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Jobs in politics are inherently difficult. How to do that when you also might lose your job because of a red/blue wave? And what does it mean to have a career where staff is underpaid or not paid at all and yet there is still an oversupply of talent.
Today, we’re speaking with Chris Jones, founder of PoliTemps and CapitolWorks, staffing and recruitment agencies for the political world. He we discuss his own career, as well as what he thinks needs to happen to make this a more representative and sustainable industry that works for the country.
You can listen to the episode above and read a lightly edited transcript below.
Chris Jones
Thank you so much, Chris. My name is Chris Jones. I work in Washington DC and beautiful Dupont Circle, and grew up originally in Texas.
Chris Oates
And how did you first get involved in the political world?
Chris Jones
Well, I grew up in a political family. My dad was an elected judge for 30 years. So I grew up literally knocking on doors and putting up yard signs. I love politics. I love the issues. You know, I love the personalities. The people are human, they're flawed. And that always is amazing how that comes into. Sometimes conflict or agreement with these issues of the day, whether it's healthcare, democracy, life, liberty, international affairs, plus, we again, we have these very frail and human people that are involved in it.
I did a year or two of college, and then I decided to get out of Austin. Back in the 80s. Austin was not the cool place it is now it was very different. It was like that movie Dazed and Confused. Lot of driving around in Camaros with bad haircuts, and big bell jeans. I joined the Navy for four years, traveled two years in Puerto Rico, two years stationed in Japan on a ship and worked in naval intelligence. Tracked Russians, North Korea, Chinese, and that was exciting. And then I finished that up. And then I got my degree from Texas Tech University. And then after that, I decided to come to Washington do an internship on Capitol Hill.
Chris Oates
Who was that internship with?
Chris Jones
That was with Congressman Jack Brooks, he was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He was a well known cigar smoking chairman of the full committee. And for me, coming to Washington, even though I was probably the oldest intern at 28, it was like coming to Hollywood. It was like being on the soundstage of Paramount, you know, there's Barney Frank. There's Pat Schroeder. There's Nancy Pelosi, there's Chuck Schumer before they were famous. And, you know, it was just an amazing experience.
Chris Oates
Interning is something that in the political world, a lot of folks get into it in that way, that you intern for your local state representative or with a nonprofit, I interned for the International Crisis Group, the one summer I spent in Washington, but I think it definitely varies based on on where it is. So when you're for a committee chairman, who's powerful, does that mean that you as an intern, get to see more things than, you know, if you were an intern for the most junior freshman and member of Congress?
Chris Jones
That's exactly right. I mean, you're on a full committee. So you're not on a subcommittee, you're not working for a member, you're on the committee. And you're exposed to the staff director, the chief counsel, who I've kept in touch with for many, many years, you're also keeping in touch with the members who are on the committee. One thing I do want to say, you know, I was very fortunate to have gotten the opportunity because of a network and connections. But a lot of people, especially people of color, don't have a pathway to those internships, and there's a great organization called Pay Our Interns that has recently come into its own. Many people of color, many people of low income don't have the ways and means to come to Washington, right? I was able to live on rice and beans for a little bit of money. But a lot of people can’t. And you need those internships as a pipeline to politics, and Pay Our Interns and similar organizations have pushed for the payment of White House interns and of Capitol Hill interns. Without that young leadership, you don't get the pipeline of people of a diverse talent group coming into Capitol Hill, coming into the White House, coming into these organizations. So I just wanted to mention that briefly.
Chris Oates
I think that's a great point. I can definitely say, absolutely anyone listening please pay your interns because they're doing work for you. What we often forget is that when we look at the internships, and that's the way to your career on Capitol Hill, it's not just that not everyone gets those internships, but that some people choose different paths when they're 20. And that should not mean they're locked out of a career in politics thereafter.
The same way that you see a lot of lawyers, they think they have to clerk at the Supreme Court or in a circuit court because your career is over at 30 if you don't have that on your on your CV, right? That's it's absolutely crucial for like the well functioning political staff, industry wide staff to have those other paths into the job.
Chris Jones
Right. And there's a big complaint for a while on Capitol Hill about how come the Chief of Staffs and the legislative directors weren't more diverse, right? So you had a population that was diverse, you had districts that were diverse, but you had people at a senior level, the managerial level that was were not diverse. How do you get them? You have to start at a younger level to be able to bring them in as a talent pipeline, and to give them an opportunity. And I'm quite aware of my fortunate ability to do an internship in Washington. But kind of the next part of that story is when I was interning, I was going through Roll Call magazine, and I saw that somebody named David Bonner from Michigan had been elected Majority Whip. So I saw that David Bonnier was strong on veterans issues, and I was a veteran, I saw that he probably was going to have more staff, and more responsibility. So in my little small political brain, I made a lobbying effort within my inner circle to get a position working for David Bonner. And so I was successful. I went on to work for David for two years, and got to see, again, Gephardt, Foley, just the inner workings of a leadership office, which was fascinating.
Chris Oates
I mean, how easy is it to do that? So you know, you get, let's say, you get to Washington, and you work for your, your local congressperson, as an intern or whatever? Is it common that, you know, you get there, and then you're in the club, and it's easy to transfer from one member of Congress's office to another, even if it's a different state? You don't know anything about that state? But you might know about an issue that they care about?
Chris Jones
No, that's a great question. I would say that it's you can you can get in the door, but to get the job, you have to be able to do the work. There's a lot of people that have relationships and contacts and my cousin and my friend and the Congressman's nephew, there's tons of these people that are constantly coming to Washington.
But we like to think it's a little bit of a meritocracy, where your hard work and your ability to understand and think fast on your feet will get you further up the food chain. So you can get in the door but actually to stay on Capitol Hill and work, you need to be of a certain certain type of personality, smart, hardworking, and many ways willing to give up a certain part of your personal life. Because your life is around, you know, a Congress that's constantly in doing issues managing crisis, January 6, 9/11, a war, a change of administration, the major election, so you need to be able to come up to a higher level to be able to stay in Capitol Hill.
Chris Oates
Would you say that this transfer of folks on Capitol Hill from one office to another leads to a kind of more national or partisan outlook on the on behalf of the staff? And I'm actually thinking kind of back to the American Revolution, where Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, they fought in the Continental Army, and they had a more continental national outlook than a lot of the state leaders who became the anti-Federalists. Do you think that that changes the way politics works when you have a group of people who - I don't want to say they're disconnected from their their local roots, by any means - but their professional circles are within a party or within a faction within a party or an ideology or an issue group? And does that changes how they work a little bit?
Chris Jones
Um, you know, I don't know if that's true, because many people, you know, tend to spin out, they work on Capitol Hill, and then they go to law school, or they decide that Washington is not for them, and they go back to Massachusetts or Texas or Iowa and run for local office, or they decide to go to graduate school or that they decide to go leave and work on a nonprofit or trade association, or a law firm or lobby firm on the outside.
So I would say there's enough churning on the Hill and especially as you get to a certain skill level. Capitol Hill notoriously underpays and overworks talent. So you get to a certain level five years into it, and you start talking to your friend, that's a lobbyist who's making $20,000 more, or your friend who moved to Boulder, and he’s mountain biking and skiing, but making $10,000 less, and you're like, What am I doing here? And so you sort of aged out after a certain period and move on to other professions or different stages of your life.
I believe Trump has made the town a little bit more partisan. You know, pre Trump, people interacted a little bit more together and talked and interacted. Trump has really demonized the government. You know, the deep state working there against me, Department of Justice, unelected bureaucrats. And I think a lot of people have a hard time with the other party wanting to work in government. So I think there's a certain amount of churn. But I think also the town has become a little bit more partisan after Trump as well.
Chris Oates
I think there's this sense that Washington is this distant place that people just go to and they don't represent the country, as some people would say it. But what you're saying is, people will go work in Washington and then go somewhere else, or they'll come in and out Capitol Hill.
There’s a problem that I want to ask you about. What do you think the effects are about having a Congress where as you say, people age out? It would seem like you would want a Congress where if you want to have a career as a congressional staffer, you can have a very long and illustrious career, being a congressional staffer having institutional knowledge, deep issue knowledge.
But it sounds as if there's financial pressures, because you're not paid enough to do that.
Chris Jones
Yeah, absolutely. And not only is there financial pressures, there's the elections. So every two years, a House member is up for reelection. So you’re typically are associated with your boss. And if your boss loses his seat, you're out of a job, you're not automatically grandfathered into work for the person that is reelected, especially if it's somebody at the other party, and not even if it's somebody of the same party.
In Rhode Island, Congressman, Langevin retired and Seth Magaziner took over. So Set Magaziner might bring some of that old staff with him. But chances are, he'll bring his own staff. So the staff is also limited by their boss, if their boss retires, if their boss gets defeated, if their boss is redistricted, and squeezed into another district with another Democrat, then potentially they could lose their job. And so that's a challenge. And for the Senate, it's every six years.
So you may work for Senator for six years, or then you may go to his committee. But at the Senate flips, the committees go from majority, which is a larger number of staff to minority, which is a smaller number, and thus you lose your job.
Like in the House, the committees went from a majority amount of Democratic staff to a minority amount of staff. And so they had to shed and let go all of the staff members from all of these, every committee is now a Republican-led committee. And so the staff members are knocking on doors, sending out resumes. Hey, Chris, you know, I'm looking for work. Can you help me as well? So there's a certain amount of turnover.
You know, the great thing about Washington is everybody, for the most part is from somewhere else. And being from Texas. That's what I enjoyed about it. I met people from Minnesota that loved jogging in the snow when it was 30 degrees. And me growing up in the Gulf Coast, crazy. met people from Massachusetts, my wife is from Long Island. You know, I met people from all over the United States. And everybody comes here. And again, I sound like I'm a Chamber of Commerce greeting for Washington but people come here they really want to make a difference and they really want to do well. They really want to see change in government, they really want to have a higher learning and a higher purpose. And that's also inspirational. And it's not necessarily just the people in politics. It's your next door neighbor that worked for the Department of Commerce for 30 years as a GS, or the woman that worked for the CIA, and you never really knew what she did.
Another thing about Washington is, there's a large contingent of veterans. A lot of people think Washington is out of touch place. But what's great is there's people that really are here that have a high dedication and service to the country.
Chris Oates
Yeah, I think that's something that it definitely frustrates me. When you hear about folks attacking Washington, I can definitely see attacking the way that politics is practiced in some ways. But that's a fair ground. Totally fair. But I think unless you've ever worked there or live, you don’t realize that the amount of earnestness and sincerity is as high as anywhere else in the country.
Chris Jones
And I will say you have to get out of DC. I was here and then I left and I went back to Texas for a bit in the mid 90s, and worked for governor and Richards. And you have to get out of Washington, you have to go back home. And you have to get back to your roots. Because in Washington, it is kind of an echo chamber, right? Everybody's talking about health care, health care. It's George Santos, George Santos, what's going on with Biden. You do have to go back and listen to people and talk to people and talk about mundane stuff, or unrelated, you're hiking or biking or your health or your meemaw or your abuela, or your grandma or your grandmother, you have to get in touch with your outside of Washington, just to kind of clear the clear the airwaves from your brain to talk about something else.
Chris Oates
Absolutely. So let's let's pick up with your story again. So you were in DC, you were working in the house, and then you went back to Texas and worked for the governor. What was that like going from Washington and the legislative branch to Texas and the executive branch,
Chris Jones
Governor Richards was an amazing political figure. And there was the second time she ran for election. She was running against a novice. But this novice happened to have the last name is Bush. And it was a changing of the winds in Texas politically, when it was moving from centrist Democrat to centrist Republican. And it was a tough election. It was the midterms, the Bill Clinton election, so there was a little bit of backlash against him against the gun gun laws that he was passing. And so she was a little bit of a celebrity. And the news was there, the media was there, they were covering her.
But unfortunately, the tides of change, she couldn't swim against and she lost that election. But being at a state level, and seeing her up close, just an amazing political leader. She was very much ahead of her time with progressive issues, making sure that women, that LGBT people, and minorities were in government. It wasn't just a slogan of talking about it. She made a point of making sure that government looked like its citizens. But she was an amazing leader, she lost and out of that loss. She went on to do you know, government relations and consulting and lobbying and get up she was certainly happy with the next stage of her life.
But I was at a turning point, at a pivot point. I was 31. I had had this amazing experience in the military, got my college degree, worked on Capitol Hill, grew up in politics, but I was again trying to figure out my next step. I had done temporary staffing as a fallback job off and on, it was my equivalent of hosting or waitressing or Uber driving or whatever you want to call it. So I thought, temporary staffing, politics, politics, temporary staffing, and it was like that Reese's Peanut Butter commercial, you know where I put them together and I thought there ought to be a staffing agency that had the model of a staffing agency, but it was like a campaign.
Back then we didn't use the word startups, we didn't say, startup or dot com. My vision is really to make it full of energy, enthusiasm to give it the branding of a campaign and the vibe and energy, which is kind of what a startup is, right? A startup runs hard, they deliver a product, and then they fold the tent, and they move on to the next product, you know, V dot two.
I came back to Washington a second time and things really kind of started to align for me. People started to help me with a business plan, I found a silent partner. And things started to click, and people got it immediately, a value added smart temp that can help me with research, legislative tracking, press comms admin, Lobby Day, or conference, you don't have to say another word, send me the information.
So it's been a solid, ongoing enterprise since 1998. We've placed people for over 1 million hours, for over 3,000 temp to perm and perm placements. And it continues to just go strong.
We have another division, which does executive search. And as I've gotten older, you know, my attempts have gotten older, and my clients have gotten older. And the talent that I'm working with has gotten older as well. So I've kind of split off to do kind of retained search, but PoliTemps continues to have great years. We did a really amazing year last year as well.
Chris Oates
Your website says that it's not just we will place people in campaigns for this party or this division. It is the political ecosystem. And that's something that people don't necessarily understand that politics isn't just the folks that we elect who are in office in terms of what how it runs. It is a whole array of journalists, nonprofits, federal or other governmental agencies, as well as the elected branches. So to what in your mind kind of is the world of politics that you work in? And how do you kind of define it?
Chris Jones
That's a great question. Think of it as an umbrella. So we don't work with the federal government, we don't work with Department of Agriculture, we don't work with, you know, US Department of Defense. We work with adjacent industries, we rarely work with Capitol Hill, because they have an abundance of cheap, ready talent. And we don't work with campaigns directly. We will work with adjacent industries. So we would work with a public relations agency that has a contract with the Census Department.
Or we might work with a political consultant that advises Republican Senators on their fundraising and direct mail strategies, or we would work with, you know, a political media firm that works with members of Congress, nonprofits, public relations, firms, trade associations, lobbying and law firms, as well as corporations. So that's kind of the ecosystem. And they touch politics, public affairs, public relations, in some way. And that's where we kind of provide a value added staffer.
Chris Oates
And so what would you be your advice be for folks that are interested in politics, but maybe they don't want to work for very little money on Capitol Hill? Or, you know, they we already know how you apply for the federal government elsewhere. But what would be your advice for someone who's looking to get into this world? But again, not in those particular agencies or departments?
Chris Jones
Yeah, I would say the first thing is start, you know, whether you're in Des Moines or Charlotte or Charleston or Tallahassee or Santa Fe, start to get involved and start to volunteer on your local political campaigns. It could be a city council race, it could be a state representative. It could be a member of Congress. It could be a US senator or governor, but start to talk to people and figure out how you can knock on doors or do phone banking, or understand a little bit about the political system.
Those jobs, they need people. They love young people and old people. It's important for people to feel that they're involved in sort of our body politic. When you have this whole recount, and ballot machines, and voter integrity stuff, the thing that came to me was these people questioning have obviously never worked in politics. They've never seen what the registrars and the voting people and the commissioners have to do, how hard it is, how mundane and also how it has integrity. So start to get involved, start to volunteer, and start to sort of make your mark and figure out what you want to do in these capacities.
Chris Oates
That's really good advice. It's always good for more people to get involved, because we need more people in civic life. But before you go, I've got three questions. First, what is working in politics actually, like West Wing, Veep, or House of Cards?
Chris Jones
That’s a good question. It's probably closer to that movie with Michael Douglas, the American President. It can be very boring. It can be also very exciting. A lot of people come into it for the wrong reasons, fame or money, as opposed to trying to contribute and trying to learn and help the process as well. But, you know, it's like these television shows, but it's also not like these television shows as well.
Chris Oates
What was your best day, kind of in the political world? Professionally speaking, I mean.
Chris Jones
That's hard to say, I mean, I think it's when you get your job, or your first paid position.
One thing that is important is helping other people. So when you're climbing up the ladder, you're gonna have some people that don't want to help you, there's an expression, you know, in Washington, if you want a friend, get a dog. So you're gonna have some people that go out of their way to help you. I had a Chief of Staff, he got my resume. And, you know, he looked at my resume and said, you went to Texas Tech, you're in the military, you were the Young Democrats, there must be just one of you out there, it's such a rarity. And he was very kind. I keep in touch with them. He was a chief of staff to Lloyd Benson, Senator from Texas. And then there's some people that almost go out of their way not to help you. And you just have to remember to help other people as you're going up. Because as they say, when you go back down, you're gonna see them going back down, so help people be kind. But my best day was probably when I got a real job in Washington that paid.
Chris Oates
And finally, what is one thing you wish someone had told you before you started in this entire world, which I guess for you is very young, to, let's say, professionally, speaking after college when you first got started?
Chris Jones
Expand your contacts, expand your network, make friends, expand your relationships, talk to people try to get to know people that are like you. That's so important.
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