Office Space
When newly-elected members of the U.S. House first come to Washington, they participate in a lottery to determine what office they’ll have. When your name is drawn, you get a chance to select from the offices that are open. After you’ve been there a while, you get the chance to move to another office, as you gain seniority.
Iowa third district Congressman Zach Nunn began this, his first term in office, in office number 1232 of the Longworth House Office Building. He’ll move out of that space soon, now that he has more seniority.
Office 1232 was once held by Michigan’s Louis Rabault…who was first elected in 1934 and died while in office in 1961.
One of the newly-elected members is Michigan’s Tom Barrett; Louis Rabault was his great grandfather.
Congressman-Elect Barrett sent a note to his fellow newbies, asking for a favor. He told his new colleagues it would mean a lot to him to be able to have the same office his great grandfather did. Rabault actually used three different offices during his long tenure, all apparently on the same floor of the building. So he asked them to please not select one of those offices so he could have a family connection with an ancestor he never knew.
In a rather considerate show of bipartisanship, everyone whose name came up before Barrett’s made sure to not take any of Rabault’s offices. Then came Tom Barrett’s turn, and he proudly selected 1232 Longworth…the one currently used by Iowa’s Zach Nunn, and the one Barrett’s great grandfather used for the last several years of his tenure in Congress. The picture of him posing in front of it is rather sweet.
By the way, that was the office Louis Rabault used when he crafted his most famous piece of legislation…the one which added the words “under God” to the pledge of allegiance.
Let’s hope the bipartisan spirit that led to Tom Barrett getting Office 1232 continues into the next Congress…and let’s hope the new guy accomplishes something as meaningful as his ancestor did.
