WASHINGTON — Lost your House seat? Please clear out of your office by midnight. Work instead from a “Departing Member Support Center,” a basement bullpen where there’s a cubicle with your name — er, number — on it. Or don’t. But do show up for votes during the last, lame-duck session of the year.
For House members ousted in the midterm elections, the brutal business of losing continues. They, their staffs — and all those home- state photos, awards, books, boxes and knickknacks — needed to evacuate their offices by the time Tuesday became today.
“It’s like you cease to belong,” Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who lost his bid for the Senate, said Monday night as the House reconvened for the first time since Thanksgiving.
“But,” he added with a glance toward the bustling chamber, “you still have to vote.”
The “Departing Member Support Center” is a maze of cubicles each consisting of one desk, one phone, one computer and one chair.
Departing members can forward their office phone to one or two of these chambers and have station staffers answer them — or do the work themselves.
Others prefer work space in cyberspace.
“See this?” said Rep. Bobby Bright, D-Ala., pointing to his BlackBerry phone. “This is going to function as my office.”
