Parker Poling

Chief of staff, office of the Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry

Parker Poling, one of the most powerful female aides in the House, nearly chose law over politics.

She was in her third year of law school at The George Washington University in 2007 when she got the call from a self-proclaimed “bomb thrower” looking to evolve into a serious lawmaker.

“I was gonna go be a real lawyer, but he called kind of out of the blue,” Parker said in a recent interview from the office of House Chief Deputy Whip Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.). “I was not expecting that. I actually thought he was gonna ask me for free legal advice.”

Instead, McHenry asked Poling, an alumna of the George W. Bush White House and House Education and Workforce Committee, to be his chief of staff. The two knew each other from the College Republican National Committee, where McHenry was treasurer when Poling was executive director.

Her role has changed significantly since she came to the Hill as a senior aide to a sophomore Republican lawmaker in the minority. Now she works with a member of leadership in the majority who took on an increased role as Whip Steve Scalise recovered from a shooting last summer. Her position requires constant communication with McHenry, as well as vote-counting and talking to members about upcoming legislation.

But her efforts are sometimes complicated by a president named Donald Trump, who tweeted in January — hours before a scheduled House vote — that a surveillance bill might have been used against his campaign.

At the time, Scalise was having surgery and McHenry was at a separate hospital with his pregnant wife. “We all just panicked,” she recalled, “because we had no whips. But the whole leadership team really pulled together.”

Poling acknowledges life was easier in the minority, but the party hopes to stave off a Democratic wave and maintain its majority this year. She also had no kids when she started in 2007. Now she’s a wife and mother of two young daughters, whom she proudly notes are graduates of the House Daycare and sometimes come to work with her on the Hill.

“I have the best husband in the world, so I could not do it if it weren’t for him. He’s made sacrifices in his career so that he can be there to pick up the girls every night,” she said.

But motherhood is tougher now that her children can walk and talk. “Now they’re like, ‘No, don’t go back to work,’ or, ‘Why are you always working?’” she said. “But they also get to do some cool things as a result of mommy’s job. They hang out in the Capitol, ride the subway, and they’ve met the speaker and the leader and the whip, and they sell Girl Scout cookies to members of Congress sometimes.”

They’re also D.C. insiders. “We were watching TV the other night, and my 9-year-old goes, ‘Mommy, who’s gonna be the next speaker?’” she recollected. “I’m like: ‘Oh, you know, it’s so-and-so. It’s her boss.’”

Asked which lawmaker she was alluding to, she simply smiled. “That’s between me and my 9-year-old,” she quipped. — Nolan McCaskill

Photos by John Shinkle/POLITICO.

Advertisement