Basic training for Congress.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Congress may be a maze of complications, but if you've served first in a state legislature you already know the ropes. Former state lawmakers say there's no better training.

By all rights, Patty Murray's entrance into the U.S. Senate in 1992 should have been an exercise in political humility. Not only was she one of only seven women in the self-styled "greatest deliberative body in the world," she was also something of a novice who only four years before was a member of a suburban school board in Washington state.

Sandwiched between these two jobs, however, was another position that Murray now thinks made all the difference; between 1988 and 1992 she was a Democratic state senator representing Seattle's northern suburbs. In that role, Murray successfully ushered through a series of bills she had particular interest in, such as family leave for a parent whose child is sick, and she learned the niceties of working within a complex and often divided lawmaking body.

"That experience gave me things that have turned out to be essential for me in the U.S. Senate," Murray said of her state legislative background. "And one of those things is an understanding of parliamentary procedure."

"The U.S. Senate, anyone will tell you, is an extraordinarily complicated place. But the essentials of how to work here can be learned on the state level," Murray said.

"Many of the issues are the same, and frankly the personalities are the same, too. In every state legislature there are different personalities that work together and some that don't, and I see that at work here. So the experience I gained on the state level in putting together winning coalitions to pass legislation has paid off for me here too."

For Murray, state legislative experience has also provided an unexpected network of support that would not have existed had she not been a lawmaker in Olympia: three of Washington's nine congressional representatives, Maria Cantwell, Jay Inslee and Mike Kreidler, all Democrats, also served in the Washington Legislature with Murray before winning seats to Congress in 1992. "We all came here the same year and had a strong relationship and coalition developed back home that still works for us today," said Murray.

A Mom in Tennis Shoes

But even with such apparent assets, Murray's rise to any sort of appreciable power and influence in the U.S. Senate could have initially been viewed as problematic. She came to the nation's capital as a decided outsider, much as she did when she entered the Washington Legislature in 1988. The red-and-white buttons with pictures of tennis shoes that became Murray's campaign symbol in 1992 served to remind voters of the time, years before, when she went to the state Capitol in Olympia to argue for saving a preschool program in danger of losing state funding. "A mom in tennis shoes won't make a difference," a state lawmaker gruffly informed Murray then.

In 1988, Murray, frequently donning tennis shoes, knocked on more than 17,000 doors in her successful campaign for the state Senate in Washington, stressing, as she did in her bid for the U.S. Senate four years later, her status as an outsider.

But that very status within the nation's Capitol is often seen as a liability. "Bomb-throwers," Lyndon Johnson called incoming senators who vowed to shake up the system once they were elected. Yet Murray almost immediately got on well with the powers that be in the U.S. Senate, winning important appointments to the powerful Appropriations Committee as well as the equally pivotal Budget and Banking Committee.

The reason? Her four years in Olympia. "That kind of experience can absolutely make all of the difference in the world for an incoming freshman," said Gary Hymell, a well-known Washington lobbyist and vice-chairman of Hill and Knowlton World Wide, a public relations agency. "Right away that experience is going to help get you on a good committee because the leaders in either the House or Senate know that this is someone who understands compromise, and that is the most important thing you need to know if you want to be successful in Washington. You learn that as a state legislator.

"The people who are at a disadvantage are the people who have never served in any kind of legislative branch," continued Hymell, who also worked as an administrative assistant to Tip O'Neill, the speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, and for Hale Boggs, the Louisiana congressman who was the House majority leader in 1971 and 1972.

Experience Counts

As an example, Hymell pointed to Carrie Meek, a Florida Democrat elected to Congress in 1992. Despite her freshman status, Meek was a seasoned legislative veteran back in Florida, having served in the state House for four years beginning in 1978 and the state Senate for 10 years after that. She held a leadership position on the Senate Ways and Means Committee. "It was because of that experience that she ended up on the Appropriations Committee," said Hymell. "She was the only freshman to be picked, and very clearly the leadership in Washington looked at her background and saw that she was someone who could be trusted, who had a proven record of reliability."

That a state legislative background is a well-traveled route to election in either the U.S. House or Senate cannot be denied. Throughout the history of the country, roughly a third of either the Senate or House membership has...