Jobs I've Had Part IV: the Lobbyist

When I returned to FSU for my junior year, I unfortunately had far less money saved from my summer job than I'd hoped. I had moved into an expensive apartment with my crazy friend Amanda (crazy like she went to a Bush concert while tripping and believed for over a year afterwards that Gavin Rossdale was in love with her crazy, not like haha wacky crazy) and knew that at some point during the school year I would need to get a job. Unfortunately I'd also gotten roped into running for and winning a Student Senate seat, thanks to Amanda signing us up to volunteer for a student political party and saying yes on behalf of both of us when they called to ask if they could run us as candidates instead. It was fun, but it was time-consuming and made even moreso because I met the man who I would almost marry, Gabe, while campaigning for the seat. So suddenly I had this extra-curricular activity and this boyfriend, and a full courseload, and no money. It was kind of a problem.

Luckily in January I heard about a friend who had been working for a lobbyist in the Florida legislature. He had fired another employee because she dared to get mononucleosis, which when you are working to accomplish lots of legislative priorities in a session that is only three months long is apparently an unforgiveable sin. The friend managed to talk me up as the sick girl's replacement, and I was hired for what at the time was the obscene rate of $10 per hour. There were two drawbacks: first, I'd have to be there every day at 7am to open the office. Second: I had to agree to work whenever he wanted, or I'd be fired just like the last girl. I was desperate for money, so I didn't mind. As added bonus, we were all paid under the table so I wouldn't have to worry about taxes.

This was about 1996, and Florida's legislature had just gone Republican for the first time in ages. The lobbyist I worked for was from South Florida and was also a political consultant to various Democratic politicians in the area. He was still coping with the change in the power structure, as were we all by extension. Most of my day was spent sending faxes on upcoming votes, important legislative priorities, and other news items to the various legislators' offices. Any fax that we sent out had to go to well over a hundred people, and it could take hours to complete. I remember on one occasion being called in early on a Saturday morning for a faxing project, and the document I was sending was so long that it took roughly 10 minutes to send to each recipient. I would type in the number, put the document in, and hit send and take a nap on the floor. When the fax was done it would beep, I'd wake up, and send the next fax. I did this for 10 hours straight.

At the time, many of the people who are now making a name for themselves nationally were in the Florida legislature. Charlie Crist, Katharine Harris, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and Robert Wexler all started out as state legislators and were serving in about this time period. Katharine Harris in particular stands out to me because she had this hilarious official portrait of herself hanging in the Capitol. She had her hair in a bun with a massive bubble at the top, looking like she was a librarian or a school principal (think the principal's hairdo in the movie "Pump Up the Volume"). Even then the rumor was that she was crazy. Charlie Crist was known as "Chain Gang Charlie" back then for repeatedly introducing legislation to bring chain gangs to Florida.

In addition to the endless faxing, we also ran various errands at the Capitol for the lobbyist. Often it was delivering donation checks or picking up revised versions of legislation. I recall two legislative initiatives that he was really working hard that session: viaticals, and tow trucks. I don't really recall the particulars on the tow truck issue but I know that a lot of tow truck owner organizations were donating a lot of money that session so they were obviously working some issue hard.

Viaticals were a much more compelling story. The viatical industry essentially buys up the beneficiary rights to a terminally ill person's life insurance policy and pays them out a portion of the proceeds in advance while they are still alive. The company makes its money when the person dies and they collect the full value of the policy. At the time, the industry was flourishing primarily by contracting with individuals with HIV. In the mid-1990's HIV was still considered a certain death sentence within a decade, and many of the individuals who were diagnosed did not have children or any other family that they particularly wanted their life insurance proceeds to go to. They argued powerfully and persuasively that they should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their life insurance now to make their remaining years more comfortable, rather than living austerely and then seeing the money go to next of kin once they were gone. It was a tough issue and there were strong opinions all around. We were lobbying in support of the industry and against legislation that would have prohibited viatical contracts in Florida, and the strategy was to put the real stories of people who had entered into these contracts before the legislators and allow them to hear how the availability of this option had improved their last few years of life. We were able to defeat the legislation, though the industry has been under continued attack in Florida since then.

This job was certainly interesting and it looked good on a resume, but it wreaked complete havoc on my life that semester. My work hours were supposed to be from 7-10, go attend classes until 1, come back and work until the lobbyist told me I was done. I frequently worked until 9 or 10, sometimes later. Instead of going to classes during my midday break, I was often so tired that I went home and slept from 10-1, and I started missing a ton of class time. I was also so constantly exhausted from waking up at 6 to get to work by 7 that I would fall asleep in my car at red lights, or at the table when we were out at a restaurant. Gabe and I went to a Barnes and Noble one Saturday and I ended up sleeping in a chair for three hours. I normally am awakened at the slightest noise or movement in the room, so I have to be completely wiped out to sleep in a public, bright place. It was then that I decided being a morning person was never going to be my thing.

I'd stopped going to all of my classes by midway through the semester, and I expected to fail all of them. This was supposed to be my last semester in school, because I had been on track to graduate a year early. Instead, I had flunked out. I was a complete mess about it, but sort of felt immobilized about the whole thing. I would ultimately take the next semester off, convince the school to let me retroactively withdraw from all of my Spring 1996 classes, and restore my GPA to its former respectability before applying to law schools in spring of 1997. I was extremely lucky in that regard, as law school would not have been an option if a flunked out semester had stayed on my transcript. It helped that my grades had been fantastic except for that one abberration, so I'd been able to argue that I was working too much and that it was completely out of character for me to miss so much class. Thankfully I was able to get my transcript fixed BEFORE my parents found out about that semester, so I could tell them that the situation was already taken care of. I thought they were going to absolutely lose their shit when they found out. To this day, I still have nightmares about that time in my life and all the anxiety I felt about having screwed my future.

After the legislative session ended in May, there was talk of me continuing to work part time for the lobbyist while he was down in South Florida, checking the mail and completing various administrative tasks. I didn't particularly want to keep working there, and I was not at all disappointed when the lobbyist never contacted me with details about continuing part-time work. I turned in my key and started looking for something else.


Rusty's posts inspired this topic, and Garrett and Thomas are writing about their former jobs as well. Join in the fun, and I'll link to you too!