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Working in Senator McConnell’s office could not have come at a more interesting time for me, as the recent Congressional elections have led to his transition into the role of Senate Majority Leader within the few months I have been employed there. It is this changing of position that has brought to light an interesting question: while he is in Congress, who exactly is Senator McConnell supposed to be representing?
When McConnell was the Minority Leader, the answer was quite simple. Calls I received at the office from the Senator’s Kentucky constituents seemed to hold more weight; out-of-state callers voicing concerns about different politicians and obscure issues were irrelevant to the casework the people in Senator McConnell’s office were working on every day. However, things began to change when the Republicans took the Senate.
Suddenly, most of the calls coming into the office were from other states—New York, North Carolina, and California. It was so strange to realize that national attention was now on Mitch McConnell, who used to be just a regular Senator from Kentucky. People were now calling for him to mend relations with the President, solve the ebola crisis, and pass bills in Congress. This was much different than the congratulatory messages and thanks for hardworking caseworkers that I had grown accustomed to answering calls in the office. I was beginning to get questions that I had no idea how to answer.
This experience has led me to consider Senator McConnell’s representative role in the Senate as a Senator from Kentucky versus the Majority Leader of Congress. Through the effects of this transition, I have seen the complications of check and balances and separation of powers that I have been learning about in Dr. Farrier’s Constitutional Thinking class play out in real life. I have learned that although Majority Leader McConnell can’t be expected to have all the answers vested in his office, he certainly has become a figure much more representative of the nation in the past few months. I look forward to seeing how a Congress under his leadership will function.
Alicia Humphrey is a sophomore McConnell Scholar studying political science and english. She is from Paducah, Ky.