Capitol Hill: Oscarson

By Kristin Coyner, CQ Staff

The Senate Daily Press Gallery accredits print journalists who cover Congress and negotiates on their behalf with the Capitol bureaucracy. One of the longest-serving gallery staff members, Wendy Oscarson, is retiring after nearly 30 years of managing news conferences, committee coverage and floor debates.

Oscarson (BILL CLARK / CQ ROLL CALL)

Oscarson, who until last Friday was a media relations coordinator, started at the gallery for radio and television journalists in 1983 — the same year the Internet was established and mobile phones grew common. Both would revolutionize journalism. “When I first started, we would take three or four pages of phone messages for the press because there were no cellphones,” she recalls. “Every desk in the gallery is a newspaper’s office, and senators would call to give them quotes or reactions to the legislation on the floor.”

Oscarson had just finished studying business administration at the University of Florida in 1983 and got the job through her neighbor, Senate Sergeant-at-arms Howard S. Liebengood. She moved to the print gallery in 1986.

Oscarson still loves what she does, but pay freezes for congressional staff and the Senate’s ever-later debates have weighed on her. In her years on the Hill, she has become a student of Senate parliamentary procedure, and she says that even now there are rules invoked that she’s never seen before. “The Senate is like chess. It’s so masterful with rules and dynamics and the way that they’re applied or used.”

Oscarson’s retirement setting will be starkly apart from the Capitol; she is moving to Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach.

Rory Cooper

The communications director for the Heritage Foundation, Rory Cooper, joined the staff of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor , a Virginia Republican, last month as communications director. Cooper succeeded Laena Fallon, who joined the Financial Services Forum this summer.

Cooper, 35, has Hill experience, having worked at the National Republican Congressional Committee for the 2000 election. He spent seven years in the George W. Bush administration after that, with jobs at the Energy Department, NASA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

At Heritage, Cooper ran the conservative think tank’s messaging and edited its Morning Bell e-newsletter.