Horn starts efforts in D.C.
U.S. Rep.-elect Kendra Horn began reorienting herself this week with the hallowed halls of Congress, which she will join in January as the first Democrat to represent Oklahoma’s 5th District in four decades.
“Walking onto the House floor is just a really powerful experience and a reminder that it’s a really awesome responsibility that I have been entrusted with, not to supplant the voices of, but to represent the voices of so many people on so many important issues,” she said by phone Thursday night.
Freshman orientation in Congress is a biennial tradition that draws inevitable comparisons to college orientation, but with older classmates and better food. Freshmen members and their transition staff stay in the same hotel, often eat together and bond over the newness of it all.
“That’s not a bad comparison,” Horn said of the college analogy. “You show up with a lot of new people, you meet all your new classmates and there’s a lot to learn all at once.”
It’s a whirlwind time, a mix of business and fun. New members are taught how to run a congressional office, how to comply with ethics rules and where the bathrooms are.
Horn, 42, is the first Democratic woman elected to Congress from Oklahoma and the first Democrat of either gender to be elected from the Oklahoma City-based 5th District since 1974. She will join a U.S. House that is majority Democratic, younger than usual and containing a record number of women.
“There are some really amazing women who got elected and I’m excited to get to work with them. There’s some camaraderie there and that’s a lot of fun. It’s good to meet people who are coming in from both sides of the aisle, as well, to be able to start building those relationships and get to work,” Horn said.
Thisweek was the first of two weeks of orientation, with the second occurring after Thanksgiving. The second week will include a lottery to determine which office buildings members are assigned to. An office in the Cannon House Office Building is sometimes considered the short end of the stick, especially on the fifth floor, which is notoriously far from House chambers and not connected to the Capitol’s subway system.
“I actually really love Cannon,” Horn said, “because it’s the oldest building and historic but the focus will be getting a good office that constituents can visit and be accessible.”
Horn’s not a newcomer to Capitol Hill. She served as a press secretary for former Rep. Brad Carson, an eastern Oklahoma Democrat, in the mid-2000s.
The congresswoman-elect will begin making staff announcements in December and decide where to place her district office. U.S. Rep. Steve Russell’s office is in Del City but Horn has said she would prefer to have her office in Oklahoma City, though she hasn’t decided on a neighborhood. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, has a district office in Automobile Alley and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, has one on Northwest Expressway.
Horn, who criticized Russell during the campaign for not hosting more town hall meetings, said she expects to host town halls early next year to get feedback from constituents from across the district.
Back in Washington, much of the focus this week was on the incoming Democratic majority and whether its members will again elect House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as speaker of the House. Horn, who is undecided but believes Democrats need fresh faces in leadership, said she has been asked about Pelosi a lot.
“My answer has always been the same: I’m going to make the decision in the best interest of Oklahomans,” Horn said. “But yes, it is a very frequent question.”