A 28-year-old former Bristol resident helped U.S. Sen. Angus King win his seat and will continue to work alongside the former governor in Washington, D.C.
As King’s assistant policy director during the campaign, Chris Rauscher would brief the candidate on the issues of the day and work with him to develop and write his policy positions.
He and other members of King’s staff would prepare the candidate for debates – Rauscher counts 22 – and media interviews, and help the candidate respond to questionnaires from special-interest groups.
Rauscher will serve as a legislative assistant in D.C., a job with similar responsibilities, as well as some new tasks. He will continue to brief Sen. King on issues and prepare him for interviews, like King’s Jan. 6 appearance on “Meet the Press.”
Rauscher will also manage a portfolio of specific issues. He will keep King up-to-date about impending legislation pertaining to those issues and work with the senator to initiate legislation or amendments of his own.
He will meet regularly with other legislators and their staff members to learn their positions about issues, a task he has already started.
Rauscher was born in West Virginia, but moved to Bristol around the age of 2. He attended elementary school at Bristol Consolidated School and graduated from Lincoln Academy in 2002.
He enjoyed skim-boarding at Pemaquid Beach as a boy and, later, surfing at Old Orchard Beach.
His passion for the sport led him to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
He came for the maritime province’s famous surfing and stayed for Dalhousie’s “amazing” classics department, studying Greek, Latin and ancient philosophy and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in classics.
He traveled after college, crewing a sailboat, surfing in Hawaii and supporting himself by working as a freelance writer and photographer. He wrote for boating and surfing publications and about finance for the website The Street.
Rauscher continues to pursue those passions. He surfs on vacations and does copywriting and technical writing for a friend who is starting a business.
His full-time focus, however, would lead elsewhere. Following his post-graduate travels, he landed in Providence, R.I., where he taught high school history.
He remembers the experience as “eye-opening” and “incredible,” but it also pushed him toward returning to school with the hope of being able to have a greater impact with his life.
“I could help individual students, and that was very gratifying, but also that impact felt fleeting,” Rauscher said. A law degree, he reasoned, would equip him to “try to help with some of the structural problems in society and make structural changes to affect more people.”
He followed the big waves again, attending The Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, Cal. on an academic scholarship.
Rauscher was succeeding academically, near the top of his class, when a family emergency brought him home. He subsequently transferred into the University of Maine School of Law.
The student body in Maine was just a fraction of the size of Pepperdine, but Rauscher found himself with “unparalleled access to everyone in Maine,” including leaders of business and government.
He recalls a chance meeting, at a school event, with the dean of the law school, a supreme court justice and a pair of prominent attorneys. “In any other state in the country, you would never have that encounter,” he said.
He met and went out to lunch with King in 2011 while working as a summer associate at Bernstein Shur, the Portland law firm where King was employed as special counsel after his tenure as governor.
“We hit if off,” he said. Rauscher said he had respected King as a governor.
Rauscher is cautious about discussing his political beliefs, but the tidbits of philosophy he did offer have striking similarities to those of his boss.
Rauscher, like the famously independent King, does not belong to a political party.
“I always vote for the candidate, not for the party,” Rauscher said. “I did that long before I joined the campaign.”
“I have a hard time believing a single party can encapsulate the views of an individual voter,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s a single person in the U.S. [whose] views align perfectly with Democrats or Republicans. I don’t see how that’s possible.”
When King announced his bid for the Senate in March, Rauscher was nearing graduation and knew what he wanted to do next.
“I thought, this is it for me,” he said. “The market is still really tough for lawyers and I thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
He contacted King’s staff and, when a job offer was not immediately forthcoming, contacted them again and again until, in his words, the campaign “broke down and gave me a job.”
“One of the ways I approach career stuff is to always be prepared and keep knocking on doors until they open,” he said. “I had no idea this was going to come up, but I had all my ducks in a row to go in the door when it was opened.”
Rauscher said he felt very fortunate to be able to join the campaign.
In November 2012 King trounced the party candidates to win the seat Olympia Snowe had held for 18 years. Now, Rauscher is ready to help Sen. King accomplish his goals, with changing the way Congress works at the top of the list.
King serves on the Senate Rules Committee and hopes to achieve filibuster reform and work toward other changes that will reduce the ability of individual lawmakers or small groups to delay or derail legislation, Rauscher said.
Congress cannot remain in a constant state of gridlock, or it will not have time to address important issues, he said.
Rauscher currently lives in Portland with his wife, Eliza Rauscher, and their 1-year-old daughter, Penelope, but he and his family are in the process of moving to Washington, D.C.
“I’d love to remain living in Maine, but the amount of work I have to do down there is just too much,” he said.
The couple maintains strong ties to the area, however, and plans to visit frequently. Rauscher’s parents, Kurt and Andrea Rauscher, and his father- and mother-in-law, Alden and Susan Sproul, live in Bristol.
Rauscher said he does not know what his career might look like beyond his current post, although he seems confident his future does not hold a run for elective office.
“I’m in it to work for Senator King as long as he needs me and as long as I’m being productive,” he said.
