As lotteries go, Jaime Herrera hit the jackpot Friday.
Sure, it’s a modest 840 square feet. But “it’s a little bigger than my Olympia office,” the 32-year-old congresswoman-elect said in an interview from Washington, D.C. “And I focused on getting as many chairs as possible.”
She said she wants to make sure she has enough places for constituents to sit when they visit her in the nation’s capital.
Herrera drew the number 8 in the contest among nearly 100 House freshmen for decent, or at least minimally acceptable, office space. That allowed her to choose one of the best of the soon-to-be-vacant offices on Capitol Hill.
She chose Room 1130 in the Longworth House Office Building, a ground-floor office near a building entry that offers a direct route to the U.S. Capitol.
“I was looking for proximity to one of the entryways,” she said. “When guests make it to the Capitol, I want them to find me.”
There’s room, she says, for a reception area, desks for her legislative assistants, and one for her.
“I could have looked for more space, but I didn’t want to be in the corner of a building that is hard to find.”
Herrera and her husband also went apartment-hunting Friday. They hope to find something eight to 12 blocks from the Capitol that’s “clean, efficient, close.”
After a week of orientation, they were heading back today to Vancouver, where Herrera and her transition team will spend the next few weeks hiring her staff. She’ll get the key to her office Jan. 3 and be sworn in, along with the largest House freshman class in decades, Jan. 5.
Herrera has decided to keep her district office at the O.O. Howard House on the Fort Vancouver National Site, where U.S. Rep. Brian Baird will be vacating his office space, for the first six months. She said she wants to assess “where in Clark County is the best place to have an office,” and, presumably, whether she can afford the rent.
As a long-distance commuter from the West Coast, she’ll get a budget of about $1.5 million annually for staff, furniture, travel and district office expenses.
Herrera has made good use of her week in D.C. She’s been introducing herself to Republican “would-be committee chairs,” and also ran into U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the next House speaker, whom she met when she worked for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers on Capitol Hill.
“I think he remembered my face,” she said.
But if she wants to lobby for a specific committee assignment, she said, she won’t be so gauche as to approach him directly.
“I will talk to his staff.”
Kathie Durbin: 360-735-4523 or kathie.durbin@columbian.com.
