A delegate’s life in Washington, DC

He rides the metro train going to and from work seven days a week, lives by himself in a nondescript studio-type apartment in Columbia Heights, and orders sandwiches or Chinese food for dinner if committee meetings don’t hold him up until late at night in Washington, D.C.

Three months into the job as the CNMI’s first non-voting delegate to the U.S. Congress and Gregorio “Kilili” C. Sablan says he is learning every single day.

“I believe there’s something to be learned everyday. I could be there for 10 years and I’m still learning,” Sablan told Saipan Tribune in an interview two days before he was due to go back to the nation’s capital.

Sablan, 54, won the nine-way congressional race on Nov. 4, 2008. He sealed his victory when the absentee ballots were counted for a total vote of 2,474 on Nov. 18, just in time for the orientation in Washington, D.C. for new members of the U.S. House of Representative for the 111th Congress.

That’s when he got his first Blackberry, courtesy of the U.S. Congress to be able to contact its members when needed.

“Are there moments I’m very lonely [in Washington, D.C.]? Yeah. There are moments I want to be home. …Mostly on weekends when it’s not very busy. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss people in the Northern Mariana Islands,” he said.

In moments like those, he either goes to church about a block away from his office at the Cannon Building in the Capitol Complex, or goes for a long walk. He does not have a car.

Taking the metro

Just like on Saipan, his day starts at 4am. He walks for 10 minutes from his apartment to the train station. During rush hour, the train comes every five to seven minutes. He transfers to another station before reaching the Capitol either before 7:30am or 8:30am.

“The train ride takes about 20 to 25 minutes…Coming back home usually takes longer because the frequency of the train is every 15 to 20 minutes,” he said.

He usually leaves the office at 8:30pm or 9pm, except when there are meetings. When they were discussing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, they didn’t get off work until after 11pm.

Just like the other 440 voting and non-voting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Sablan needs to walk from one building to another, take the tunnels or ride the elevator to attend one meeting after the other.

The exercise at work kept his spirit high at the 8th Annual XTERRA Saipan Championship on Saturday.

Curious about NMI

Sablan, a former executive director of the Commonwealth Election Commission, also appreciates the immense volume of resources and information available to congressional members.

“And the amount of material that needs to be read is amazing…materials for hearings, testimony…it’s just not humanly possible to read it all. So staff members usually read them and summarize the important ones, those specific to concerns we may have,” he said.

He has eight staff members in Washington, D.C. including Bob Schwalbach, a former senior policy adviser for then Gov. Juan N. Babauta, and former assistant attorney general Arin Greenwood. He has three staffers on Saipan.

Sablan said there are still members of the U.S. Congress who are curious about the CNMI, asking him questions about its population or “what’s life like out there?” He said he has not been asked a question about the CNMI that does not deserve an answer.

Islander

Many members of the U.S. Congress are each representing or voted by hundreds of thousands of people. In the CNMI, an official holds a position by only hundreds or thousands of votes.

“But there, we get to sit on the same table,” said Sablan, who is a member of two committees. He is also a member of two subcommittees for each committee.

Even though he wears a coat and tie most of the week, Sablan said he will always consider himself an islander. “I will not be a Washingtonian. Washington is just a place where I work,” said the father of six, the youngest of whom is 16 years old.

“In Washington, if somebody says the meeting starts at 11am, it starts at exactly 11am. If they say you have five minutes to speak, you have exactly five minutes. You will be told if your time is up,” he said.

Star turn

He and other new members of Congress get to have regular breakfast with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with special guests, he said, including Bono of U2 or Bill Gates.

Sablan never forgets the time when he was a visitor at the residence of the Philippine Ambassador to Washington, D.C. where he was served chicken “adobo,” a popular Filipino dish of either pork or chicken in soy sauce and ground pepper. Sablan is married to Andrea, who hails from the Philippines.

“I really like adobo,” he said.

Sablan said he will also never forget the day President Barack Obama was sworn into office. He walked miles from his apartment to the inaugural place.

“I think it was the coldest day but it was electric…seeing people from all over the world cheering on the president of the United States was just electric. I’d probably not see another day like that in my life. Everyone was so courteous; it’s amazing,” he said.

Historic polls

He said nothing also beats the experience of getting elected to office to serve the CNMI people in Washington, D.C.

For the first time in 30 years since the Northern Marianas became a commonwealth of the United States in 1978, it held an election to vote for a non-voting congressional delegate. The historic polls were also held 22 years since the territory’s qualified residents became U.S. citizens in November 1986.

“I like the work in Washington, D.C. It’s very busy. There are challenges, and I’m not trying to jump ahead of everybody. I’m taking it a step at a time, and just trying to do as much as I can for the people I represent. There are good days and there are bad days,” he said.