Jobs on the Hill

[TayTay]

05/20/2005 08:30:11 PM
Help Wanted: Dem Health Staffers Exit


A series of high-profile departures has left Democratic senators with a thin bench of senior staffers who focus on healthcare issues and is prompting some aides to worry that top-tier replacements might be difficult to find.
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The Democrats' top healthcare spot at the Senate Finance Committee will open next month, when widely respected and influential staffer Liz Fowler leaves to take a consulting gig at Health Policy Alternatives. Similarly, the Democratic staff at the Senate Budget Committee will be filling its top healthcare spot after Sue Nelson departs later this month for a job at the American Heart Association.

There are also healthcare openings in a number of members' offices. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has two openings on his healthcare staff, following the departure of veteran aide David Nexon and Dora Hughes, who moved to a spot in the office of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. There is an opening on the staff of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as well, after Heather Mizeur left to run for public office in Maryland. And Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is without a top health adviser.

Fowler, who is taking the job vacated by former Senate Finance staffer Julie James, said she, like many of her Republican and Democratic colleagues, is simply stepping off the hamster wheel of public service. "It's like dog years," she says of work on Capitol Hill.