After Beverly Hart decided she was going to leave her job as a congressional staffer, she posted a few lighthearted videos on TikTok about her job on Capitol Hill. Now, she has more than 29,000 followers on the app, where she posts a mix of the personal and the political.
She started gaining traction thanks to a game she and her former co-workers would play while waiting for coffee in the mornings — guessing staffers’ political parties based on their outfits or accessories. A Fjällräven backpack screams Democrat, she said, while a bowtie leans Republican.
In an endless sea of suits and blazers, Hart said posting on social media can help demystify what it’s like to work on Capitol Hill.
“There’s this conspiracy theory energy around, like, all politics is bad, everyone that works in it is evil,” she said. “So I think peeling back the curtain in any capacity is a good thing and showing there’s normal people who work in Congress who are passionate about the environment or foreign affairs or whatever issue.”
But posting has its pitfalls, too. If a staffer wants to make social media content like hers while still working on the Hill, they should make sure their office’s communications team is aware, Hart said. She also advised staff to avoid mentioning the names of their bosses.
“I feel like it could have affected my job,” said Hart, who left the House in 2022 after five years of working for Democrats. “It’s hard to get taken seriously, especially [as] a 28-year-old legislative director, so I’m already fighting an uphill battle. And as a woman, I was like, I’m just not gonna post, I’m not gonna risk it.”
As long-standing norms on the Hill collide with a younger generation of congressional staff, tension over how staffers should conduct themselves online has only grown, especially for Democrats grappling with larger questions about their party’s digital reach, how to keep up with Republican influencers who made waves in the last election, and how to meet voters and constituents where they are.
Michael Suchecki, spokesperson for the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, said in his eyes, social media for staff shouldn’t be too different from how members handle it — one account for official purposes and another for campaign or personal purposes.
“It’s still a work in progress for offices to recognize that those same distinctions should apply for staffing as well,” he said. “I think modern comms recognizes that we’re people, not just cogs in a machine. The best bosses are setting clear guidelines, empowering staff to show up as people.”
Each congressional office sets its own expectations for personal posting, and there is no official policy for all House or Senate staffers. Any blanket social media ban for staff would be “directly in violation of the very freedoms and goals that the party stands for,” he said.
One Democratic staffer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, described a recent culture shift, pinning it on the current political climate and a less productive Congress, at least legislatively speaking.
“There’s a greater relevance for people who are communicators,” the staffer said. “Congress is becoming less effective in the role that it’s supposed to do. And so I think that there’s this secondary role that it’s amassed, and if you are a new type of staffer, then maybe you’re going to be forging fewer bipartisan connections. Maybe you’re going to be more online.”
Thinking critically about why staff may want to post online on their own accounts in the first place is important, the aide said. “Do we want to have personal accounts to have certain ideas or policy goals more accessible, to have people agree with the policies and legislation that our bosses are trying to achieve? [Or] are we trying to create personal brands so that we can run consulting firms when we leave?”
According to Hart, a broader sea change could be coming to the Hill, which is powered by recent graduates working in entry-level positions like staff assistant or legislative correspondent.
“The younger, Gen Z generation is very much like, my job is not my life. So yeah, maybe I work in Congress, but I also have other interests, and I’m a multifaceted person. I think that’s kind of a good thing, and hopefully will make more young people civically engaged,” said Hart, who now works in government affairs.
Hart still makes TikTok videos, with recent ones offering ideas for political Halloween costumes or how staffers can ride out a government shutdown. Her current job sometimes takes her from New York back to the Hill, where she once spotted a crop of current congressional staffers looking at her posts.
As her videos started taking off, Hart said she got plenty of comments asking for advice about how to find a job on the Hill or what it’s like to work in politics.
“When I wanted to work on the Hill, I had no connections; I didn’t know anyone that worked there,” she said. “And so I was literally — this is aging me — looking at blogs. I was like, “how to work in Congress,” I was on Reddit threads.”
She hopes her videos give would-be staffers a glimpse of the human side of the Capitol.
“It felt like this really hard thing to break into,” she said. “So I feel like if I can provide information, or a little bit of a leg up to somebody who might not otherwise have it … and then they get an internship, I think that’s a great thing,” Hart said.
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