09/04/2026
Last week at my town hall in Deerfield I was asked:
“You worked for Sherwood Boehlert, right? Did Sherry care that you were a Democrat?”
During my time in his office, it never came up. I interviewed with his local staffer Pat Smith over lunch in New Hartford in December 2005. He was interested in my background growing up here, how I was doing in college, and what I would like to do after graduation.
When I started my internship in 2006, no one ever asked me my party affiliation. To Sherry Boehlert, my most important qualification was that I was from the district. Party didn’t matter to him.
During my time in his Washington office, I helped with some research for the House Science Committee, where Congressman Boehlert was the chairman. I reached out to other offices of both parties to try to find co-sponsors for his bills. I answered phone calls from constituents in the district who needed help and gave tours of the Capitol to visitors from back home. Through all this, my party affiliation never came up.
Near the end of the year, Congressman Boehlert’s Chief of Staff called me into his office to give me some advice:
“Jon, since your time with us is coming to an end, I just want to give you some advice about Capitol Hill. Some offices won’t care that you worked for a Republican, but this can be a very partisan place. If you interview to work in a Democratic office, many of them won’t hire you because you worked for a Republican. So be careful on how you talk about your time here.”
To that I said:
“If anyone has a problem that I worked for *my* Congressman, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.”
This is the same thinking that went into hiring staff in Congressman Brindisi’s office years later — one of our first hires there was an outstanding district staffer who had worked for both Republicans and Democrats. And I know that Marianne Buttenschon does not care if her staff are Democrats, Republicans, or independents; all that matters is they do a good job.
That’s a lesson I learned years ago from my time with Sherry Boehlert that I’ll always carry with me.
