Representation at Work: Life at the Office of Senator McConnell

Alicia Humphrey, Class of 2017

To me, politics has always seemed to be a realm far distanced from the familiarity and visibility of everyday life. As a young person in a small town in Western Kentucky, I always wondered why people got so worked up about elections; my life never seemed to change, regardless of whether Bush or Obama was in office. I didn’t know who my Senators or Representatives were, and I didn’t really care. I didn’t even feel the need to vote, because I shared a cliché feeling that is nevertheless common among many young people: that my voice doesn’t matter. The only thing about government and politics that interested me was the Constitution, because it could be printed out, quoted, and directly applied. Elected officials seemed too distant to make a materialized difference.

Even spending a summer in Washington, D.C. didn’t do much to change my apathetic attitude towards politics. Although I was so close to Capitol Hill and even visited the chambers of Congress several times, it still seemed to be a mystical place filled with men in suits too important to acknowledge my presence, much less help me with my problems or care about my concerns. Even many of the interns were too busy to notice anything around them. The attitude of self-importance and smothering rhetoric was largely impossible to ignore or escape, with few exceptions. Although Congress became more familiar in a literally sense and I was able to put faces with names after that summer, my government still felt like a machine run by celebrities who would never know nor care about regular people.

However, working in the office of Senator McConnell in downtown Louisville has been the driving factor in a gradual, yet notable, change in my perception of the political world and its inhabitants. Although it may seem like a tedious and unimportant task to work on constituents’ casework and answer their phone calls, it has completely materialized the way that democracy and representation works for me and improved my attitude towards the functionality of Congress. People call nonstop from not just the state, but the entire nation, to express their opinions and concerns to the Senate majority leader. I never could have expected the seriousness with which these comments are treated; every one of them is documented and passed on to the Senator rather than simply ignored or thrown away. Everyone’s voice counts. Furthermore, there is an entire room filled with cases from constituents all across the state, documenting problems ranging from Social Security issues to inability to acquire a visa to extremely troubling health situations. These people look to their Senator to help, and I am proud to be a part of the process of achieving this outcome. Although I have not been won over completely, I have had the chance to be a part of a beneficial outcome of politics. In this regard, I have finally found significant meaning in political representation from behind the desk of an intern in Louisville, Kentucky.

Alicia Humphrey is sophomore McConnell Scholar studying political science and English. She is from Paducah, Ky.