Name: Dan McFaul
Hometown: Pensacola, Fla.
Position: Chief of staff and communications for Rep. Jeff Miller
Age: 43
Alma mater: Bachelor’s degree from University of Florida, master’s degree in public administration from University of West Florida
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Washington Examiner: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got to Capitol Hill?
McFaul: I was a political science major in undergrad, involved in student government and a couple of county municipal races, volunteering on them. When I graduated, I fully intended on going to law school and deferred for a year. An insurance executive from my hometown was running in Florida for state treasurer. He needed a travel aide, so that’s what I did.
He ended up not winning the race, but I met a lot of folks who were in politics and I kind of got the bug for being in politics and campaigns. One of the guys I met was a 31-year-old guy who no one really gave a chance to, Joe Scarborough. About a year later, when he was getting his reelection campaign, he called me up and asked if I would run his campaign.
So I did that and he obviously got reelected in ’96 and he asked if I wanted to come to Washington. And I said, “You know, that’d be fun to do for two years.” And that will be 20 years ago this Dec. 27.
Examiner: So you’ve been with Rep. Miller since he was elected in 2001?
McFaul: Fifteen years in October. Then-state Rep. Miller called me up and we met. My second day, we went around the district together and we just hit it off. We just had this kind of yin and yang relationship where we were just complements to each other and I’ve been with him ever since.
It was a pretty heady time. He was one of the first two members sworn in after 9/11. The special election was the 16th, the next morning we were at the airport ready to get on a plane when [House Majority Leader Dick Armey] called on my cell phone saying, ‘Where are you guys?’ I said we’re about to get on a plane. They said turn around. That’s when the anthrax had been found in the Senate, so they had shut down everything up here.
So we were actually operating out of the GSA building, so they really were like, here’s your members pin, here’s your voting card, here’s a key to the office, good luck. So we had to figure things out on our own a little bit.
Examiner: You’ve been with Miller for a long time. What are you most proud of that you’ve accomplished so far in his office?
McFaul: It’s really tough to pinpoint one. Some of the things that I like most about the job and that kept me here so long and made me most proud, it’s not necessarily when you have that big legislative score or that big home run of uncovering a major scandal in the VA, it’s more like the day-to-day helping out a constituent.
When you have somebody’s grandmother who didn’t get their Social Security benefits one month or an immigrant who’s going through the system of becoming a U.S. citizen and there’s some bureaucracy. To me, those are some of the most rewarding moments that you have up here. That’s happened dozens, maybe hundreds of times, in the last 15 years.
Examiner: Miller has announced that he’s retiring at the end of this year. How does that change your job over the next six months?
McFaul: It doesn’t. We still have work to do at the committee, he still has constituents to represent. You want to leave the house tidy for the next person that comes in, you don’t want any unfinished business out there. So maybe it puts a little more pressure to get certain things done in a compressed time frame, because there’s not next year, there’s not next Congress.
I sometimes try not to think about the end of it because it’s been a long run up here, but it happens for every Capitol Hill staffer.
Examiner: You mention some pressure to get stuff done. Any loose ends or end-of-term priorities for your office?
McFaul: Obviously, there’s some VA legislation that the chairman would like to get finished. Then there’s some more parochial things at home. We’ve got a courthouse, a federal courthouse that has a tremendous, toxic mold problem. So beginning that process of getting the remediation done
Of course the [National Defense Authorization Act]. We have a huge military presence in our district, so making sure that we address the troops and make sure military in our district have what they need to continue to function.
Examiner: What do you do for fun in your spare time?
McFaul: I have two young kids. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son and a 10-month old daughter. So that consumes a lot of my wife and I’s free time. It’s also my favorite thing to do, spend time with my kids. When I do get some time to relax, I do like to hunt and fish. I went turkey hunting this past month down in Florida, in my home district, but I also like to hunt ducks and geese on the Eastern Shore. I like to go rock fishing in the Chesapeake Bay.
