If you’re a fired federal worker or you quit in disgust, I have an idea for you: Run for office.
Both parties here in Minnesota and nationally are badly in need of a fresh crop of activists and candidates who understand governance and believe in it passionately.
Federal employees are often highly skilled, knowledgeable and focused on service to their country and their communities.
Despite the ceaseless anti-government rhetoric, Uncle Sam’s achievements during the past century are impressive: Federal workers stabilized the banking system; beat the fascists; split the atom; built a massive network of transcontinental highways; significantly reduced elderly poverty with Social Security and Medicare; unwound apartheid (mostly) in the old Confederacy; seeded commercial air travel and made it safe; developed life-saving vaccines and other medicines; invented GPS; put a man on the moon; significantly reduced air pollution and lead poisoning; achieved increasingly sophisticated weather forecasts; helped to liberate — without firing a shot — the Eastern Bloc.
The U.S. government has also done a bunch of foolish and evil things — sometimes while carrying out the above, like putting highways through urban neighborhoods — but that was usually the result of elected officials making foolish and/or evil decisions, not the civil service workers who were merely carrying out their policies.
Indeed, federal civil servants take an oath and are prohibited from partisan politicking, which is why they can’t heed my advice about running until they leave.
“I’ve worked under Republican and Democratic administrations, and they have their own agenda and priorities, and we perform the work they ask us to do,” said Ruark Hotopp, a vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, who organizes federal workers in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska. For two decades he has worked at U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, which investigates immigration cases.
A Minnesota data scientist who recently accepted the deferred resignation from his federal job out of frustration told the Reformer’s Chris Ingraham this week that his work could have actually contributed to DOGE’s alleged aims: “We can ask questions that are valuable to whatever outcomes you want to get. Maybe I disagree with that outcome, but as a researcher or somebody who likes to answer questions I’m happy to explore them. I’m also happy to be like ‘that program doesn’t work, we should do something better.’ But there appears to be no interest in actually asking questions or learning.”
Hotopp said he lives by the credo of an old boss, who said it’s fine to have political bumper sticker, “But when you come through these doors, that’s where it ends.”
This ethos of apolitical, selfless service is foreign to the likes of Elon Musk and President Trump, who’s alleged by American generals to have insulted the sacrifice of servicemembers.
Indeed, around 30% of the federal workforce are veterans. (Proud disclosure: This group of federal worker/veterans includes two of my siblings.)
Both the military and federal workers spend a lof time preparing the country for events that may never happen but which the federal government is singularly suited to manage: wars, famines, natural disasters, pandemics. This long view of risk management would be helpful to legislative bodies that often struggle to think beyond the next election.
Former federal workers also offer a framework of servant-leadership that we need among elected officials right now, from school boards to the Legislature to Congress and the presidency.
Politics tends to attract people who want attention, now exacerbated by social media. Federal workers, by contrast, typically labor away in obscurity; not only do they rarely receive the credit they deserve — they are often treated with scorn, and never more than now.
If there’s a silver lining to this nightmare, federal workers are finally getting some of the recognition they deserve.
The majority of the civilian federal workforce are in defense, homeland security and care for veterans. Others ensure food safety, conduct cutting-edge scientific research, safely land passenger jets, investigate and dismantle drug and gun networks. Do these sound like valuable services?
(Also, just fyi: Federal civilian employee compensation is just 4.5% of the federal budget. And the federal government’s civilian head count is roughly 2.25 million, or the same as in 1969 when the American population was just a bit over 200 million, compared to 340 million today.)
About four out of five work outside the Washington area.
“We coach your kids’ Little League teams. We go to the same churches and synagogues and we’re like everyone else,” said Hotopp, who organizes members in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska.
The “deep state” label, Hotopp said, is reminiscent of the McCarthy era, when civil servants were smeared by Wisconsin’s most famous drunk, U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy.
If they want to serve our country again and with honor in the face of creeping autocracy, I urge the people who have been fired or resigned from the federal workforce to run for office.
Ultimately, we need them in Congress, where they can bring their expertise to bear on federal issues and public administration that’s sorely lacking in either chamber, where the most common occupations are lawyer, rich guy and career elected official.
But even here in Minnesota, candidates with experience as federal workers would bring valuable insight about the interplay between the state and federal government. And they could help their colleagues understand the challenges and opportunities of implementing and administering the Legislature’s many brilliant and less brilliant ideas.
Run (former) federal workers, run!
Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.