From the mailroom to major legislation

Occupation: Legislative assistant for Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio

Age: 30

Alma mater: University of Toledo

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Washington Examiner: How did you come to work for Sen. Portman?

Harrington: After law school, my game plan was to stay in Ohio and be a prosecutor. That ended up not panning out so I took the big jump to D.C. right after the 2010 election, but without a job.

I have always been a little bit active in Republican politics. About two weeks after Sen. Rob Portman was sworn in, I ended up coming in to volunteer to help set up their mail system. They were in two rooms in the basement. They ended up after two days of volunteering hiring me for two months to be in charge of the mail system and the letter-writing process, and I am still here. I was definitely way over-qualified to be in the mailroom for very long.

During law school and right after until I worked out here, I worked in the city of Toledo prosecutor’s office. They lost a grant so I couldn’t stay, they couldn’t’ afford to keep me.

Examiner: How did you and the senator’s office go through putting together the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, aimed at tackling opioid and heroin abuse? (The bill passed 94-1 in the Senate last week.)

Harrington: With CARA, we really started with getting everyone in the room, all of the different stakeholder groups.

With this issue in particular, the different groups are siloed. We realized really quickly that you can’t just write a treatment bill and you can’t just write a prevention bill. Unless we start talking about addiction as a disease, one that is treatable and people can recover from, we are not going to make progress on this issue.

We worked with more than 130 groups across the country. We had forums where we plucked county health officials who had great collaborative models.

The answers don’t come from Washington. The way to write the best policy is to find out who is doing the work on the ground, to listen to them and let that be the basis and your framework for developing any kind of policy out here.

Fortunately, this is an issue where there is a lot of bipartisan support. People truly understand it because it impacts them in a personal way.

Examiner: What do you like to do in your down time?

Harrington: I am active in my church, which is The Table Church on H Street. I am involved in all kinds of outreach to folks who are less fortunate than we are.

I also love to cook. I garden in the summer on my little fire escape. It is the optimal urban garden.