He walks just about everywhere he goes, sometimes taking the underground tunnels that connect his congressional office building, Longworth, with the Rayburn, Cannon and the Capitol buildings. Other times he heads out into the bright light of day where he can witness the hustle and bustle of Washington.

“Hello, Mr. Congressman,” people say in passing, identifying him by the pin he wears on his lapel.

As he walks down the halls of Congress, his entourage of staff practically runs to keep up with his long strides, asking questions about repsonses to correspondence, firing off emails on their Blackberries, checking his upcoming schedule and coordinating his position statements.

Out of respect, they call him “Sir.”

Rep. Wittman almost always takes the stairs instead of the elevator. I joke that he probably doesn’t need a gym membership, but he says he has one and tries to work out every day.

The freshman Congressman is one of the rare lawmakers on Capitol Hill who goes home every night.

“My staff gets in at 8 a.m., so I always try to be here by 7:30 a.m. to give myself time to prepare for the day,” he said.

That means getting up at 4:30 a.m. to start the 90-minute commute from his home in Montross by 5 a.m.

In the evening, “I try to be out of here by 10 p.m. so that I can be home by 11:30,” he said.

For nights when the votes run late, Rep. Wittman has an inflatable mattress stashed in the closet of his office.

Running on only five hours of sleep, he still has the energy to bounce from appointments to meetings to hearings every 15 minutes. Keeping up with him for an entire day proved quite a challenge.

That shouldn’t have surprised me. I met Rob Wittman in 2005, shortly after he was elected to his first term in the Virginia House of Delegates. We were at Bevans Oyster Company in Kinsale taking a tour of the plant with lawmakers. It was to be the first of many such encounters.

In the two years he served as delegate, we crossed paths constantly – at parades, festivals, fund-raisers, commemorations, lectures, farmers’ markets, grand openings, services. He seemed to have the uncanny ability to be in two places at once and could always be relied upon to make an appearance at any important event in the four counties that make up the House of Delegate’s 99th District.

When he was elected last fall to the U.S. Congress from the First District, with its 18 counties and five major cities, it seemed only reasonable that we would see him less. On the contrary, he’s still everywhere – at church in White Stone on Sunday, parading in Callao, White Stone and Lively, shaking hands at the Bethel Memorial Day service, signing an oversized check in Heathsville, eating lunch at Lee’s, cutting ribbons in Warsaw and Burgess . . . the list goes on.

“I enjoy being in the district,” he said. “It’s my grounding in reality. The fun part is going back home and just talking to folks.”

It is in these conversations, Rep. Wittman says, that he begins to understand how people are feeling the effects of rising gas prices and the troubled economy. He walks away with ideas for how to deal with the problems that lawmakers try to address on Capitol Hill.

“If you really listen to what folks are saying, it guides you in your decision making,” he said.

8 a.m.

Rep. Wittman’s schedule last Thursday started with a breakfast meeting of the House Shipbuilding Caucus, which he co-chairs with Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi.

As caucus members filled their plates with eggs and croissants, Wittman stood before a gathering of 100 legislative aids, congressmen and industry representatives and introduced Admiral Thad Allen, the Coast Guard’s highest ranking official and Commandant.

Adm. Allen spent the better part of an hour talking to the group about the Coast Guard’s needs now and into the future, highlighting the race to the Arctic. With polar ice caps receding farther than they ever have before, Adm. Allen said he has a growing need for a new fleet of icebreakers to deal with increasing ice flows.

“I don’t care about the politics of why the ice is melting, all I know that there is water where there didn’t used to be and I’m responsible for it,” he said.

Strained relations with Russia underlined Adm. Allen’s speech as he spoke of America’s efforts to help create the Georgian coast guard, which Russia completely destroyed in its recent attacks, and he described how his men were spit on by Russian soldiers when they tried to provide relief aid to Georgia.

As the crowd mingled afterwards, Rep. Wittman grabbed a sausage patty, sliced it into quarters and ate it in four quick bites before turning around to greet people. It was the only thing I saw him eat or drink for the next six hours.

9:30 a.m.

Rep. Wittman returned to his office and spent about 10 minutes at his desk signing correspondence. He personally signs every letter that leaves his office and adds short notes to people he knows well. Then he was off to the Rayburn Building for a members-only briefing of the House Armed Services Committee. I chased after him, trying to keep up as we walked outside and across the street. We got a little lost trying to find the conference room, which isn’t surprising. It takes years to figure out how to navigate the campus and even veterans get turned around at times.

I left Rep. Wittman at his HASC meeting and headed to the press gallery in the Capitol Building to get a good seat to watch him give his “one minute,” a 300-word speech on the subject of his choice.

To get to the press gallery from Rayburn, I headed across the street into the Capitol through a side door, through the Rotunda, down a narrow set of stone stairs worn in the center from centuries of use.

By the time I got there, Rep. Wittman was miraculously already seated below, in the front row on the Republican side (his right, my left).

10:07 a.m.

The Speaker of the House gave Rep. Wittman the floor. Every day she determines how many one-minute speeches will be allowed prior to the legislative business, and Wittman tries to get time whenever he can. It was his third such speech that week alone.

On Thursday, Rep. Wittman decided to talk about working across the aisles, especially in light of today’s energy challenges and troubled financial markets.

“We need to be inclusive, to make sure we have the best ideas,” he said. “We need to work on things in a bipartisan manner to make sure the best ideas make it to the table . . . . This should be the most inclusive body in the history of bodies.”

I left as soon as Rep. Wittman concluded his speech and by the time we got back to his office he was already there, meeting with the Caroline County Board of Supervisors.

He offered the supervisors advice on a wide range of issues, from working with Fort A.P. Hill to build a reservoir to saving the Masonic Lodge to bringing more gas tax dollars back to the places that earn them to help improve roadways and infrastructure. The meeting lasted the better part of an hour.

11 a.m.

As the supervisors filed out, representatives from the American Traffic Safety Services Association filed in, with a complete camera crew, to talk about reducing highway deaths.

They began their standard spiel, and Rep. Wittman interjected, noting that the reauthorization of the Federal Transportation Act next year is an ideal time to talk about improving safety. He then asked the group for suggestions on how to make things better. The lead spokesman sat back in his seat a little and thought for a minute.

“We can’t just widen roads and improve guardrails,” he said. “We have to improve traffic flow on places like Interstate 81, roads that are overworked and undermaintained.”

Rep. Wittman asked if they had any innovative ideas for controlling traffic. He asked for their personal opinions on the use of technology in vehicles and the minimum driving age, issues he said are certain to come up with the reauthorization.

As they left, all smiles and handshakes, the group vowed to keep in touch with Wittman on these key issues in the year to come.

11:30 a.m.

Rep. Wittman raced out the door to catch up with a Natural Resources hearing already in progress two floors up. The room was packed with media as Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne testified about the recent scandal involving the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS).

Based in Denver, the office administers the oil royalties program, collecting billions of dollars in oil and natural gas from the companies with contracts to drill offshore or on federal or Indian lands.

More than a dozen MMS employees have been under investigation for two years for allegedly attending parties with oil and gas marketers, accepting gifts including ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings, and steering contracts to favored clients.

One senior committee member remarked, laughing, that he’d never seen the room so crowded. “With all this media here, you’d think we were talking about sex or drugs,” he said.

Rep. Wittman said he wanted to ask about the investigation and what management policies are in play to prevent such misconduct, but the more senior members of the committee dominated the discussion and he never got his chance before the bell rang, calling all the members of the House to the floor for votes.

NOON

The House was voting on two issues that day: the Commodity Markets Transparency and Accountability Act of 2008, designed to regulate oil speculation just like other commodities; and the No Child Left Inside Act of 2008, which would provide more funding for environmental education. Rep. Wittman said he planned to support both bills, but has a few reservations.

I was again in the press gallery, watching him mingle with the other freshmen Congressmen the way one might do between classes. He disappeared out of my line of sight to vote and then reappeared and mingled some more. A second vote came up and he disappeared again but never reappeared.

A few minutes later, he sat down next to me in the press gallery.

“This is a different perspective,” he declared. We watched the proceedings for a few minutes and discussed his take on the two bills. They had just finished voting on the rules that would determine how the bills would be discussed and voted on later that day.

He pointed out a few of the more senior members of Congress.

I’d been chasing after him for five hours and this was the first time I’d seen him slow down or deviate from the schedule. It lasted only a moment. The press secretary soon popped his head in and reminded Rep. Wittman that he had a meeting back at the office.

We retraced our steps across the same halls, up the same worn marble stairs, through the Rotunda and back outside where the bright light of this September day reflected off the white marble, blinding us slightly.

“There is usually a guy out here protesting the war, but I don’t see him today,” Rep. Wittman said as we walked back to Longworth.

12:30 p.m.

Back at the office, Rep. Wittman met with Joan Washburn about supporting Green Business. Like all the other issues that day, Rep. Wittman was very well versed on the subject and he described at length some green building projects going on his district.

Rep. Wittman’s legislative aide was in the room with us, tapping away at his Blackberry while Washburn suggested the need for an incentive program to support green building.

The aide spoke up, “Sir,” he interrupted. “You are cosponsor of a bill that would offer a tax incentive for renewable energy and conservation.”

Rep. Wittman has cosponsored nearly 200 bills since he took office in January and his aides and their Blackberries are on hand to help him keep track of these as well as the seven bills he has spearheaded.

1 p.m.

Rep. Wittman raced out of that meeting to a secret closed briefing of the House Armed Services Committee, probably to discuss the situation with Russia, his press secretary said.

Debates and votes were scheduled to last well into the evening on this final week of session. Ultimately, he would vote in favor of both bills, with reservation.

I took the Metro back to the suburbs where my Northern Neck family was waiting for me.

As I sped through the dimly lit tunnels that snake through the underbelly of the nation’s capital, it struck me as comforting – political persuasions aside – to know that somebody from home was here, representing.

Bright

Throughout the day Rep. Rob Wittman and his staff are constantly pulling out their Blackberries, emailing back and forth, asking questions, checking schedules. Wittman’s press secretary, Steve Stampley, has two Blackberries, one on each hip. He uses one to coordinate the office and the other to coordinate Wittman’s re-election campaign – by law the two realms must be kept completely separate. His phones buzz so often that when he takes them off to go to bed at night, he still feels the vibration on his hip, he said. There is actually a name for this: Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Or Vibranxiety.

Bio

Rep. Rob Wittman, 49, is a native of Westmoreland County. He earned his undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech, his master’s from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and his doctorate from Virginia Commonwealth University.

He worked 20 years for the Virginia Department of Health as an environmental health specialist and later as the field director for the Division of Shellfish Sanitation in White Stone.

He started his political career on the Montross Town Council in 1986 at the age of 27 and has never lost an election since. He spent 10 years on council, serving as mayor from 1992 to 1996. From 1996 to 2005 he served on the Westmoreland County Board of Supervisors, spending the last two years as chairman.

In 2005, he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. He was re-elected in 2007, but soon after earned a surprising nomination from the Republican Party to replace the late Rep. Jo Ann Davis, who died unexpectedly after a three-year battle with cancer.

He won that special election last December, becoming the first person from the Northern Neck to serve America’s First Congressional District in 123 years.

Other Northern Neckers to serve Virginia’s 1st District
John Critcher of Oak Grove, 1871-1873
Richard L.T. Beale of Hickory Hill, 1879-1881
Robert M. Mayo of Hague, 1883-1884