Office Lottery Gives Newcomer Political Siberia With View

By DAVID LIGHTMAN
Washington Bureau Chief

December 3, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Chris Murphy got a congressional room at the top, but it was at the bottom of the barrel.

So much for the euphoria of winning a seat in Congress: The freshman Connecticut Democratic congressman-elect got the fifth-to-last pick in the congressional room lottery, meaning he gets an office that's harder to find than cheap seats at a UConn basketball game.

Murphy, who will be sworn in as the state's 5th District representative next month, will be making a daily climb to the fifth floor of the Cannon House Office Building, a drab slab of Capitol Hill where members often are neither seen nor heard.

"The belfry of the building," as Congress Watch lobbyist Craig Holman put it, is a floor where few powerbrokers go. In the 1940s, a young California representative named Richard Nixon occupied Room 528.

Walk onto floors 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the Cannon building - one of three buildings that lodge House members - and the place routinely bustles with members, constituents, lobbyists and politicians. The $500-plus-business-suit crowd buys Starbucks in the basement snack bar, gets shoes shined at the stand a few steps away and squeezes into four nicely appointed gold-trimmed elevators, often designated for "members only."

But those elevators won't take anyone to Murphy's roost. They don't go to the fifth floor.

To find the new kid on the block, visitors - and Murphy himself - must solve the maze that leads to one of two well-hidden other elevators. They're accessible through barely noticeable heavy gray doors and down a hallway.

Murphy and his staff laugh off the inconvenience. "It's like going to your freshman dorm room in college. Everyone's happy just to be there," said Sarah Merriam, his campaign manager and now transition director.

The other Connecticut rookie, Rob Simmons-slayer Joseph Courtney, got luckier. Because his skin-tight race with incumbent Simmons was not decided until eight days after the election, Courtney simply got the 2nd District incumbent's second-floor Cannon offices, close to the good elevators and minutes from the Capitol.

"There is a lesson in Joe Courtney's `landslide' victory: Win by a narrow margin, avoid narrow office space," said Brian Farber, Courtney's communications director.

Meanwhile, Murphy had to endure the room selection lottery, a biennial Washington marathon in which rookies quickly learn their place in this land where the old bulls rule.

The longer a member's been around, the higher they are on the office-selection list. Most want the more modern, more spacious Rayburn Building, so by the time the 49 freshmen got to pick, Rayburn was long sold out.

Rep. Nancy L. Johnson, the Republican ousted by Murphy, has a spacious office there, and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3rd District, is keeping her Rayburn suite.

But other members have other preferences. And like any real estate, good location is in the eye of the occupant.

Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, likes his suite in the Longworth building, a 73-year-old behemoth, because it's one floor down from the Ways and Means Committee meeting room, where he spends much of his time.

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District, is at street level of the same building, in a bright office that's a quick walk to the Capitol.

Murphy and the 48 other newcomers got the leftovers. On Nov. 17, they or their designees assembled in one of the spacious Rayburn rooms, and each drew what looked like a poker chip. On each chip was a number. Once they picked their numbers, members had about four hours to look over the available offices before making their choices.

Rep.-elect John Sarbanes, D-Md., got No. 1, and Rep.-elect Michael Arcuri, D-N.Y., got No. 49.

When Murphy drew 44, his staff knew it had little choice.

"We headed straight to the fifth floor of Cannon," Merriam said.

They knew what they didn't want: The two, dreaded fifth-floor suites that are cut in half; staffers from one side have to go out in the hall and use a separate entrance to see their co-workers.

The Murphy team kind of liked the room with the stained-glass window made by a member's wife, but in the end, they settled on 501. The view of the Cannon courtyard wasn't bad, and it seemed kind of spacious.

But it also seemed so distant from all of that action just a floor or two below. Not to mention a hike for a new congressman's constituents accustomed to Johnson's prime location.

"It can be hard for people to find," warned Jason Batts, a staffer for the current occupant, Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, who is moving to better digs.

Once they find it, constituents may wonder if they've stumbled into Washington's twilight zone.

Disembark one of the elevators, and all you see is a storage area on one side and three unmarked dull-white doors on the other. Pull open the correct door - and the visitor is in a hallway plagued by the monotonous humming of a heating unit.

The hall itself? A blizzard of beige.

Sleepy beige ceilings. Beige walls. Beige doors with numbers such as "96" or "48" that make no sense. And every now and then, a member's office, noticeable only because the doors bear signs and flags.

Murphy's suite-to-be is roughly 1,000 square feet chopped into three rooms. His personal office will be spacious - big enough for two couches and a large desk - and has its own bathroom. A middle room has a receptionist in front, a partition at his back, and the chief of staff and scheduler are squeezed into the remaining space behind it.

A third room is even more cramped; Marchant, the current occupant, has six people working in that room.

But the office has advantages, Batts said. "It's quiet up here, and you get more space. There's not as much hall traffic."

Some members like that, and they stay up here for years. Others learn fast to make the best of what they have. Batts points out that, unlike most other suites, the three rooms have individual thermostats.

Then he offers to show a visitor the really good stuff.

Batts crosses the hall to a cryptically labeled mystery room and shows off what he calls the staff "cage." A storage area with a full-size refrigerator, microwave and copier.

"You can only fit a mini-refrigerator in most of those other offices," he said.

Marchant, though, knows he wasn't sent here by his constituents just to eat well, so he's going to trade refrigerator space for more access to the action. Next month, he'll move into a ground-floor suite in Longworth.

"It's closer to the ATM," Batts explained, "and closer to [Marchant's] committee, where he spends a lot of his time."

And, he said, "It's better real estate."