Casualties Of The Downturn

Atrios' headline says it best: And A Million Tiny Violins Began To Play:

Twenty-six Republican congressmen are retiring at the end of this session, and expectations are that Democrats will pick up at least that many seats on Tuesday. If the average congressional office has 14 to 18 full-time staffers (plus paid interns and part-timers), that’s a couple of hundred job opportunities that could soon vanish in electoral smoke.

The average Senate office has 34 staffers, and with polls showing Democrats poised to take anywhere from five to 10 of those seats, that could be an additional 150 to 300 Republican Hill jobs gone the way of the dodo bird. Scores of Republican committee staff slots would also get wiped out, too, as the GOP would control a smaller portion of the committee personnel budgets in both chambers.

Of course, with fewer Republicans on the Hill, there are fewer needs for lobby shops to refill their GOP cartridges.

“It’s a double-whammy,” said Brad Traverse, whose staffing website, www.bradtraverse.com, is a popular destination for job seekers on the Hill. “You have more firms who are both looking for Democrats and eliminating the Republican lobbyist positions. And from what I’ve heard talking to people is there’s a kind of a dearth of good, qualified Democrats to take some of these lobbying jobs.”

Younger staffers may have an easier time matching their $30,000 to $50,000 salaries elsewhere, but senior chiefs of staff making six-figure incomes will find it quite difficult to replicate that pay as Republican operatives in a Democratic town during an economic downturn.

...In this environment, Republican staffers should be looking to sign on as the GOP lobbyist for a predominantly Democratic firm, the same aide said. There will also be a lot of business for Republican lobbyists who have the clout to rally GOP lawmakers against a given piece of legislation. “Guys will get paid a lot of money to defeat stuff,” the aide said.

The bear market for Republican talent in Washington may rival the post-election labor market of 1994, when thousands of Democrats who had enjoyed comfortable Hill careers during the four-decade Democratic reign were tossed to the street after the Republican revolution.

...All of this, and we haven’t even touched on the direct effect of an Obama victory: If the Democrats take the White House, that’s up to 3,000 displaced Republicans looking for jobs after the Bush administration.