Giffords aide Pia Carusone takes command of office

— -- When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords made a surprise Aug. 1 return to Capitol Hill to vote on debt legislation, her chief of staff, Pia Carusone, was at her side, at the center of the action but on the periphery of the spotlight.

The scene was defining for Carusone. Like most congressional aides, she is more comfortable in the background. But in the 11 months since a gunman shot Giffords in the head during a Jan. 8 constituent event outside Tucson, Carusone has proved herself an indispensible asset to the three-term Arizona Democrat.

Virtually unknown to the public before the tragedy, Carusone, 31, immediately became a fixture on national television as a Giffords spokeswoman.

Although she was chief of staff for fewer than two years at the time of the shooting and had only limited Hill experience, Carusone is largely credited for keeping Giffords' staff intact and her Washington and Arizona offices operating under the emotional and traumatic circumstances.

Earlier this year, Carusone worked extreme hours and straddled time zones as she shuttled among Washington, where she lives, Tucson and Houston, where Giffords continues her rehabilitation. Although staff members say Carusone would get away, she always stayed on top of the office's affairs.

It was only after Giffords went to Florida in May to watch her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, rocket into space aboard the space shuttle Endeavour that the intensity of the media coverage subsided.

But Giffords' prolonged absence this year has meant new responsibilities for Carusone, who no longer can avoid the public eye.

She sometimes acts as the congresswoman's stand-in, such as at the February White House signing of a bill to name a new federal courthouse in Yuma after U.S. District Judge John Roll. Roll died in the same shooting in which Giffords was wounded.

Carusone also is one of the main gatekeepers controlling information about Giffords.

For the most part she fiercely protects details about Giffords' personal life and her recovery, often to the point of frustrating journalists and members of the public. But there have been other occasions when a less cautious Carusone has allowed a more revealing portrait of Giffords to emerge.

She frequently communicates with Giffords' constituents in ways normally reserved only for the elected official, such as issuing formal written statements or authoring newspaper opinion essays.

"The chief of staff oversees the three critical elements of any congressional office: policy, politics and communications," said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' communications director from 2007 until August. "Mastering those things -- controlling those things -- is essentially what the chief of staff's job is about."

In their new book Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, Giffords and Kelly make clear their appreciation of the "extraordinarily dedicated and loyal" Carusone.

"She became a trusted partner and friend to me while getting her boss through this horrible ordeal," Kelly writes. "We could not have managed without her."

Giffords' head injury and fight for life would have been hard enough for Carusone and her colleagues to absorb. But that was only the beginning of the office's heartache. Gabe Zimmerman, Giffords' well-liked director of community outreach, was among the six people who died in the shooting. Two other Giffords aides -- Ron Barber and Pam Simon -- were wounded but returned to work. The media were in full frenzy.

"This is the job that we signed up for in some ways and in some ways not at all what we ever expected," Carusone told The Arizona Republic. "We are making every effort we can to get the work done that this office has set out to do. Not to brag, but we have been pretty successful at it. I'm not saying 'I.' I'm saying 'we' in the office."

Things in commonThose familiar with Carusone and her work ethic and businesslike temperament say that they are not surprised that the calm, cool and collected -- if sometimes brusque -- chief of staff was able to hold steady amid the turmoil that followed the shooting.

"What she's had to handle in Gabby's office is unimaginable for any of us who have worked on the Hill," said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. He has worked with Carusone on several issues.

"She's kept that team together. They've been very, very effective representing Gabby's district even as Gabby recovers."

Carusone started working for Giffords in early 2009 at age 28. Her laid-back management style, along with her more-casual dress and youthful locution, was a striking change from the hard-driving, Washington insider Maura Policelli, Giffords' previous and only other chief of staff, Giffords insiders said.

Carusone was in the market for a chief-of-staff job, and a mutual friend connected her with Giffords, who was 38 at the time. They hit it off. One thing the two women had in common was that both were former registered Republicans. That perspective can be helpful for a Democrat in a swing district such as Arizona's 8th, where Giffords was first elected in 2006.

The daughter of a small-town attorney, Carusone hails from a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., family that she described as, except for her, still "entirely" Republican. Giffords formerly was president of her family's southern Arizona tire-and-auto-service business.

"I remember in my interview she said, 'I like to run my office like I ran my tire shops -- this is a small business,' " Carusone recalled. " 'When we have someone walk in the door, we treat them like a customer. We want to help them in any way we can. We offer them water and coffee to start.' I grew up that way. My dad is running the small business that my grandfather started in the '20s. Whether they're a 'tea party' Republican or a progressive caucus Democrat, whatever it is, we're here to make government work for people, and we want to find solutions."

'Unflappable'While nothing in her life could have prepared Carusone for the test of professional mettle and personal strength that followed Jan. 8, it may have helped that she honed her political skills in New Hampshire, a state where hard-nosed and unpredictable politics are a passion.

Carusone, who double-majored in political science and human rights at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., gained experience working as 2006 campaign manager and later congressional communications director for Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., and as 2008 campaign manager for former Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H.

"She's unflappable," Shea-Porter told The Republic. "Everything that I've seen her show the world (since Giffords was shot) I saw in my own campaign and my own friendship with her. She's known in New Hampshire and fondly remembered for her talent, her loyalty and just for her ability to manage everything and stay calm."

Alexis Tameron, who was chief of staff for former Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., describes her as "very focused and very in tune with what Gabby's wants and needs were."

After both lawmakers received threats for voting for President Obama's 2010 health-care overhaul, Tameron said he got a glimpse of Carusone's talent of projecting "a sort of coolness among the chaos."

For her part, Carusone credits Giffords for her staff's generally high morale and the way everybody stuck together after the violence of Jan. 8.

"You go through any sort of trauma together and you come out with different bonds," Carusone said. "All this stuff starts at the top, right? Gabby is the one who really values getting to know the people that she works with and making work fun if possible. So we would do everything we could to celebrate birthdays or engagements or weddings for staff."

AspirationsGiffords, 41, has not yet announced whether she intends to run for re-election in 2012. Carusone's profile has risen so much that some observers have even floated her name as a possible candidate for Congress or some other office.

"My aspirations for the future go as far as hoping to continue serving Congresswoman Giffords as her chief of staff," said Carusone, who earned $133,750 in 2010, according to LegiStorm, a website that tracks congressional-staff pay. "It's hard to imagine what might happen next."

Carusone is not the first congressional aide in Arizona whose boss had been sidelined by health issues.

Parkinson's disease and a fall at his home eventually made veteran Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., resign in 1991. Aide Matt James oversaw the staff during the grim final chapter of Udall's long political career.

Roy Elson, top aide to Sen. Carl Hayden, D-Ariz., wielded so much clout on Capitol Hill as the ailing Hayden's proxy that he informally was known as the 101st senator. But Elson, who died in 2010, learned that inside-the-Beltway influence does not necessarily translate to victory at the ballot box. He unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 1964 and 1968.

"There have been a number of cases over the years in which lawmakers, either because of illness or injury or age, had diminished capacity, at least temporarily, and staffers had to assume responsibility of most of the work of the office," said John J. "Jack" Pitney Jr., a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California who has written about Congress. "Of course, even if a legislator doesn't have any disability, staffers still do much of the work of the office."

In the Giffords situation, the national and international attention has added to the pressures on Carusone and other staff, Pitney said.

Karamargin, who left Giffords' staff seven months after the shooting to take a nearly $150,000-a-year job as Pima Community College's vice chancellor for public information and government relations, gave Carusone kudos for her performance under what he described as historically difficult conditions.

"What fell on Pia's desk on the morning of January 8th was unprecedented," Karamargin said. "I think it is a testament to her abilities that we handled it the way we did, but it's also a testament to Gabby and the staff that she assembled and her willingness to take a chance on someone who is relatively young and ask her to do a job that is truly one of the most challenging in government."