The presidential campaign office of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is in a rather nondescript building in northwest D.C. on the same block as Metro Center, not far from the White House. Erring on the side of caution I arrived for my first day definitely over-dressed for a campaign. I quickly realized it is not safe to wear a tie when you are spending a significant amount of time operating a paper shredder.
Much of my first week was spent stuffing envelopes, making hundreds of phone calls, putting together office furniture, making copies, typing lists, running to the post office and buying the office football at City Sports. While these were not exactly the most intellectually stimulating tasks, I made sure to keep my eyes and ears open and quickly learned the lay of the land.
The senator's D.C. campaign staff is broken up into several teams. Most of my interaction was with the fundraising, Internet and research branches of the staff.
The fundraising team works at a frenetic pace to organize events, contact supporters and fill seats at the senator's numerous fundraisers across the country. As interns we did a lot of data entry and assembly, as well as spent many a day in the conference room phone bank making calls for the fundraising team. We essentially made the same phone call hundreds of times to confirm invitations with donors. This sometimes got to be a bit of a drag, but every so often the calls would be broken up by an especially enthusiastic supporter, or by a call to a famous VIP. We also got to know each other better by chatting while we were on hold navigating the many mazes of secretaries and assistants.
After my first week I quickly got an opportunity to do some more interesting work. My first big assignment came from the research team who handed me a legal pad as I walked off the elevator one morning and told me to hike over to the Washington Hilton to watch and take notes on another candidate's policy speech. Sitting alongside the press corps I feverishly took notes and quickly learned that it's tougher than it looks to keep up. I then prepared a summary for the research team.
Apparently the team was impressed with my work. From then on I was frequently recruited to track speeches, conduct historical research, catalogue video from the campaign trail and manage the dozen or so TiVo's tuned into everything from C-SPAN to Fox News and every other news outlet under the sun.
Unlike many of the college students that work in Washington each summer, I lived at home and interning was my second job. I'm still not completely decided on whether the benefits of free rent and home-cooked meals outweighed missing much of the storied D.C. intern happy hour scene, but balancing my time inside an office with coaching summer league swimming each afternoon was a definite perk.
Coaching did cut my internship a little short -- I only spent the first five weeks of the summer with the campaign -- but I left with the feeling I'd learned a good deal. Aside from the obvious honing of my typing skills, increasing my Xerox machine prowess and perfecting my polite, persuasive telephone persona, I learned a lot about the mechanics of a presidential campaign.
Everyone from the senior staff to the interns and often the senator himself shared a lot of the same office space and there were very real benefits to the close quarters. While not really "in the room" I did get to watch as policy and strategy that had been debated in the office unfolded on the floor of the Senate and in the Democratic debates. It was not only enlightening, but a real thrill to watch the senator on television one day and work with him in the office the next.
My internship experience was rewarding on a number of levels. I left with a job offer and enough experience to hit the ground running in politics after I graduate in December. Overall, as far as internships go, I couldn't have asked for much more than that.
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