Bernie's spokesman holds down two jobs

If Bernie Sanders has a shadow on the campaign trail — from Missouri to Iowa, to Arizona, to Texas, to Washington in the past two weeks alone — Michael Briggs is it. And when reporters want to reach the suddenly besieged candidate, Briggs is the man to call.

As Sanders’ communications director, he draws a salary from the presidential campaign. At the same time, he’s collecting his paycheck from the U.S. Senate, as the senator’s communications chief since 2007.


The arrangement isn’t unusual for staffers serving on Senate and House reelection campaigns. But such double duty is out of the ordinary for a high-profile presidential campaign — most other political operations rigorously separate the two responsibilities, especially for a role as public-facing as communications director.

And while Sanders’ staff closely follows the time-honored procedures for government staffers working on campaigns — from making sure their salaries don’t exceed the legal cap, to ensuring they don’t use official property for political purposes — the arrangement illustrates the occasionally blurred lines between Sanders’ presidential campaign and his Senate work.

While candidates who are sitting senators often use their access to the Senate floor and lawmaking mechanisms to introduce legislation supporting their bids, Sanders in particular has raised eyebrows with his near-mixing of Senate and campaign activity — more than Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham, who also both have senior aides drawing two paychecks each, and more than Ted Cruz, whose Senate staff receives stipends when they correspond with the campaign side.

The questions about Sanders date back to the news conference he used to announce his run in April: because of its political nature , the campaign moved it from a Senate gallery to the grassy grounds outside the building to avoid any conflict. And he has since held multiple rallies right outside of the Capitol to push on themes that link his political plans with his legislative programs, like advocating for a $15 minimum wage on Wednesday after introducing legislation on the topic.

“Sen. Sanders is a candidate for president, but he is also a U.S. senator,” his chief of staff Michaeleen Crowell said. “He takes that responsibility seriously and Briggs works day and night to help the senator and the reporters who cover Congress.”

While the five senators currently pursuing the White House saw a wave of staff members exit their Senate chambers for their political teams over the past year, months, and weeks — some just hours before the ink was dry on the presidential paperwork — a POLITICO review of second-quarter Federal Election Commission filings showed only a handful of top-level staffers sticking around Capitol Hill as they also get a salary from the campaigns.

Briggs’ arrangement is the most prominent due to his status as a face of Sanders’ campaign, but he’s not alone: In the case of Rubio, there’s his deputy chief of staff for operations Jessica Fernandez, who the senator’s office says is splitting her time 60/40 between the Senate and campaign. And for Graham, there’s senior adviser Denise Bauld, who has no plans to commit to either side full-time anytime soon.

Capitol Hill staffers whose bosses are running for reelection or higher office — like Briggs, who will soon likely shift to a campaign-first arrangement, while keeping some Senate responsibilities — generally know they can’t talk politics on their official cellphone and that they shouldn’t talk election strategy in their boss’ taxpayer-funded offices. However, the stakes are considerably higher when it comes to presidential elections, even if the same laws apply.

The Senate Ethics Committee guidelines on how such staffers are supposed to behave are clear, said multiple lawyers working for presidential campaigns, and go beyond just making sure the aides aren’t in the Capitol when they take a political phone call. But because these rules are longstanding, the lawyers explained, campaigns have perfected ways to blur the lines for maximum convenience.

“The line is: Anything you do in your time, you’re fine to do either for pay or as a volunteer. You can’t use any resources in your congressional office. No phones, no computers. If you do any campaign activity, you’re supposed to step out of the office. My experience is that doesn’t happen,” said the Campaign Legal Center’s Meredith McGehee. “It’s an important line because taxpayer money is not supposed to be spent on the senators’ political aspirations.”

However, a number of senators bristle at tight enforcement of these regulations, say the lawyers. Some of the frustration comes from the briefings supplied by the Senate committee, which reaches out to the candidate’s offices (for example, it spoke with members of Sanders’ staff in Washington and Vermont).

“There have been a number of investigations by the House and Senate ethics committees — some haven’t become public — of the issue of members using staff for the campaigns,” said one longtime Washington attorney working for a 2016 campaign. “But the truth is the ethics committee is not great on training on this topic. If they really spelled all of this out, a lot of the senators would be upset.”

The committee guidelines allow aides to do whatever campaign activity they wish to do on their own time, without using Senate resources. And, says the committee, as a staffer spends more time on the campaign side during work hours, his or her Senate pay should shrink accordingly. Those who earn more than $121,956 on the official side aren’t allowed to bring in more than $27,225 in any outside income — including campaign work. Accordingly, Briggs has seen his Senate pay reduced as he spends more time on the campaign trail. The FEC filings showed that he pulled in nearly $9,500 in the campaign’s first quarter of operations.

“The bottom line is that if somebody who is a full-time senior staffer is suddenly doing campaign work and getting paid for that, you should expect to see a reduction in their Senate hours and salary,” said another veteran campaign lawyer representing a 2016 candidate. “The question is whether they’ve reduced the salary. The ethics committee doesn’t go out there and monitor this stuff. But people don’t get away with it. There’s always an unhappy staffer or somebody that says something and turns it into the ethics committee. It’s high risk not to do it right.”

Nonetheless, having two full staffs with some political, policy, and research functions is one of the “built-in incumbent advantages” of running as a sitting senator, said McGehee, even if such candidates run the risk of creating a perception problem. And in a case like that of Sanders, a number of former Senate staffers are now on the political team, fresh off the government payroll.

Still, the biggest legal risk in mixing campaign and official staff is also the hardest to track, said one of the lawyers advising a candidate. But even if it’s caught, it just might not get a candidate in that much trouble.

“You’ll have a problem with the junior legislative assistant who gets pulled into a project for the campaign and it’s a last-minute crisis and they end up doing it in the Senate office space. That’s a flat violation of the rules,” he said.

“If the Senate Ethics Committee notices it or files a complaint, what ordinarily would happen is they would look into it, and if they determine there was a violation, there’s a range of sanctions they could adopt. They might take some action. But it would likely just be a letter of admonition.”

Jonathan Topaz contributed to this report.