For Michaud, office a numbers game Congressional lottery determines choice

WASHINGTON – Democratic Rep.-elect Mike Michaud eagerly stepped up and chose lucky number 39 out of 53 in Thursday morning’s housing lottery, an event organized to determine the order in which new congressional members would select their offices for the 108th Congress.

Michaud and his chief of staff, Peter Chandler, then spent the morning checking out more than a dozen offices to find the new digs that would best suit Maine’s newest representative in Washington.

“Settling in is overwhelming because they throw so much at you,” confessed Michaud, who eventually committed to his new address: 437 Cannon House Office Building.

While touring the building, Michaud cheerfully introduced himself to the current occupants and asked questions about the office space.

While scrutinizing the space, Michaud jokingly pointed out to Chandler that a storage cage across the hall could be the chief of staff’s office. The two chuckled like two college freshmen picking out their dorm room and then got back to business, examining the rest of the real estate.

Most important to Michaud’s selection, he said, was not the view or the shininess of the furniture but how little time it would take him to get to the floor for votes.

The outgoing president pro tem of the Maine Senate has had his hands full with to-do lists and decisions to make since arriving in Washington a week ago.

In addition to the pile of books and papers handed to freshmen lawmakers at their many orientation meetings and receptions, each new member was issued a new cell phone, laptop and BlackBerry organizer for e-mailing – technologies he’s still figuring out and learning to love.

Michaud demonstrated how the BlackBerry displays his schedule and explained that the programmer was intended to smooth over communications during emergencies after Sept. 11, 2001, when many cell phone lines were down. The organizer can send and receive messages without any interference, unlike cell phones, which often don’t work in the Capitol even in nonemergencies.

The congressman-elect and Chandler have been living in the Hyatt hotel on Capitol Hill while working out of a temporary cubicle in the Rayburn House Office Building. Michaud said he plans to rent a place right on Capitol Hill to beat the traffic, but prices, he said, “are a lot more than what I’m used to in Maine.”

While he won’t have departing Rep. John Baldacci’s old office as desired, Michaud still hopes to have some members of Baldacci’s staff join him by Jan. 7 when the new members of Congress are sworn in.

Baldacci, a Democrat, won his gubernatorial bid in Maine and has yet to announce all the members of his new administration.

“There’s so much to do with the 2nd District to get Maine moving forward,” Michaud said Thursday, adding that he won’t miss the Pine Tree State because he’ll be making many visits home. “I want to go back and focus on the district and talk to people about issues.”

Michaud said he never dreamed of being in politics while growing up, but river pollution and local issues pushed him into the Legislature 22 years ago. Instead of complaining about the problems, he wanted to make a difference and he has been working on solutions at the state level ever since. But only so much can be done at the state level, he said Thursday. “The federal policies and federal government have a huge impact on the state of Maine.”

Now working under the roof where federal policies are made, Michaud isn’t too concerned whether he chooses slate-blue walls or navy drapes for his office; he says he’s just excited about being in Congress, even if it’s in the minority party.

“I would have loved to have been in the majority, but that’s not the case,” he said. “But one thing about Maine’s congressional delegation is that it’s small and we’ll work [together] closely.”