Let's Begin.

Within hundreds of pages of text from my interviews with senior congressional staffers are hours of insightful commentary.

“The thing that frustrates me is the extremes run the parties now. You have to run so far to the right and so far to the left, and, you know, I was always a centrist. So I don't have a party. People in the middle are like on an island. We were deserted.”

- Senior congressional staffer

It’s been a while. An entire season has passed since my last post. And in that time, I’ve been sifting through hours… and hours… and hours of transcripts from my interviews with current and former senior congressional staffers. I’ve been analyzing the data and writing articles. At some point, they’ll be published. Ideally, in a journal without a paywall.

As I explained when I began this substack, my academic research focuses on legislative staff who sit where I once did, meeting with people and organizations from across the country intent to sway policy. As the gatekeepers of congressional information, they possess outsized power to amplify or bury certain voices in the process. And as the title of this substack describes, they serve as our nation’s “unelected representatives,” shaping policy without electoral accountability.

I was incredibly fortunate to be able to recruit a politically and ideologically diverse sample of participants for the research thanks to relationships I have from working on Capitol Hill, years running an NGO, and the Presidential Leadership Scholars program. I am tremendously grateful to each individual who spoke with me for being so generous with time and remarkably candid, while offering a perspective that we rarely get to hear.

Within hundreds of pages of text from my interviews are hours of thoughtful commentary from staffers - mainly chiefs of staff and legislative directors - who shared anecdotes and observations about the state of policy and politics in the United States.

While I cannot publish any personal details about these individuals, I can share some of their comments without attribution. Excerpts from interviews are alternatively surprising, reassuring, troubling, funny, and insightful. Taken together, they offer lessons about how the science community - and all of us - may be more effective at influencing national policy.

So with that in mind, I begin a series of posts where I’ll be sharing some of the most interesting quotes and broader commentary on several themes. I hope they might foster interesting discussions and promote a broader understanding of how information moves within the halls of Congress as well as who has the most influence on policy outcomes.

The results may surprise you. So I hope you’ll join the conversation here.