Pelosi’s press secretary boasts a RI linkDC Connection April 25,
2007 2:59:27 PM
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When Erica Sagrans, a 2005 Brown graduate who had contributed to the Phoenix and to www.rifuture.org, took a job on the staff of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, her move to the nation’s capital was noted in the Providence Journal’s Political Scene column and elsewhere. What wasn’t reported at the time is an even more prominent Rhode Island connection — how Brendan Daly, the brother of WPRI-TV (Channel 12) reporter Sean Daly, serves as Pelosi’s director of communications.
With Pelosi, the first woman speaker, gaining considerable attention for her recent trip to Syria and other matters, Brendan Daly, 44, is at the center of the action in Washington, DC.
“It’s great being in the majority, being able to set the agenda,” he writes in a recent e-mail interview. “I do sometimes think, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ because the phone never stops ringing — people always calling to ask something. The hours are quite long. But I appreciate being able to help people and to answer their questions.”
Brendan Daly is one of eight siblings raised in the DC area, a number of whom emulated a family tradition by pursuing careers in media, including his identical twin, Matthew, who covers the Pacific Northwest delegation in the Capitol for the Associated Press.
“We have never intentionally tried to trick anyone, but we are often confused,” writes Brendan. “One time when I was in a closed Whip meeting that Ms. Pelosi was running, a member from Washington State said to me, ‘No press is allowed in here.’ I told him that I was a staff member, I worked for Ms. Pelosi. We both laughed about it. Other members who know us both will ask me jokingly, ‘Are you the good twin or the evil twin?’ (Gives you a sense of what they think of the press.)”
After graduating with a degree in political science from Duke University, Brendan Daly worked for newspapers, including the Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts, before taking a post as press secretary for then-US Representative Gerry Studds in 1993. He worked for the Peace Corps, the Office of the US Trade Representative, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence before joining Pelosi’s staff in 2002. He says he manages nine staffers and runs weekly meetings to coordinate message strategy for the House Democratic Caucus.
The Daly children grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, one block from the DC line.
Sean Daly teasingly calls Brendan “one of the few who has left the [journalistic] fold for the great divide of the other side,” although their father, John Day Daly, the son of a longtime Washington Post reporter, was a photographer at the Post before pursuing a successful career in public relations. (The father still publishes the Daly Greeting, dubbed “the only Daly newspaper published annually.” It can be viewed at www.johnjaydaly.com/daly_greeting.)
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