Rohit Kumar

Attorney Rohit Kumar, 30, counsel to Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), was recently counted among the top staffers in Congress by The Hill newspaper. But he had made a name for himself long before that, having worked closely on the creation of the Homeland Security Department and myriad tax issues.

For Kumar, public policy seemed the natural niche after he began debating national issues in high school. That he is an independent thinker is also evident from the fact that his parents, physicians Vinay and Raminder, and sister Am-bika are Democrats, where he chose to be a Rep-ublican. “I don’t know why I am a Republican,” he told News India-Times. “The ideas appeal to me and they make sense.”

Kumar got his serious political exposure during his 1993 Summer internship with Steve Bartlett, Mayor of Dallas, Texas, the city Kumar’s family moved to after many years in Boston. “In high school I was interested in politics and national issues. I debated and so was exposed to these issues,” Kumar recalls.

He met Phil Gramm through Mayor Bartlett’s Chief of Staff and that led to the next Summer’s internship in Gramm’s Dallas office. Based on that Summer job, Gramm’s office offered him a job in the Senator’s Washington office where Kumar began work in 1995.

“I was interested mostly in tax issues ----- the economics of it was attractive to me. I could see how decisions affected people’s behavior.”

Kumar worked with Sen. Gramm from 1995-97, then went to complete law school at the University of Virginia ). He then clerked for a Federal Judge form 2000-2001 and returned to the Senator’s office. In June-December 2002, he worked at Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott’s office and during that period worked on Homeland Security.

Tax and trade are his forte but the most significant matters he has dealt with closely are the Tax Bill 2003, and the creation of the Homeland Security Department. “Those are the biggest two things with lots of little things along the way like trade agreements, energy legislation,” Kumar said. “Now I’m working on manufacturing jobs, which are on the decline. We are hoping to stop or slow the decline,” he said. He is also working on the Highway Bill reauthorization.

While there’s no one seminal experience Kumar can recount, he said: “Working for Phil Gramm had a tremendous influence on me, because of the man. He was both a boss and a mentor and joked that I was learning so much from him I should give him tuition rather than be paid a salary.”