Posted on 02/12/2005 6:26:33 AM PST by shortstop
WASHINGTON - Clutching leather briefcases packed with resumes and letters of recommendation, young men in suits and women in stockings and heels stood in the rain outside H20, a waterfront nightclub.
Inside, more lines formed in front of tables, where employers conducted five-minute interviews. Many organizations at the recent Democratic job fair didn't even have jobs to offer, but they came anyway to get names of possible future applicants.
About 1,500 out-of-work Democrats sought jobs from 100 employers. Some had initially been turned away, then put on a wait list to get inside.
Times are tough for Democrats in this unmistakably Republican town. Three months after the bruising November election, thousands of Democrats - mostly ex-campaign staffers and out-of-work congressional aides - are still searching for jobs.
Many moved back in with parents. Some lost their health insurance. Others applied for unemployment benefits.
It's always difficult after an election, but this year has been brutal. It's not just the Republican White House and the more-Republican Congress.
In Washington, everyone is partisan - including employers. Republican lobbying groups, Republican think tanks, Republican polling firms, they're all flourishing.
"It's bad this time. Every time you lose, it's bad," said 31-year-old Mike Dorsey, whose job as deputy research director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended in January. "But it's the nature of the business. You kind of know it's coming, but this is one of the hardest things."
Matt Chiller worked for Rep. Peter Deutsch, a Democrat from South Florida who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. It has been six weeks since he lost his job.
Now he spends much of his time, unshaven, watching old action movies, including The Great Escape, in his apartment just outside Washington.
He has been on some job interviews, but it hasn't gotten much further. Meantime, Chiller applied for unemployment benefits.
"No one has left the city," he said. "This is what we do. We can't imagine doing anything else."
Chiller, 27, hopes to snag a job on Capitol Hill, but it's tough: There are fewer Democrats in Congress, and the new ones often hire their campaign staffs. He estimates 200 to 300 people apply for each opening on the Hill.
He worked in Florida for Al Gore in 2000, and it took him four months to find a job after the Democratic presidential nominee lost. It's worse now.
Each day Chiller, who came to Washington after graduating from the University of Maryland, scours a half-dozen Web sites that list jobs. Publications that cover Congress, including Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call and the Hill, have online job listings, as do the House, the Senate and Web sites created by former Hill staffers, including HillZoo.com.
But most jobs listed these days are for interns.
Other groups, including EMILY's List, which helps female candidates who support abortion rights, try to match potential employees and potential employers. And those who worked for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's campaign have formed their own network to help each other find jobs.
"There just aren't enough jobs to go around so you have a ton of people fighting for jobs," said Dorsey, who is moving to Minnesota, where he will house-sit for his parents until he finds another job.
Nathan Fenstermacher, 26, was a legislative aide to former Rep. Barron Hill of his home state of Indiana. Hill lost to a Republican in November, and Fenstermacher lost his job in January.
Like others, Fenstermacher had been on the losing end of a race before, and he knows to save money for the times he is out of work. After working on an unsuccessful campaign in Indiana in 2002, he moved to Washington and landed a job on Capitol Hill.
"It's a Republican town. They control both branches of Congress and the White House," Fenstermacher said. "It's worse now than two years ago. There are just fewer jobs."
Fenstermacher lives with six other people in a house in Adam's Morgan, a young, lively part of Northwest Washington where rents are high. He is paying his rent with money he saved in the last couple years, but he can't afford to go without work for much longer.
"Another election is around the corner," Fenstermacher said. "It always is."
The job prospects for Democrats looked so bleak after the midterm elections in 2002 that the Democratic National Committee and other similar organizations put on the first job fair.
But those organizers were in the business of getting politicians elected, not finding jobs for the unemployed. So Democratic consultant Amy Pritchard formed a group to help out-of-work staffers.
Democratic GAIN - Grassroots Action Institute & Network - offers career advice and training, financial planning and help holding onto health insurance. Almost 7,000 resumes are posted on its Web site.
"Almost every industry has an association but we didn't," said Pritchard, 38, who moved to Washington to work for Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor who ran for president in 1988. "We definitely filled a void."
In December, Democratic GAIN held the job fair at the nightclub; it was similar to the one held two years ago but on a much larger scale.
Democratic polling companies, nonprofit organizations and political action committees held interviews. Some of the lines were longest at tables of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's PAC, the Democratic congressional and senatorial committees and the DNC.
For those eager to work on another campaign, there weren't as many choices. Only Virginia and New Jersey have statewide races this fall.
Some already were looking to 2006, when races will be held for a slew of governors and senators and the entire House of Representatives is up for election.
Those who attended were generally younger staffers who worked for Kerry, other campaigns or many of the groups that formed to get out the Democratic vote.
Ken Stramsa, president of Strategic Telemetry, a Democratic firm that works with campaigns, collected 75 resumes that day. He hired a data analyst the day after and is holding onto other resumes for jobs down the road.
Andrew Poag, 26, was communications director in West Virginia for America Coming Together, one of the many groups that tried to get out the vote in November for Kerry. His job ended Nov. 15.
Living in New Jersey, Poag traveled to Washington to attend the job fair, where he handed out 18 resumes. Copies went to Clinton's PAC, the Democratic Governor's Association and the New Jersey State Assembly.
A week ago, he started his new job at the Democratic state committee of New Jersey. Soon he'll move out of his parents' house.
Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Staff writer Anita Kumar can be reached at kumar@sptimes.com or 202 463-0576.
Well, well, well. Just cry me a river of tears. What were these people doing BEFORE the "bruising November election"? Sucking on the government's nipple would be my bet.
Andrew Poag, 26, was communications director in West Virginia for America Coming Together, one of the many groups that tried to get out the vote in November for Kerry. His job ended Nov. 15.
Guess he didn't a very good job to get out the vote for Kerry. His job wasn't a job after all. What was he thinking?? This "job" was going to continue after the election??? DUH!!
Cry me a river full of tears ping.....
The Democrats are the party of the elitists and the government employees, not the working people.
Read this thread Star.... Good for a belly laugh....
GET A REAL JOB, YA BUMS!
You average unemployed illegal alien is worth more to a potential employer than these overeducated donks.
They lie, cheat and steal for a living. Who would want to hire them?
Well, let's see... Union Organizations, The Mafia, The MSM,...
You get the point...
Fewer jobs for DEMOCRATS, that is.
This is a happy article. :o)
Sits unshaven watching old movies?
What? He's too GOOD to flip burgers?
When you have to, you take ANY job. Of course these socialists think the country OWES them a living.
Oh mi gosh! I am totally snickering here!! Thanks for the Saturday morning laugh, losers! LOL!!!
DUmmie FUnnies 02-11-05 ("Is anyone else tired of living like this?")
These people have no idea how funny they are! I suspect there will be a spike in law school applications.
I read this article or one extremely similar about a month age.
After I read this, I heard, one of those things heard only once, that many of out-of-boss congressional staffers were being absorbed into existing congressional and senatorial staffs. When whatever committee meets to allocate the budget for each office, the Republican proportion should have gone up, and the Dem proportion gone down by the same amount. The Dems would not agree to the downsizing of their budgets.
I did not get amy more details of how that was resolved, but would bet that the Dems beat the Rs in the final budget resolution.
The glorious misadventures of a misspent youth.
demoRAT is to JOB as OIL is to WATER
ROFL!! I especially love the "Valium lick" mental image!
Nah, the mob is pretty conservative and patriotic...back in WW2 Lucky Luciano helped keep the docks on the East Coast sabotage-free and he and Vito Genovese helped US Army Intel in the invasion of Sicily.
COBRA isn't free, so I guess they didn't feel like using their "savings" to pay for it.
Let me see, I couldn't find a job in IT, so I worked at a call center, hardware store, convenience store and a print shop.
I did whatever it took to make a few bucks. During that 2.5 year period, even though I qualified for unemployment, I collected a total of 8 weeks worth.
My point being, a job is a job, even if it is outside your so-called profession.
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