Democratic Rep. Nikki Budzinski remembers being a little “starstruck” by the lawmakers she saw coming and going from Dick Gephardt’s leadership office when she was an intern in the ’90s. “It just speaks to the fact I was 18,” she says.
Before she was elected to Congress, Budzinski worked in the labor movement, on presidential campaigns, for current Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and as chief of staff for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. But she still connects her political path to her time on the Hill as a teenager.
That includes interning for Democratic Sen. Paul Simon, who represented her home state of Illinois and whose “pragmatic progressive” identity influenced her own. She points to him as the kind of public servant she hopes to be.
