Campaigns & Elections' Politics - February 2008 - (Page 20) Spotlight at my parents’ home recuperating from knee surgery and the phone rang. It was the White House. The person on the line said, “We received your letter, it was very, very good. Would you be interested in an internship?” Now my parents are from this small suburb of Philadelphia—Lansdowne, Pa.—middle class, blue-collar stock, God-fearing Americans. For the White House to call their son was a big deal. My father ran the numbers, and he decided he could afford to send me to Washington. He gave me $50 and put me on a train to Union Station. That was in June of ’93. Politics: I understand they assigned you to the White House Medical Office, but you didn’t last long there. Traynham: I worked there for the first He found himself trapped in a nightmare. Now he’s living a dream. What It’s Like to Be Robert Traynham Robert Traynham is Washington bureau chief for CN8, The Comcast Network. Prior to this, he served as communications director for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. Traynham spoke with Politics magazine from his CN8 office on Capitol Hill. Politics: Robert, how does a small-town kid wind up working for a senator and a president, and then running the Washington bureau of the Comcast Network? Traynham: I didn’t know I’d be involved in two weeks, trailing the president’s personal physician. I started asking questions about the president’s policies and commenting o how he was comon ing across on t television, and my boss eventually said “You know, Robert, I said, don’t really thin you want to be here. think I think you m actually want to be may at the White H House press office.” And so I transferred there and I loved it. I remember si sitting across from Dee Dee Myers, an seeing how she’d yell and into the phone to reporters and how stressed out, and for some she was so stre reason I really thrived on that. And I thought, this is where I want to be. Politics: How did you en up working for Sen. end Rick Santorum? Traynham: Sometimes I feel like my life is like politics. In fact, I started out as a pre-med major in college, at Cheyney University. But my English teacher was friends with someone on the Clinton transition team. And one day, as a homework assignment, she asked us to write a letter to the president-elect about what we’d do, if we were his senior adviser, to help change the country. She really liked mine and said, “Robert, I’m going to forward your letter to my friend on the transition team.” Not long after that, I was a Forrest Gump episode Fast forward to 1996. episode. I was working at Black A America’s Political Action Committee for about $17,000 a year, and the way I’d feed myself was that I would go to receptions for the free food. I got invited to this one reception, and Rick Santorum, my home state senator, was there. I went up to shake his hand and it turned into a 45-minute conversation. Toward the end of it he said, “I think you should work for me.” I started off in his mailroom in 1996, and then I rose up to be his deputy chief of staff and communications director. And I worked for him for 10 years. 20 Politics February 2008 PHOTO: JORDAN LIEBERMAN
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