Institutional Memories: Gentleman Jim

It’s a bit old news now, but the party shift of Senator Arlen Specter last month got me thinking about the last U.S. Senator to change parties – an old boss of mine, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

In late 1997, I left the office of my home state’s U.S. Senator, Pete V. Domenici, to take a position with the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now the HELP Committee), which Jeffords had just started chairing.  I knew the Jeffords staff fairly well—I had worked closely with several of t