Madam President ✓

52. Chairwoman

Evelyn

   "This will not be your standard internship." I say to the new set of young faces standing in the common room of my office. "Before the bombing- I can't speak from experience obviously, some interns described it as the biggest regret of their life. The hours are long and the pay is shitty- expect that it will be until the budget committee responds to my request for an increase. That being said: if you survive the workload, having HOR( House of Representatives) intern on your resume will look fucking phenomenal- especially after what happened. What will look terrible is you quitting. So right here- right now, I am giving you an out."

I glance around the room. The ten-ish of them do the same, but not one steps out.

"Okay then-" I smile. "My chief of staff will assign you different tasks later. For now you can explore the office- get a feel of the place you'll spend about thirteen hours a day in the next six months. You all start tomorrow. Oh go on- he's not gonna shoot you unless you decide to attack me."

My government assigned bodyguard stands in the corner of the room now, eyeing them like a hawk. For a while, the secret service thought they'd be able to handle the monumental task of having people protect each member of the house and senate- but then they ran into an issue:

People. They ran out of people. Agents were retiring too fast in those months immediately following the bombing. This year's graduating class was large- but not enough to cover the presidential line of succession and us. So they had talks with the budget committee and treasury department, after which they came to the conclusion it would be cheaper money and people wise to hire a bodyguard for all five hundred and thirty seven of us( HOR+ the senate)- at seventy thousand dollars above minimum wage as an incentive.

"Well-" he coughs. "I won't shoot any of you unless you decide to plant bombs or attack someone without their verbal consent. Pretty simple rules to follow."

They relax a bit, and one by one start moving around. As the chairwoman of the judiciary committee, my office is a bit larger- with a front desk and everything. In the common area- a sitting room where I hold lots of meetings, large windows face the capital building - giving me a phenomenal view. There's a full kitchen, a security room, bathroom, my private office, one that fits my three senior staff- and the largest room for interns that do typical intern things- just way more of them.

Above my office door- a picture of me from 3 am on may 4th hangs. In it I'm clearly sleep deprived, my pantsuit is beyond wrinkled, and the tears streaming down my face make me look depressed- but those who were there that night know the full story.

We had just five and a half weeks- the shortest campaign window in history, to run for our respective offices. I'd already been thinking about running in 2022, but for some of my colleagues it was a last minute decision. For some of them- they decided with less than two weeks left; but with the way politics works they got zero breaks.

We had to file the paperwork to run. It would normally take a few months to get reviewed- but the president negotiated with state level officials across the country to speed the process up to just a few days. Then there was the matter of announcing our candidacy to the public- which was often rushed too.

I'd be lying to myself if I didn't say most people just voted based off of which letter was next to candidates names- in fact I'm almost certain I wouldn't have won otherwise. I did just four campaign events.

The way they handled forgoing primary elections was this: once two candidates from any one party had signed on, that was it. Nobody else could. The federal government temporarily suspended the fifty percent law common in a few states so we wouldn't have to deal with runoff elections and vacant seats on top of everything else.