March 26, 2008 — A crowd of teens talks excitedly in the lobby of the congressional office as Delegate Donna M. Christensen sweeps in with one of her staff members on this cold morning in late February, one flurry of activity meeting another in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
Heidi Hafker, a 17-year-old from nearby Vienna, Va., has returned to say hello and get a group photo with her friends and Christensen. The blond high school student worked with Christensen last summer, helping to prepare for —
"What did I help prepare for, Shelley?" Hafker asks Shelley Thomas, a Crucian with gray locks who serves as scheduler and adds major island flavor to Christensen's office.
"The National African-American Youth Initiative," Thomas answers, dropping the "H" when she pronounces "Youth."
Hafker's father, who works for the CIA, takes a couple of quick snapshots in Christensen's office. It's a room full of snapshots and formal portraits: Here's the congresswoman with George and Laura Bush, Nelson Mandela, Harry Belafonte, Bill and Hillary Clinton — the latter her choice for president in 2008. Behind her desk, a table full of family photos contrast with the shots of the rich and famous.
Decades ago Christensen, a New Jersey native, would visit Washington with her own father, then a U.S. attorney. A picture on the wall behind her desk shows her as a young woman in white gloves shaking hands with yet another president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. "When Kennedy was in office I was in college, so I wasn't able to come then," she says.
Christensen went on to med school, and would eventually become the first female physician in Congress, and the first woman to represent an offshore U.S. territory. Health issues remain close to her heart — she speaks with pride about recent successful efforts to get federal funding for AIDS extended throughout the Caribbean. Currently serving her sixth term, Christensen chairs the House Subcommittee for Insular Affairs, and she just went with a delegation to American Samoa, way past Hawaii in the South Pacific.
The day before, she flew halfway around the world to return to the capital in time for a V.I. Day Celebration. The lines stay blurry in her line of work, night bleeding into day, work bleeding into time off. So if this isn't precisely a day in the life of a congresswoman, call it a few hours in the life, a brief snapshot from a congressional career that now spans more than a decade.
Back to School
Even without the teenagers in her office to overstate the obvious, Congress feels a lot like high school. There's plenty of walking down crowded hallways. There's a cafeteria (several of them, actually) when lunchtime rolls around. Bells ring throughout the buildings to tell people when to move from one room to the other — for representatives, the bells toll when it's time to head to the House floor for a vote.
As a delegate from a U.S. territory, Christensen can vote for amendments to bills, but not the bills themselves. Her vote counts only when the full House converges — also known as the Committee of the Whole.
"I get to shape how the final bill is written, but I don't get to vote on the bill," she says. "I go over if there's a really important issue. I go over if I need to speak with someone — it's a good place to catch people, especially people you don't see every day."
Otherwise Christensen spends a great deal of time walking down endless hallways and tunnels, back and forth between the Longworth building, the Rayburn building, the Hart Senate Office Building and the Capitol, traversing underground passageways that take her past Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, onto an elevator with California Rep. Henry Waxman and into a subcommittee meeting with Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo.
"I don't know how, but I'm gaining weight," Christensen says as she hustles down a long tunnel to the Capitol, past student paintings from every corner of the United States and its territories — including one called "Mixed Feelings" by Irene Cruz from the Virgin Islands. She wears a comfortable business outfit and loose, slip-on clogs.
Fortunately, no one expects representatives to have perfect attendance on their daily schedules. On this Wednesday, Christensen has five pages of potential activities laid out, and no mere mortal could attend them all — even if they didn't start late and finish later, as they often do. Despite her grueling travel schedule the day before, the congresswoman started her day at 7:30 a.m. in a conversational Spanish class in the Capitol.
"We watched a movie based on Castro's Cuba, and tried to talk about it in Spanish," she says.
The Spanish class caused Christensen to miss a meeting of the Hillary Clinton for President Committee at 8, but that's all right — she'll catch the next one at 5. The rest of the schedule careens between buildings and topics. There's a meeting of the Democratic Budget Group in Longworth to discuss "the long road toward Democratic priorities." There are meetings with Gov. John deJongh Jr. — in town for the previous night's awards ceremony and to take care of governmental business in the capital the following day — and various senators and congressmen to discuss economic and security issues. There are meetings closed to the press, including a Congressional Black Caucus meeting and a meeting of the Committee on Homeland Security.
Committees and Subcommittees
Christensen started her day excited at the prospect of formally opening the House session later in the morning. But that plan falls through when officials tell her staff that, as a non-voting delegate, she can open a meeting of the Committee of the Whole, but not a regular session.
"I went through the training, but they told me I wasn't eligible," she says, disappointment evident in her tone.
So it's on with the dense schedule that bears no resemblance to a routine, Christensen regularly checking her Blackberry for email and schedule updates and talking occasionally on the cell-phone headset clipped to her right ear. She'll spend most of her day alternating between meetings of the House Committee on Natural Resources — Christensen chairs the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs — and meetings with individuals and other members of Congress.
If you've ever been to a school board or town council meeting, you've got a pretty good idea what a congressional committee meeting looks and sounds like. When representatives aren't cross-examining high-ranking officials or hearing testimony from famous athletes or entertainers on a hot topic like steroid use in Major League Baseball, they're going about the daily business of the government, discussing in minute detail pending legislation and budget requests. Of course, the surroundings are more ornate, from the gold eagles on the ceiling down.
A pending vote related to tribal casinos has little bearing on the interests Christensen represents in the Virgin Islands, so her vote on the issue will be determined in part by weighing other interests. It's the way Congress has worked throughout it's history: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. In making voting decisions Christensen will weigh the wishes of a committee chairman against those of a coalition chairman, working to find a balance that will serve the territory when she needs support on a tax bill or
for the new school planned for St. John on National Park Service land.
After one meeting, Christensen speaks briefly with National Park Service Director Mary Bomar about the school issue. It's one of the key issues Christensen and her staff are focused on at the moment.
Echoes in the Halls
Christensen has disappeared into a closed Homeland Security meeting, and back at her office business carries on. A saleswoman calls to show furniture samples — the office is due for an upgrade. Shelley Thomas sings "Guantanamera" and a very slow rendition of "Bye Bye Birdie" in between phone calls, occasionally venting her frustration about people trying to tell her how to do her job: "People drive me crazy. Give me your job and you take mine, OK? People think they so important."
How long has Thomas worked for Christensen?
"Twelve. Long. Years."
She's joking … mostly. But always singing.
"Music is my high. I don't drink, I don't smoke. When I sing, I'm in another world."
Christensen returns, and it's another forced march to the Capitol, past statues of generals and chiefs, past real-life Pentagon brass and musicians playing in corridors. The little House subway comes to a halt, and out hop several white guys sporting buzz cuts and blue NASA jackets, looking like they've just arrived from 1962. When Congress stops feeling like high school, it starts to feel like a movie studio.
The congresswoman gets tied up in another closed meeting with the governor and a famous congressman to discuss more territorial business out of earshot of the media, so it's another hike past the statues and the soldiers, past failed presidential candidates and political legends before returning to the cold winter air and everyday life outside the halls of power. Abraham Lincoln walked these hallways, and so did Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, Adam Clayton Powell and Shirley Chisholm. Delegate Donna M. Christensen follows their ghosts through the Capitol as she goes about the business of the territory, and the nation.
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