Murkowski got a lot of Democratic votes. What is it like to work on a campaign where you know there's almost no chance of victory? Or is that just in hindsight at the time, you always think there's a, there's a fighter's chance? Jason Smith So this, this campaign was actually very bespoke, in the sense that I'm not sure there's anything really comparable. And here's the reason why, when I agreed to do the campaign, it was going to be we thought, my candidate Scott McAdams, great guy, Scott McAdams, and really somebody who became a great candidate who has an incredible skills and knowledge. But he had never run statewide. And, you know, he was sort of put up there as the Democrat who would take on Senator Murkowski. But, you know, she's very popular and is an institution in the state. And so when I signed on, I said, Okay, this guy probably doesn't have a chance against Lisa Murkowski. But, you know, I, let's, let's have this experience. After I accepted Senator Murkowski lost her primary to Tea Party Joe Miller. When she lost to him immediately, we said, oh wait, we could win this race. Because even though Alaska is in many ways a conservative state, this is extremism. You know, there was involvement with Militia and separatists and all sorts of strange things. Now, maybe it was a week after she lost her primary, Senator Murkowski said that she was getting into back into the race, running third party running as a write in. And she was able to do that with the backing of this is the first election first federal election after the Citizens United decision. And she was able to run her write in candidacy because there was a group of corporations that came together to create a group called Alaskan Standing Together, and they funded it for several million dollars. And she had by far the best resourced campaign in the field. I've never seen a campaign. She was everywhere, she was on the air on the billboards, they had handouts with her name on it, they had bracelets, they had all sorts of stuff, they were paying for snow machines to take people to the polling places out in the villages. So when that started, you know, the hope died? Because I said, Wow, but the X factor was this is a write in campaign, how could you win this as a right and somebody has to bubble in and write in Lisa or Lisa Murkowski or something like that. So we actually had litigation that went up to the Alaska State Supreme Court, it was the whole thing was wild. But in the end, we did come in third in a three way race. In terms of one part of your question about, on was this a try out was this sort of like a, an interview, you know, one of the the important parts in politics, whether it's on what we call the official side, so actually in a senator House office, or on the campaign side, is that you need to see people operate under pressure to really understand who they are and what their capabilities are. And, and, you know, for any given job that is open, like we had a job, we had jobs in Senator Murray's office that were lower level jobs, that you get 400 resumes for single openings. And how do you? How do you possibly come to good decision making with that sort of volume of people? Right, it's, it's, the odds are worse than getting into Yale Law School, or Harvard. And so actually, being in the trenches with someone goes a long way toward letting you know about their real performance. And that is, that is part of politics that I think it's important that people don't the people don't get confused about, which is, yeah, there are there's a certain style of politics and a certain part of national politics, where it's the same people moving around, sort of, you see this, you see the same names over and over again, and you say, oh, no, like, this is the same old, same old, but, and I can't get it doing what a lot of you know, something that a lot of people think is I can't get a job unless I know somebody or less, I'm important. And I didn't know anybody, and I'm not important. But what you have to do is you have to find ways to show people that hey, I'm not just another one of these people who thinks they want to be on the West Wing or they want to be on some, you know, fictional political show, I want to do the work. And that's that's the importance of performance. So that's a way of distinguishing, like, hey, it's it's not always about pull, you know, or, or things like that. Chris Oates I don't have nearly the experience that you have on a campaign, but the one campaign I was on, it was amazing how you get into the office nd within a few days, you're seeing people do stuff that wasn't on the job description, but needed to be done. You just see the people who are happy to do it and happy to pitch in and do what's needed for the campaign for the team. And those who, let's say, are less, less amenable to it. Jason Smith Yeah, it's as if you can have a campaign, you know, there's glamorous work, oh, you know, I get to help write a speech for a senator or a candidate. You know, that's, that's glamorous. That's cool. I'll never forget one day. I was in campaign office for Senator Begich in 2014. And I was writing, I don't know, it's like writing our fish policy or something. And they were about to cut a television ad. And the ad maker decided, Oh, I really want a picnic bench that looks this certain way in this ad, because it looks like this other ad and whatever. And everybody's saying, how do we get this bench? I said, I'll go find it. You know, we got we have to get this done. I'll go figure it out. You know, give me a truck and two guys, and we'll go figure it out. And we did. There can be no task too small. You know, if, if Senator so and so it was running to a hearing and is like, oh, boy, I could really use a coffee. I'll go get your coffee. You know, that's there's there's no task that has beneath anyone who's really on the job. Chris Oates So you're working a legal job, and then you get the call, and you start working for him? And then what was that like when you you first show up in the Senate? Obviously you know a lot about politics. You're a smart person about policy. I'm sure you've read the news, you had your campaign experience. But what was that like, you know, the first week of you now work in the United States Senate. Jason Smith It was incredible. It was total sea change. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I'll never forget my first day was the day after Labor Day, in 2012. And I showed up 830, I walked into the building the Hart Senate building, got my suit on, and I was so excited. I gotta go find out, you know, where my cubicle was. And I went up to the, the
