Financial power pair helped push TARP

The financial world was in a tailspin, and Congress was under intense pressure to pass an unpopular Wall Street bailout.

On Capitol Hill, the tough job of selling a $700 billion taxpayer-funded rescue package with the 2008 election looming fell in part on the shoulders of two young staffers and friends with remarkably similar life stories.

{mosads}Jaime Harrison and Aranthan “A.J.” Jones II had been through a lot of tough votes. They had risen from humble beginnings to operate as a tag team for House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.). As the man charged with counting votes, Clyburn was one of the most powerful members of Congress.

But the Troubled Asset Relief Program was one of the toughest bills yet. Back and forth the pair went, talking to members, staffers and party leaders. Jaime did much of the politicking — who wanted what. A.J. handled the policy — how to get those requests in the bill.

“If I was a father to them,” said Clyburn, “they were like brothers.”

The vote was a last hurrah of sorts for their work under Clyburn, but just one of many points in a relationship that continues to intertwine two astonishingly parallel lives.

Jaime and A.J., both 34, rose as African-American staffers in Congress over the last decade to become top-level aides to the same boss on some of the toughest issues.

Now the partnership continues at The Podesta Group, where they are helping to build one of the largest lobbying practices in town.

Before their success on K Street, Jaime and A.J. stood on the House floor as the huge Wall Street bailout bill came up.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was plunging 650 points. Time then ran out, and the vote ticker above showed defeat.

“There was this hangman kind of feeling,” A.J. said.

Back and forth they went again. They BlackBerried members and staff during the day and through the night, barely having the time to go home. 

Everyone — especially Democrats — dreaded the vote.

Finally, the economy’s freefall overwhelmed political calculations. On Oct. 3, 2008, Congress approved the bill, leaving the duo successful but exhausted.

“If you watch them interact, you would think they grew up together, lived next door to each other, knew each other all their lives,” Clyburn said.

Jaime’s current and former bosses say the same thing: He’s the people person, always laughing, a big smile on his face. Born out of wedlock to his 16-year-old mother, Harrison was raised with the help of his grandparents in Orangeburg, S.C.

That was where, in the 1960s, Clyburn had helped organize a civil rights sit-in.

Jaime and Clyburn first met when Jaime was in 11th grade and head of the honors society. He invited Clyburn to speak at Orangeburg-Wilkinson High School.

“I still have the picture of the two of us that day,” Clyburn said. He was impressed and kept an eye on Jaime from afar.

He graduated from Yale, a first-generation college grad, returned to teach world geography at his high school before eventually making his way to Washington. Clyburn wanted him aboard.

“He’s my political dad,” said Jaime, who started working with Clyburn while finishing his law degree at Georgetown.

About 175 miles northeast of Orangeburg, in Fayetteville, N.C., A.J. was born to a father in the military and a mother who was a mortgage banker’s assistant. His mother had family in Williamsburg, S.C. – pretty much at the center of Clyburn’s district.

But the family moved to Texas, where A.J.’s father took a job in law enforcement.

Not even out of North Carolina, a drunk driver jumped a median and struck the family’s white Ford pickup. A.J.’s sister was hurt badly and needed head surgery. Then 9, A.J. decided he wanted to work on healthcare policy.

{mosads}After the accident his parents divorced amid mounting financial stress — theirs had become a “broken home,” he said.

“I knew I needed to be somewhat successful.”

He went to Iowa State University (one of only 600-some African-American students out of 27,000, he recalls), did a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship overseas and then, eventually, came to Washington for graduate school at George Washington University.

But he wasn’t much of a politico until he met Del. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) at a CBC conference. Christensen soon offered A.J. a job on Capitol Hill. “I thought I’d maybe stay one year,” Jones said.

That was 2001.

Jaime, meanwhile, rose along with his boss, who moved up the Democratic leadership ranks.

Clyburn named Jaime the floor director for the whip’s office.

“I would spend a considerable amount of time sitting on the [House] floor with them,” Jaime said, rattling off House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Reps. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) among the many lawmakers he counts as friends. With Clyburn’s responsibilities growing after being elected whip in 2006, the office had its eye on a new policy director.

“The immediate thought went to A.J.,” Jaime said.

A.J. had gone on from Christensen’s office to become chief of staff to Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.). Clyburn had met A.J. earlier. “I was teasing Donna one time, ‘You ought to fire A.J. … so I can hire him,’ ” Clyburn said.

By 2007, Jaime was the first African-American floor director for the whip office in history, and A.J. was its first African-American policy director. Jaime worked on the third floor. A.J. worked on the second.

They teamed up on major war funding bills, help for a Gulf Coast still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, internal Democratic debates on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues — pretty much every bill since Democrats reclaimed the House.

By the end of 2008, Jaime was tired. “I, in essence, had no life,” he laughs. So he started looking around for other opportunities. “It was hard to leave.”

But Jaime’s stepfather had just been laid off, and his mother’s job had just moved to Mexico. “I was thinking what I could do to help,” he said.

Too many of the big law firms treated him as an associate right out of school. Others wanted to hire a lobbyist with obvious ties to African-American lawmakers — a “You’re our CBC guy” type of job.

A.J. stayed on with Clyburn a little while longer, but he too had family in need. And he eventually started looking.

They both came to the same conclusion only a few months apart.

“They were sort of the Batman and Robin of Mr. Clyburn’s office,” Podesta said. “And you don’t want to split up Batman and Robin.” Jaime started there in December 2008; A.J. started in April 2009.

They work down the hall — two offices away — and for some of the same clients, “giving war stories in the office, giving our color commentary” of life on Capitol Hill.

“I’m on C-SPAN always, and A.J. is always on CNBC doing all this financial stuff.”

The two are now even tossing around the idea of writing a book together.

“We were thinking of doing it as a dual memoir,” said A.J.