Senate ag panel’s GOP staff named

As ranking member, U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., announced the names of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s Republican staff.

The list includes Taylor Wiseman, a legislative assistant who grew up on a farm in Vilonia and joined the committee last year.

After earning her bachelor’s degree in agricultural business from Southern Arkansas University, she pursued a master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of Arkansas, before taking a job on Capitol Hill.

The issues she focuses on will include livestock, climate, forestry, economics and 4-H/ FFA. Wiseman participated in 4-H and FFA growing up.

Macie Kelly, one of the committee’s new staff assistants, is from Mountain Home and previously worked in Boozman’s Senate office.

A former state officer in Arkansas FFA, Kelly’s family raised beef and grew hay in south-central Missouri. The family farmed there for four generations.

She studied at the University of Arkansas, earning a bachelor’s degree in agriculture communications.

Others transferring to the committee from Boozman’s office include Skylar Sowder, a Texas native now focusing on commodity programs, crop insurance and grain standards; and Mary Catherine Cromley, a Georgia native now specializing in Arkansas agriculture issues, nutrition and rural development, among other topics.

Patrick Creamer, the senator’s longtime senior communications adviser, will now serve as the committee’s communications director. Planning to visit the nation’s capital? Know something happening in Washington, D.C.? Please contact Frank Lockwood at (501) 908-5204 or flockwood@ adgnewsroom.com. Want to get the latest from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Washington bureau? It’s available on Twitter, @LockwoodFrank.