Painful Work Remains for Capps’ Staff

His nameplate has been removed from the door, and his credit card is no longer accepted at the House canteen. When his staff answers the telephone, they offer only an anonymous, “Office of the 22nd District.”

Inside, the office of Rep. Walter Capps (D-Santa Barbara) is just as he always kept it--immaculate. But the calendar above his desk is stuck on October while time marches on.

Two weeks after Capps’ sudden death of a heart attack as he flew back to the capital from a weekend in his district, his eight Washington staff members come to work every day but have no boss.

There are no more speeches to write, no policy to push, no frenzied meetings regarding last-minute changes to the end-of-session budget bills. When the bells ring and the lights go off to signal roll call votes, nobody flinches. There is no congressman to find and hurry to the floor.

Instead, they have been consumed with the tedious details of death: planning first the funeral, then memorial services--one tomorrow in the capital, three others on California’s Central Coast--then packing up pictures and books and files collected during Capps’ 10-month tenure in office.

According to House rules, they must work until the vacancy is filled, but be ready to roll the day after a new member is elected, perhaps as soon as mid-January.

“These two weeks, when I have not paid the slightest of attention to legislative business, has been the busiest time of my Hill career,” said chief of staff Jeremy Rabinovitz, who previously ran the offices of New York Democrats Steven Solarz and Carolyn Maloney.

“There’s a constant work element to all this,” said Rabinovitz, 36, who has worked in Congress a dozen years. “This is the most personal grief-stricken moment, and at the same time it’s a very public event.”

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Officially, Rabinovitz and the others now work for the clerk of the House, Robin Carle. On Friday, they shipped boxes of new stationery with Carle’s name on it to the California office; Capps’ letterhead goes to the recycling bin, save a few copies for the scrapbook.

The staff can continue helping constituents whose “casework” is navigating the federal bureaucracy, and handle mundane tasks like getting visitors tickets for White House tours or flags that once flew over the Capitol.

But all of a sudden, they have no politics. They have no positions on issues or legislation. They have no upcoming election, no ribbon-cuttings, no press conferences.

And, depending on what happens in a yet-to-be-scheduled special election, they may soon have no jobs. “My grief over the loss of Walter is 100 times more powerful than any professional anxiety I might have,” Rabinovitz insisted. “This is a good staff, with good people, who will get good jobs.”

Five of the eight D.C. employees came from other Hill offices. Three hail from the 22nd District: Blake Selzer was the San Luis Obispo field coordinator for Capps’ campaign; Alishya Mayfield and Thu Pham met Capps, a former religious studies professor, when they were students at UC Santa Barbara.

So far, none has left. They say they aren’t even looking.

But Gene Smith, a Hill veteran whose former boss, Gillis Long (D-La.), died in office in 1985, said that will probably change soon.

“It’s devastating. . . . At the very moment when you’re grieving a profound loss in your life, you’ve got to be looking for a job,” said Smith, now chief of staff to Los Angeles Democrat Howard Berman.

“What you’re really doing during the day is running off copies of your resume and calling people,” she recalled. “The casework for the district seems a lot less important than your own casework.”

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In all, 792 of 9,657 House members--8.2%--have died in office, according to the legislative research service. In the upper house, 292 of 1,843 senators--15.8%--failed to live out their terms.

Capps, who squeaked into office last year in one of the nation’s most closely watched races, was the second member to die this year; Texas Democrat Frank Tejeda succumbed to brain cancer in February.

Eighteen members of Congress have died in plane crashes since 1928. One senator, Oregon’s Edward Baker, was killed in the Civil War. Another, California Democrat David Broderick, was fatally wounded in 1859 in a duel with the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court, David Terry. Two House members dueled in 1838--Maine Democrat Jonathan Cilley died and William Graves, a Whig from Kentucky, returned to the Capitol.

And while Capps’ time in Washington was short, he set no records.

Robert Coffey (D-Pa.) served only four months before dying in a plane crash in 1949; Douglas Elliott (R-Pa.) committed suicide in 1960, two months after being sworn in. The shortest serving senator was J. Melville Broughton (D-N.C.), who had a heart attack in 1949 after only 65 days.

None of this, of course, reduces the shock or pain for the staff of the 22nd District of California. Each day, staffers say, is a mix of grief and laughter, as memories of a man they loved flood back.

Rabinovitz met Capps nearly a year ago, when Rabinovitz gave a speech to new members in the Cannon caucus room. Tomorrow, during Capps’ memorial service, Rabinovitz will give a speech in the same room, with an “entirely different purpose.”