Name: Brandon Eden
Hometown: Amherst, Va.
Position: Legislative director and deputy chief of staff for Rep. Steve Knight, R-Calif.
Age: 34
Alma mater: Liberty University
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Washington Examiner: Tell me a little bit about how you got to Capitol Hill.
Eden: My first year [in college] was fall 1999 and I got my GPA as low as possible, then I went into the Marine Corps. I went to Iraq 2004-2005, I came back and decided to take school seriously. I was in the Marine Reserves at the time as well. One of my friends from my Marine unit who was also going to Liberty, he was doing an internship with [former Virginia Rep.] Eric Cantor. I had no real work experience, I had done construction and Best Buy and Sam’s Club and every retail box store job you could possibly have. My friend gave my resume to a staffer and he hired me as an intern just because my friend had done so well in that office, so they took a risk with me.
Examiner: How did you get from Cantor’s office to Rep. Knight’s office?
Eden: I started talking to some other staffers in the office, they started reaching out for me. I had a lot of misses. I was kind of shooting a little too high.
Eventually, I gave a tour to Janice Knopp who was finance director for the [National Republican Congressional Committee.] I didn’t know that at the time, but a couple weeks later, I found out she was looking for a staff assistant. Kind of weird how that worked out, this lady I gave a tour to, we kind of hit it off during the tour, so she hired me without even looking at my resume, which is crazy because I had no experience. So I was working in the Finance Department and I couldn’t even balance my checkbook at the time.
I was an indentured servant at the NRCC for four years, two years at finance and then I went to the Political Department in 2009-2010. I didn’t really know what I was doing, to be honest with you. I had never worked campaigns or politics, but I got to watch guys like Brian Walsh, John DeStefano, Guy Harrison. I learned a lot from them, just watching how they work and trying to emulate what they do.
Richard Hanna brought me on as a [legislative assistant] in 2011, so I was with him for a year, then [Rep.] Kevin McCarthy’s personal office came to me saying they were looking for an MLA, was I interested? So I was with him from 2011 to Feb. 1, 2015, as a legislative assistant. Then I’ve been here since Feb. 1.
Examiner: When you were in McCarthy’s office, you were very involved with legislation surrounding the Veterans Affairs care scandal.
Eden: I actually helped bring that to light. This is like congressional staffer 101 and probably my proudest achievement. Our district office was getting complaints from veterans. Their problems were always the claims backlog and wait times at the VA. We issued [Government Accountability Office] investigations that validated what we were hearing. From there, we started pushing hearings in the VA committee.
Then we went to figure out how we can help reform the VA. We were trying to look at some way to begin some privatization of it, because another complaint we always heard was veterans had to travel from Bakersfield, Calif., to Los Angeles to go see a doctor, even for something like a colonoscopy. It’s crazy.
As a veteran, it was great to be a part of those reform efforts even though there’s still a lot to do unfortunately.
Examiner: What’s your favorite thing to do in D.C.?
Eden: This is going to sound nerdy, but I think just having all the museums and the history here is really cool. There’s a lot of free stuff to do here, so it’s fun to take advantage of that. I’m a pretty big Civil War buff, so it’s also cool to see all the Civil War sites in and around D.C. Also, trap and skeet shooting.
