Staffer-to-Lawmaker Pipeline Grows With Walkinshaw’s Election

Virginia Democrat James Walkinshaw is not only joining the House, but becoming a member of an even more exclusive club — former congressional chiefs of staff who make it back to Capitol Hill as lawmakers.

Walkinshaw, 42, was elected Tuesday to fill a vacant northern Virginia district previously held by the late Gerry Connolly (D), for whom Walkinshaw served as chief of staff for 11 years. He’s likely to formally join the House in the coming days.

It’s perhaps fitting a recent Capitol Hill insider such as Walkinshaw will represent a Washington-area constituency whose residents include more than 50,000 federal civilian workers as well as lobbyists, contractors, and others whose work is linked to the federal government. Outside of the DC region, a Capitol Hill background might not count for much with voters, but in a district proximate to the Capitol, knowing how to move legislation matters to politically savvy voters.

“I’m running to represent a lot of the insiders,” Walkinshaw said at an exclusive Bloomberg Government roundtable last month. He started as Connolly’s chief of staff in 2009, at age 26, and left in late 2019 after winning a seat on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, where Connolly also served before joining the House. His experience made him the leading candidate to replace Connolly after the lawmaker died this spring from cancer.

While dozens of federal lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), have previous Hill experience working for a lawmaker or committee, Walkinshaw will be among just a handful in the 119th Congress to have served as a member’s chief of staff. They include:

• Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), a former chief of staff to then-Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) who succeeded him in the 2022 election.
• Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), for then-Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
• Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), for then-Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)
• Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), for Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and John Carter (R-Texas) and then-Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas)
• Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
• Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), for then-Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.)

Other former senior aides-turned-lawmakers include Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who in the 1970s was briefly then-Sen. Abraham Ribicoff’s (D) administrative assistant, a precursor to the modern chief of staff position.

Some have served as chief of staff to nonfederal officeholders or agencies. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) was the top aide to a South Dakota governor in the 2010s and is now seeking the state’s top executive job. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in the early 2000s was chief of staff to then-Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, who’s now Bennet’s Senate colleague.

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), a former chief herself, has spoken with Walkinshaw about the transition.

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Walkinshaw said he’d texted and talked with Trahan and also planned to reach out to Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the top Rules Committee Democrat who was a longtime aide to then-Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.).

A new member who’s been chief of staff can “hit the ground running,” Trahan said. “James knows how this place operates. He knows the committees, he knows the caucus structures, he knows the procedures and how the floor works.”

“There isn’t a single decision that a member of Congress makes without using your chief of staff as a sounding board,” she added.

Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Walkinshaw could benefit from the relationships he forged on Capitol Hill. “Legislators need other legislators to get things done,” he said.

Knowing Capitol Hill

Walkinshaw said serving as a House chief instilled in him the importance of the nitty-gritty necessities of staffing an office, setting its priorities, and helping constituents resolve problems with federal agencies.

“There’s the kind of nuts and bolts piece of it that I think is probably an underrated advantage,” Walkinshaw said.

He said new members are well-served by identifying specific areas of interest and developing expertise in them, rather than trying to become a pro on every single topic.

“I think a lot of new members come and it’s like the world is your oyster and there’s a million exciting things to do, and you want to do everything,” he said. “Having been through it and seeing the folks who are most effective are those who choose the issues that they want to focus on and become an expert in.”

For Walkinshaw, the niche issues include the “ongoing impacts on federal workers and contractors in northern Virginia” adversely affected by President Donald Trump’s campaign to downsize the federal workforce. He would rescind funds for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and require any president who wants to significantly restructure a federal agency to come to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

Transportation also is an abiding priority in a district where residents have among the nation’s longest commute times.

Walkinshaw said he expected to fill the vacancy on the Oversight Committee created by Connolly’s passing. Connolly was the ranking Democrat on the panel, which would assume a larger profile if Democrats win control of the House and can investigate Trump’s administration his final two years as president.

Walkinshaw also learned from his Hill days that members can be effective by attaching their standalone bills to larger, must-pass measures. He noted that one of Connolly’s top accomplishments, a 2014 law addressing information technology in the federal government, was enacted as part of an annual defense policy measure.

That measure was a bipartisan product from Connolly and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who led the Oversight Committee. Walkinshaw said the two men could be “butting heads and screaming at each other” in a morning committee hearing before working together quietly on the IT measure in the afternoon.

“You’re not going to be able to work with congressional Republicans very much,” Walkinshaw said, “but I think you still can find those under-the-radar issues.”