Meet the woman steering Biden’s bipartisan winning streak on Capitol Hill

Washington
Cnn
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The Biden administration has succeeded in accumulating a long list of major legislative victories during its first two years despite one of the most divided congresses in history.
From the bipartite action on infrastructure, the security of firearms and homosexual marriage with bills of party party which attack climate change and expanding the coverage of health care, it is a record president Joe Biden and the Democrats on the ballot was all impatient to boast on the campaign track in mid-term.

But far from the spotlight is a woman who helped to achieve everything that is happening: Louisa Terrell.

As Director of the Board of the White House Legislative Affairs, Terrell, 53, heads a team that is the president’s eyes and ears of the president at the Congress.

“Ensure that we answer, we ensure that we are proactive, to determine what is going on here in this building,” said TerlliS in CNN, explaining her work while standing in front of the Capitol, where she spends a lot of time even if she works for the White House.

She describes her role as a conductor to move the Biden agenda by the congress.

“You want to talk to the committees, the caucus. Who speaks to the leadership? Who are the new countries? What is the action of the soil? What works quickly? What slows down? And you need all these types of tentacles there, then bring it back every day.”

But unlike a real conductor who is at the center of an orchestra, Terrell operates a lot behind the scenes.

In fact, when we sat down for our conversation in the building of the White House Executive Office, she said it was her first television interview – Never.

The years of experience from Terrell to Washington have been essential to its success. She started on the hill over 20 years ago as a member of the staff of the time. Biden to the judicial committee. With hindsight, she described herself at the time as just a “girl from the Delaware”, in admiration before the experienced legal clerks and the experienced employees who surround her. She quickly found her foot and prospered, being served as an assistant chief of Biden and then worked in the Obama administration’s legal affairs office – the very team she is leading now.

Even with its vast curriculum vitae, however, Terrell easily admits that Washington today is more difficult to sail than the one it arrived two decades ago.

“The extremes have become extreme and I think it makes things more difficult,” she said. “You really have to work much harder to find where you can meet in the middle.”

Be able to call the personal relationships it has falsified over the years in Capitol Hill has proven to be essential to work in the aisle to find this environment, in particular given the majorities of razor of the Democrats.

“I will be very clear about the president’s position and why we want to see what we want to see,” she said about her conversations with republican legislators. “The Republicans know that when this White House – and it is us in our team or a senior official – gives the floor, then we are tough. And I think this kind of credibility on the hill was very important to move things. ”

Deep relationships are also important, she said.

“You get fuel from other people you work with. And I receive an incredible quantity of fuel from the senior team here at the White House and people who have years and years of experience and relationships in these questions. ”

This is the kind of work that can make or undo a president, and even if it is largely not announced, it does not mean that it goes unnoticed. Following his confirmation at the Supreme Court as his first black justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson included Terrell in his cries as one of the “brilliant people” who helped make the historical realization possible.

The longest relationship from Terrell to the White House is with the president himself. Although their professional relationship started when she arrived in Washington two decades ago, she met Biden for the first time when she was only 5 years old.

“I met beautiful Biden in kindergarten,” recalls Terrell, who is Wilmington, with a smile. “It was (it was) a very fast bike ride from my house where it has grown up. So we were childhood friends (and) remained friends for … all our adults. ”

She remembers having visited Biden’s house when she was a child, sharing with CNN a common joke from her childhood.

“When we went to Beau, there was a fax in the living room and everything you needed to know (was), did not drink the fax,” she said, laughing. “And once again, it’s Delaware and it was probably the first Delaware fax, it’s high -tech equipment.”

The relationship of Terrell for life with the Biden family means that it brings a unique perspective to its work in the White House.

“He knows my parents and simply being connected in this way,” she said. “You know where the person comes from and I think it helps.”

“It brings warmth to work and I feel very lucky about it,” she added.

Terrell said her friend Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015, was still in her mind.

“You want to represent what … the president wants you to do,” she said. “And then there is always this other question of, what would I do? And I think of these things as a kind of linked and they are part of the background of the way we do the work.”

Two years after work in the judicial committee, Terrell fell pregnant. She says that Biden’s office maintained a family culture first. But while she was continuing her career in Washington, her children became a little older and the balancing act became more complicated.

“I had work in the Obama administration when my children said, about 6 and 8 – or 4 and 6 years old. It’s a bit vague, ”she joked.

She describes her time after work as “bed, bath and beyond”, a “second quarter of work” in a full day in the office. It is something of which she is very attentive now, as an elderly woman in the administration.

“I look through the White House, women whose children have this age, and you really have (remember) how long their days and nights,” said Terrell. “And then to think about the type of performance and the type of 100% they give to the office every day. I have so much gratitude and admiration.”

Women with a seat at the table are not only a sentence in the office of Terrell. When CNN stopped with one of its team meetings in the west wing, the room was filled with young staff members – mainly women. Terrell says it was a conscious decision, not because of their sex, but because they were the best for work.

“(The wait is ready to contribute. And that’s a bit of what I mean-be ready and ready to play,” she said about the junior staff. “Don’t be afraid to do that.”

But when asked what advice she would give young women starting to government today, Terrell did not hesitate.

“I think women today are much more courageous than me,” she said. “It’s really impressive. So I think they don’t need my advice, in fact, so, yes, they don’t need me. I’m just happy to have drinks and coffee with them when they take me,” she said laughing.

Terrell and his team are to the knees in the negotiations for the last weeks of a democratic majority, which means competing priorities for the rest of the gearbox duck session – the most important function of which is the basic function of the government’s financing congress.

While some Democrats were trying to sneak into the legislation to regulate social media companies, the transition from Terrell to Facebook raised certain questions among certain defense groups, although Terrell manages its passage to the technology giant 10 years ago is not part with the president’s legislative agenda.

“I think that the president came into office and campaigned on this subject about a very pro-competition, pro-responsibility and pro-transparence in social media platforms, which, obviously, what they are today is not what they were 10 years ago. So we worked hard, I think, to work hard on legislative documents, legislative documents, and hope to continue to do the next year.

And although the Democratic majority in the Senate develops slightly in January, the Bureau de Terrell is on the front line preparing for the Republicans to take control of the Chamber and to launch a wave of congress surveys in Biden officials.

“There will obviously be a big piece of” it’s surveillance ” – you have heard that -” we look at “, and it’s just to be expected,” says Terrell. “I think that the perspective of the president and the team here is, you cannot leave this kind of swamp in the boat.”

“I think the president said that he was ready to work with anyone who wanted to work with him, hope that the Republicans will do it and that they will do the work of the people and will not descend the surveillance holes of the proverbial rabbit.”

She insists on the relations of her team with not only the Democrats, but with the Republicans on the other side of the aisle.

“The kind of relationships you have with the Republicans, we work there all the time,” she said. “There are people in our shop, and again, people here in the White House, who have some of these relationships. And so, he will not have the impression of parachuting. It will look like a chapter two. ”