Rep-elect jokes missing office lottery was ‘nonpartisan gesture’

Rep.-elect Brad Ashford says he considers being late to select his Capitol Hill office his “sort of nonpartisan gesture to my new colleagues.” 

The Nebraska Democrat spoke with ITK a day after we wrote how the soon-to-be lawmaker was tardy for Wednesday’s infamous office lottery at the Capitol. New members choose numbers to determine the order in which they can pick their work digs. 

“It wasn’t intentional,” Ashford said with a laugh, “We were at another meeting and misunderstood the timing.”

{mosads}After showing up late, Ashford went from being the 11th person to pick to being the 57th.

“In the end, I feel good about it, since it’s fine. It’s so incredibly unimportant to me, so I was glad the others got their picks,” the state senator said. “That’s the way we do things in Nebraska. We want everyone else to have a chance.”

But that doesn’t mean having one’s pick of congressional offices wasn’t a big deal to his future colleagues: “I’ve never seen anybody care more about something than what office they get.”

Washington, Ashford told us, is “so different” than what he’s used to back home.

“It’s so many rules,” the incoming congressman said of life at the Capitol. “I don’t know how anybody can walk down the hall without the sense of foreboding that some rule’s being violated.”

Even the office lottery was a bit much for Ashford, who said, “The way they did this thing with the offices — it looked like the stock exchange. It was just so overblown. And so much more formal than it needed to be.”

Ashford, 65, says he got some ribbing from fellow House freshmen, but said he “loved” the back and forth. And in the end, his office didn’t wind up being too terrible after all: It’s on the first floor of the Cannon House Office Building.

“I was thinking I’d be up on [the fifth floor,] which I wanted to be because you have to walk up the stairs and it’s good exercise,” Ashford exclaims.

Besides, Ashford says any of the D.C. workspaces is likely a bit snazzier than what he’s used to. “My office in Lincoln, the paint’s been falling off and the window doesn’t open,” he chuckles.

Ashford says he’s just pleased to be in the nation’s capital, adding, “They could’ve put me in the basement in the Capitol Hill Hotel and I would’ve been happy.”