Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler is a 34-year-old Washington state Republican beginning her second term in Congress. The youngest female representative in Congress, she won't be old enough to run for president until November. But the people she relies on to carry out the day-to-day work of legislating make her look like an old hand.
"We knew them, so we might not have a lot of Capitol Hill experience, but they can tell us where the bathroom is," said Chief of Staff Casey Bowman, a former public relations consultant who took his first job on the Hill after working for her campaign.
Freshmen reformers in Congress avoid Hill experience in staffing →
When it came to hiring, "first was a willingness to serve constituents back home, and there was not a lot of weight put on having people who had been part of what was really a dysfunctional [Washington] culture," Mr. Bowman said. "You can always ask a question and learn what you need to know in the Capitol, but the knowledge of what people know back home is really hard to replicate."
Freshmen reformers in Congress avoid Hill experience in staffing →
