Episode 9 – Public Policy in the U.S. Senate: A Chief of Staff’s View

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] This’ll is Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Way take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it For more. Visit LBJ dot utexas Study Teoh. Welcome.

[0:00:21 Speaker 2] Everyone were on policy on purpose. This is our ninth segment and I’m so pleased today, toe welcome to really tremendous women. Ah, both of whom are serving as chief of staff in the United States Senate. And I had the really great privilege of traveling with them about 10 years ago. And I just have been fouling their careers. And I have to tell you that we’re extremely fortunate to have both of them working in the public service and working for the United States Senate. So I want to welcome Maura Keefe, who’s the chief of staff for Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire, and Beth Jeffrey, who is a chief of staff for Senator Cornyn here in Texas. So I want to welcome both of you. Thank you so much for taking your time in doing this. Had kissed with us in

[0:01:06 Speaker 1] the past. What we’ve tried to do with these

[0:01:08 Speaker 2] podcasts is focused on people who have spent their careers in public service who has stepped into the arena of public service and the purpose of public service. And it’s enjoyed and worked with it and stayed with it. And since the both of you have been nearly two decades and some more than two decades working in that, what I wanted to do is talk more about that. You know what keeps you motivated? What keeps you involved, You know, and you’ve been through a lacked You’ve been through a lot of different Congresses with a lot of different personalities. So what I want to start with is just the simple question. You know, what keeps you going? Why? Why do you stay in public service? What is your What is your passion about public service? We can start with Mari. Do you want to

[0:01:53 Speaker 1] start? Um, sure. Um you know, I think I got into

[0:01:57 Speaker 4] public service because my family was involved in public service. So it was something that was exposed to at a very young age. And my dad had the same position I do for a U. S senator from New Hampshire in the 19 sixties, um, worked on the Great Society. We’re done, um, passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in all of these landmark pieces of legislation. And while I didn’t make a conscious decision to follow that path, I think that had a lot to do with my eventually following the path. Um, is just a belief that public service is a noble calling, um, understanding how impacts people’s lives and real lives and and in my understanding of that, after having been a chief of staff in the House of Representatives and now the U. S Senate has even expanded and you know, Beth and I talk a lot about, you know, constituent service and how gratifying that is. And that’s been that’s been to me. Um, the flip side of the legislative accomplishments is really sort of the bread and butter of legislative of constituent service and helping people solve their problems and how much power you have to do that and how it can really change people’s lives. And so, um, it’s in. It’s an incredible privilege to have this job and to be able to work from my home state. On top of it, we’re both lucky to be working for our home states, and that

[0:03:20 Speaker 5] makes a huge difference,

[0:03:22 Speaker 6] and that’s that’s that’s a good leader and I feel like I was attracted to public service. It was very much by accident, but I very much I just enjoyed so much. There’s there’s so much information you could never digested in a day. Every day is different. I worked on policy early on in my career, and I found that to be very motivating it was health care. Was Wells telecommunications. It was energy. And but now, at this stage of my career is a chief of staff. My motivation is Texas. It’s home on guy. Get to think about it every single day. And I love that, Um, my boss, center Corn loves his job. You just and I don’t know where he gets. The energy is really hard to keep up with, and it takes 70 of us every day to kind of keep up with what he’s doing. But, you know, he gets up every day looking forward to what he’s doing, and it really does energize the rest of us. Um, I love coming down to the state. We have seven different offices down here and our staff who represented each part of the state. Just there’s they love their their piece of the job so much and the staff is is very motivating for May. It’s to make sure they have the tools they need to do their job, Um, which is making corn and look every good every day. But he always says, At the end of the day, I’m responsible least 27 million people, and so is a lot of accountability there. And it’s just every day as a reminder. Your customer service. That’s what you’re here to, Dio and, um, never forget that

[0:05:05 Speaker 2] e. I think that in a lot of noise around the U. S. Congress one of the reasons why I am so glad you’re here is there. So many people who are behind the scenes who are substantive would get it who get what you just said about who

[0:05:18 Speaker 3] the customer is the constituent, whether it’s a New Hampshire constituency or Texas constituency, or as they play that role in the national constituency, that there are

[0:05:29 Speaker 2] people behind just every day trying to do the right thing, and so I think that’s a big motivator that we’ve heard before. We had this podcast and we just want to tell the listeners we had a session with the students and it was a very interesting session because the students at some point worth talking about, You know, what do you really looking for when you’re hiring somebody? Or how does your career trajectory really go? Because they want a formulaic, this sort of one, a formulaic way of entering and succeeding in public service. And both of you were very good about talking about Well, some of this pretty accidental and some of it is pretty much of a zigzag. So can you talk just a little bit about that? For those who

[0:06:08 Speaker 3] are listening and couldn’t be at our session?

[0:06:10 Speaker 1] Yeah. I mean, well, I think,

[0:06:12 Speaker 4] you know, I came through the press side of things and Beth came through the policy side of things, so we took those different paths, but I really sort of fell into it like I got a major in English. I was coming out of school, so the trying different things that worked in a market research firm, I was like I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but all that time, because it was something I grew up doing. I was volunteering on campaigns, and at one point I was volunteering on campaign and somebody said, Well, why

[0:06:41 Speaker 1] don’t you do this

[0:06:42 Speaker 4] for a living? You’re really good at it now. I thought,

[0:06:44 Speaker 1] Oh, I could do that So and so I moved to Washington and I actually

[0:06:50 Speaker 5] get a job writing on a

[0:06:51 Speaker 4] magazine called Campaign magazine, covering campaigns and then eventually became a press secretary on the Hill and then chief of staff on the House side, and eventually got to work for my home state for the first time, which is

[0:07:05 Speaker 5] real exciting. The best path is

[0:07:08 Speaker 1] totally different,

[0:07:11 Speaker 9] also accidental. But I was a journalism major, and it turns out that the writing that you are taught and journalists it was actually very on on point with with what you could, you need to figure out how to communicate complicated issues very succinctly and very quickly, which I, of course, I had a really hard time about this when I went to law school. Writing is so different on all of a sudden I was having I’m like, Why do I have to write a 20 page

[0:07:38 Speaker 6] paper. I could say this forces. Um, but community it doesn’t come back to communication. Um, whether it’s you know, whether maybe you come up through the policy side, maybe you come up through the political side. But the one thing all those things have in common, right is its communications back to writings. Because if you don’t get, if you can’t get your point across, you’re not helping your boss get their point across than there. They’re gonna be kind of missing left and right. Um,

[0:08:15 Speaker 2] one of the things we talked about in the session to waas What People don’t see what goes on behind the scenes and how much you all work across the Isles and so many different perspectives and some of its for constituent work, you know, to help your constituencies and others Aaron policies that you are trying to figure out, You know, the tens, thousands of bills that were introduced and you’re working on, and people expect you to work yet talk to it, talk to us a little bit about what you see as some of the most basic tenants of working across the aisle with folks on issues. Well, I will

[0:08:52 Speaker 6] say, behind the scenes, there is a lot being done. People focus on large bills. You mentioned civil rights, Bill. These were not bills. Are

[0:09:00 Speaker 1] there once in a generation? Yeah,

[0:09:02 Speaker 6] there are. Um I’m proud to say. I think I’m pretty sure I can say this. My boss has passed more bills than anybody else in the Senate, and all of those are bipartisan bills they have to pay. We go through a process in the Senate. It’s called unanimous consent. And behind the scenes every single day, smaller bills. I’m not gonna call them unimportant, but are being passed. And, um and you have to have a Republican and a Democrat doing those because it has to clear all 100 senators. There’s a process that that gets away, that that gets done. And it’s a lot of work. You have to work through objections from, You know, it could be one

[0:09:40 Speaker 9] office that raises objections. It could be 20 offices, raise objections on top on small bills.

[0:09:46 Speaker 6] And so each and every day our staff is going back. And, um I mean, we have a bill with Elizabeth Warren. We’ve had I mean, you, you name it. He’s worked with a lot of different Democrats, but you need to find that partner because they have to be doing the same thing. They have to be clearing it through the dem side. We clear it through the Republican side, then

[0:10:03 Speaker 9] you gotta work it through the house. But we’ve been very successful in the last two years and passing a lot

[0:10:09 Speaker 6] of, I think, really good bills. And, you know, two of them. I think we’re courthouse naming, so there’s some of that. But in other cases, thes it might be helping clear rape kit about backlogs is and we do a

[0:10:20 Speaker 9] lot of stuff in the judiciary space on there is bipartisan support and we put out releases on these and there’s interest groups or who follow it. But by and large, right, these things don’t get talked about what is happening. Arida.

[0:10:35 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, the bottom line

[0:10:37 Speaker 5] is that you can’t get anything done unless it’s bipartisan. Yes, so, um, like every I mean a lot of people will say I’ve got this piece of legislation. We’ve got a Democrat and Republican sponsors. If you want to sign on you get it, bring if you’re Democrat, we go bring a Republican where only we’re gonna be even we’re going to keep all of our sponsors. Even

[0:10:56 Speaker 4] so, that sometimes will go to sign on to a piece of legislation will be like, You gotta find

[0:11:00 Speaker 5] a Republican because we’re already at four side. And if we’re gonna add 1/5 Democrat, we get out of Fifth Republicans that you’ve got to go out and find somebody, and you’ve got to convince them to jump on this bill with you. So all of that goes on behind the scenes and, um but there’s much more in the way. And then the UC point is a very good one. There’s much more in the way of bipartisanship that happens that people don’t see. I wish they did see it more often, but

[0:11:23 Speaker 1] it was one of those.

[0:11:23 Speaker 3] That’s a big question, because when you’re thinking about just just not our students and I want to go into public service questioning this. The general public doesn’t understand this. We were talking about this earlier that their image is an image of something frenetic or something very contentious. And, you know, members of Congress or senators are walking out of meetings and microphones or thrown in their face, and they have to say something. And I’m We’re trying to figure out how we can have the American public and especially assumes, understand that that is just one sliver of what really goes on behind the scenes.

[0:12:00 Speaker 5] Well, what? That’s why what you’re doing is important by having these types of forums. Because, really, um, I do this all the time. I do it with our interns. I don’t like of explained that the

[0:12:11 Speaker 1] press covers conflict

[0:12:12 Speaker 5] and controversy. That’s what they dio. I said this to your students. They cover playing. Crash is not safe landings, but we have safe landings every single day. And, um, the number one thing that our interns who go through into internship program say to me that there most surprised

[0:12:26 Speaker 4] about is how much we work together,

[0:12:28 Speaker 1] and that always makes me a little bit sad. But also,

[0:12:30 Speaker 4] I’m glad they’re getting that exposure. And I say, Go tell your friends that Go tell you

[0:12:34 Speaker 5] parents that Go tell your family members that that people do a lot of good work here.

[0:12:39 Speaker 3] Yeah, so they just don’t see that. You know, they don’t see it every day, what they see its attention or the arguments or people getting upset and having come from the Congressional Research Service, where we had Bird’s eye view of all the sets, how things get done and people are working hard every single day to get those done. So this is something we really need to work hard around, getting that that completed and people to understand that one of things I want. I can’t not. Yes, this question cause you’re two very powerful women. Um, and you’ve been, um, Chiefs of staff. And there’s I think we said, There’s 30 chiefs of staff that are women now, but

[0:13:16 Speaker 1] you’ve been through play 30 already, and we’ve been

[0:13:20 Speaker 3] through this, you know, when you started off, um, as women in these going into political policy, it was like, Oh, what’s that? And what role The women really playing this And

[0:13:31 Speaker 2] now you’ve reached really a very top. So talk to us a little bit about what you’ve seen and what you’re optimistic about in terms of women’s trajectory into these positions, and I know some of

[0:13:44 Speaker 3] it is just because of hard work and persistence, and people get to see women who conduce very good jobs. But if we think about the future to in terms of continuing to grow that, um, without making this a women’s issue, you know, just really thinking about the talent that we have the Rod talent. How do we think about that for the future?

[0:14:02 Speaker 5] Well, that when you go,

[0:14:04 Speaker 6] um, yeah, it starts. It starts in every area of the office, right? Who we hire, whether whatever the position might be right? It’s not just the chiefs you’re thinking about. Your

[0:14:14 Speaker 9] staff assists. You’re thinking about the future. Yeah, and, um and it’s about nurturing the best talent we have. And and we were talking about diversity earlier. Whether on on all different fronts is sometimes you need Teoh, especially on the Republican side. I think we have challenges in that at times, and we need to be better about reaching out in different ways and in finding people who want to come work for us. But that’s more of a party challenge way have

[0:14:48 Speaker 6] more of that challenge than you on, and we try to do that by just going to different schools that you wouldn’t normally maybe have gone to in the past. Um, to try to fill that gap will be also

[0:15:01 Speaker 3] did. I mean, that is one of the things that we talked about to the fact that you’re the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs. People think, Oh, well, this is the last bastion of liberalism, etcetera, And we would not do our students any service unless we said, Look, you’re here to understand how to get at the bottom of a problem and how to ensure that you’re talking about the a problem. So part of it for us to is recruiting faculty and students with a lot of diversity and return to their political

[0:15:29 Speaker 1] bathroom. Yeah, it’s a lot

[0:15:31 Speaker 5] about the pipeline, but it’s also, you know, um, it’s

[0:15:35 Speaker 1] same thing with women running for office, like women have to see women get elected to want to run themselves. Yes, well, women have to see women and the chiefs of staff role

[0:15:46 Speaker 5] to believe that they can be it themselves. So it’s one of those things that the more women who, um, are ah, advanced to the role of chief staff on the Democratic and Republican side the more staffers who were legislative assistance might think,

[0:16:02 Speaker 1] Well, maybe I can have

[0:16:03 Speaker 5] that job one day instead of leaving the hell to go work in the think tank or leaving somewhere else. They might stay put and try to work, you know, to become a chief staff. So you have to really have role models. And it’s upon its on US toe sort of mentor women coming up in the ranks and making sure that the pipeline has that type of talent and that they realize that they can have these jobs.

[0:16:25 Speaker 3] Are you optimistic about that? Are you seeing young women?

[0:16:28 Speaker 5] Yes, I am a good I really, really am.

[0:16:30 Speaker 6] Yeah, I agree with that.

[0:16:32 Speaker 3] It’s good. One of the thing that that I wanted to talk about we haven’t talked about in the time we’ve been together since you come to Austin

[0:16:40 Speaker 2] is about where you go. For your information, how do you decide that you have a trusted source?

[0:16:48 Speaker 6] That’s a great question, because I feel like everywhere you turn on right with 20 24 hour news cycle. We have news on all day in our offices, and sometimes I look, we have political commentators on both sides,

[0:17:03 Speaker 1] and we know them.

[0:17:05 Speaker 6] But it’s always interesting to may. I’m like, Why? Why are these people out there talking about this? And I feel like there was a time where you kind of knew because of someone, says background, what they were bringing to the table. And now all of a sudden, I feel like it’s more about causing a stir or shock value than it is about just discussing kind of fax oven issue. And and you do have to work harder. And you have to encourage your staff to do the same right to make sure they’re not just coming forward with one one piece of the puzzle and making them go back to the drawing board saying, Actually, you know, there’s three or four more pieces. You’re so

[0:17:43 Speaker 3] demanding that when you’re when they’re briefing you on it or when there is seeking your advice, demanding the fact that they go dig

[0:17:49 Speaker 6] because in our positions were not the people. Yeah, that’s not We’re trusting. Yeah, that information, As you said, we’re not typically going right to the source is, um so yeah, it’s just, I think, reinforcing at at the very junior levels of your staff. You have got to look at this problem from all 360 degrees. It’s not necessarily your job. I recommend todo Kate. All

[0:18:15 Speaker 1] right, right, right, right.

[0:18:17 Speaker 6] We just need the information. And that’s what at the end of the day, my boss demands of me and of everybody else. So,

[0:18:25 Speaker 1] yeah, he won’t. Do you

[0:18:26 Speaker 5] want to try to find unbiased information and, you know, our staffs are you know,

[0:18:32 Speaker 1] they’re political beings. They might have their favorite cable

[0:18:35 Speaker 5] channel, that they’re listening Teoh and on whether it’s Fox or MSNBC. But they have to understand those air people with opinions, and you may agree with those opinions, but that’s not what you’re presenting to the U. S. Senator U. S. Senator is not asking you for opinions. US Senator probably has their own opinions, but what they want in this instance are the fax on bias fax. So we can sit down, discuss them, and

[0:18:56 Speaker 1] yes, we will make

[0:18:57 Speaker 5] a recommendation at the staff level. You know, if it’s a new issue once a like, we’ve looked at it from all these sides. Here’s the upsides we’ve talked toe in Jinjing him will always say who you talked to in New Hampshire. Have you talked to the stakeholders in New Hampshire? And so you’re gonna go the state and say, like, how is this going to impact the state? And if you go in is a staff for the first time and you don’t have an answer that

[0:19:18 Speaker 4] question, it’s not gonna be good for you. So So that’s always, like, get as much feedback

[0:19:22 Speaker 5] and you can. And if the, you know, if the people are working on that issue in the States say this is really something that will help us, it’s gonna be a no brainer for us. We’re yes, we’re gonna send on to that.

[0:19:33 Speaker 3] Well, what I thought was beautiful about today and I was totally unintentional was that the things that you were talking about, the values and principles of nonpartisanship, of going down to the constituent in understanding the constituents perspective of working across the aisle, working on things that you know, are both human cases that give you lots of pleasure as well as a large ones. Those are things that public policy schools, they’re trying to not only just introduce our students to, but to help educate them. Given the skills that that’s the kind of environment they want to go in and that they can contribute in. So it was It was really it was something totally unplanned. But it turned out really well today in terms of I could see the light bulbs kind of going off in their faces about what was It was really important. And we talk a lot about information because when when I was in the hill, this is centuries ago. But you had reliable information sources that everybody agreed was reliable. But now the information sources air just, you know, vast. You can go anywhere and shop it. So it’s much more difficult for the staff. Acela’s. You make sure that everything is covered that way. Yeah, yeah. So that’s another big thing we’re trying toe work on. I think the last thing I just like to ask you about is

[0:20:47 Speaker 2] what do you feel? How do you

[0:20:49 Speaker 3] feel about the United States Senate? You know, when I go out and talk to people, I say the most important branch of government is a legislative branching out, right? And you know, people look at me and I don’t. You know, sometimes I don’t even know. The difference is between all these branches. But what is it about the United States Senate that really it turned you on to? You know how important this is for the for the country, you know, really helps you get up in the morning and go, Yeah, I’m in the right place and this is really, really where we need to be.

[0:21:18 Speaker 6] It’s I mean, what everybody sees were 51 49 divided Senate right now. And, um, you know, on our side center, according to the width,

[0:21:28 Speaker 8] we were

[0:21:29 Speaker 6] because Senator McCain was ill for a while we were at it was actually 50 49. It’s very, very divided, obviously, On paper, it’s divided and what people people see every day. But this issue of unanimous consent that I talked about that is such a check on our government, and it doesn’t exist in the House of Representatives. Right there, Majority body. When you run the house, you run house. There’s not a lot of opportunity for the minority in the House Senate. It’s the it’s the absolute opposite. And I think in the last 10 years. We’ve seen some of that go away. There’s there’s there’s this effort I’d say on both sides to want to do away with some of these Senate rules, Um, and to make it more of a majority body like we have in the house, I don’t think that’s that would be a good thing. Um, at the end of the day, the Senate is supposedly where the cooler heads prevail. And as long as that issue of unanimous consent is part of Senate, I think that we will. We will have that,

[0:22:28 Speaker 7] um

[0:22:29 Speaker 3] so you’re basically the mechanism of the government’s mechanisms that do this are there in the Senate. And that’s something that you feel still aligned very well with the intention of the role of the Senate,

[0:22:41 Speaker 1] and I would add

[0:22:43 Speaker 5] very the important distinction of the six year term. So with the campaigns being so all consuming and so contentious and so partisan, um, having 1/3 of the body instead of one

[0:22:56 Speaker 4] 100% of the body up for reelection helps because

[0:22:59 Speaker 5] you’ve got 2/3 of the body that can still work outside of that contentious partisan environment. Yes, that allows us to still work across the aisle. When you get with the House of Representatives, everybody’s up. You get six months out from election and you know all bets are off. They can’t get anything done. Really. Um, it’s really difficult. So unless they get a huge majority and and whatever. But I think the six year term and the in the fact that you know, you know, not everybody is up every two years is helpful to be able to be more thoughtful and you no longer term thinking.

[0:23:37 Speaker 3] And some people have said to that, you know, because of senators representing the entire state rather than a district that the more homogeneous the district’s become, the more important Senate becomes in terms of really trying to balance the communities in the state so that to that role is even more important now than it was years ago. Yeah, so another reason why we think it’s really important. Well, I want to thank you so much for taking your time to do this podcast. I know you’re on the run, and it’s been such a pleasure to have you here. It’s been enjoying. It’s been great. It’s been really big, benefited greatly and thank you so much for your service. Really appreciate it.

[0:24:14 Speaker 1] Thank you for having us. It was really fun. It was your idea. Thank you. Thanks,

[0:24:20 Speaker 0] Thistles. Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin Way Take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. To learn more, visit LBJ dot utexas dot eu and follow us on Twitter or Facebook at the LBJ School. Thank you for listening