Matthew Ellison ‘10 conducted interviews with a variety of experts for The Politic between 2007 and 2009. He went on to graduate from Georgetown University’s Law Center in 2015, serving as a Legislative Assistant at the House of Representatives during his studies. Ellison then worked for the South Carolina Democratic Party before assuming various roles in the House, which now include being the Policy Director for the House Majority Whip and the Special Counsel to the Chairman for a Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
During your time at The Politic, it seems that you focused a lot of your writing on interviews with governors, professors, and deans. What was the logic behind this choice and how has it helped you achieve your professional goals?
It was a long time ago so it’s hard to remember exactly what I was thinking when I pursued each one, much less a broader vision, but my recollection is that I focused on interviews with policy makers and other subjects who I thought would be interesting for me to hear from and would be a valuable contribution to the journal. They contributed to all the issues they appeared in in a positive way and, as I recall, I had positive experiences with virtually every interview I did for the magazine.
Could you elaborate a bit on your everyday tasks as a policy director and what ultimately led you to ultimately focus your work on the House of Representatives compared to another branch of government?
Sure. I’ll start with the second part. After I graduated from Yale, I was very fortunate to be hired as a Staff Assistant by the Majority Whip of the House, Jim Clyburn, who represents South Carolina, which is where I grew up. That was in 2010 when the Democrats were in the House Majority. I was fortunate to continue working for congressman Clyburn after we lost the majority in the 2010 elections.
I was able to attend law school at night at Georgetown while working for him as a legislative assistant. I went from purely administrative tasks as a Staff Assistant to working for policy issues as a young Legislative Assistant and continued on that role all throughout and after law school. I left in 2016 and was hired by Jamie Harrison, who, at the time, was the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party. I served as Policy and Communications director of the party for a year. I ultimately found myself drawn back to DC and Capitol Hill, so I returned as Legislative Director for congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. When we retook the house majority in 2018, I returned as Deputy Policy Director for Congressman Clyburn’s staff.
Then in 2020, when the coronavirus hit, Clyburn was appointed by the speaker as chairman for the Select Subcommittee of the Coronavirus Crisis and I took on the additional role as Special Counsel to the chairman. In my whip office role in the first year of the Biden administration, I was elevated to Policy Director. I’ve been in that position for the past several months.
My day-to-day routine really depends on the day. Some days I focus on my role in the majority whip’s office, some days most of my tasks are taken up by my coronavirus select subcommittee duties. On the whip side, that’s having meetings with constituents and other stakeholders, having meetings and conversations with other Hill staffers, preparing and sitting in meetings with congresspeople, preparing talking points, writing speeches, and working on legislation that we may be introducing. On the subcommittee side, that involves a lot of letters that we send as part of our investigation, preparing for hearings that we’re holding, preparing talking points if the chairman is talking to the media or having meetings that pertain to the subcommittee’s work.
How does your work on the Subcommittee fit into your political experience and what kind of new insight has it given you about the virus beyond just a purely medical phenomenon?
It has given me a front row seat to the political debate on the virus. We are continuing to investigate the ways in which the Trump administration prioritized politics over science in its pandemic response. That was something we observed and called out during his term.
Since the Biden administration has been in office, one thing I’ve learned in continuing to do this work is that, while it was clear in the Trump administration that there is a way not to follow the science, the science can only get you so far. We have to make decisions that involve difficult trade-offs involving public health, but also economics and ethics in a lot of ways. For example, the question of how to protect people against a virus who refuse every opportunity to get vaccinated is ultimately a very difficult public policy question that you really can’t answer by simply saying that the science of the vaccine helps protect you against the coronavirus. Those are some of the issues we’ve been grappling with in order to continue advocating for policies that will protect people while recognizing that the virus will almost certainly remain a risk. We have to responsibly balance the steps we take to lower the risk as much as possible, just as we do with other risks like the flu and automobiles.
The path from being an assistant to making it to the U.S. House of Representatives must have required an enormous amount of dedication to certain principles. What objectives or values do you strongly hold on to that have guided the various parts of your professional career?
I’ve been very fortunate in my life to have amazing opportunities, an amazing education, and the chance to do the work I am doing. To the extent that I can really narrow down the basic values that have motivated me to do this work for the last 12 years, it really comes down to wanting everybody to have the same source of opportunities that I did.
With an ongoing war in Eastern Europe and increased talk of the rise of authoritarian powers across the globe, many Americans are looking to the reinforcement of democracy to preserve the rights of citizens. In what way do you see the House of Representatives addressing this need?
Well, it’s a question that we’re in the process of answering. That answer will develop as events develop. Yesterday, we took a first step since the conflict started by passing a resolution strongly condemning Russia’s actions, calling for them to stop the war in Ukraine, and expressing our full support for the Ukrainian people. The administration has requested resources to support the people of Ukraine that I expect will be provided by Congress in some form— likely in a spending package— that we will soon pass. Beyond that I think it largely remains to be seen and will largely depend on the elements happening on the ground.
Switching back to the Yale community: If you could offer one piece of advice to current undergraduates about their post-college career path, what would it be?
Think about what you really want to do and do it. Yale students are incredibly fortunate to be able to make that assessment and pursue it in a way that a lot of other people aren’t. Given that privilege, I think it is both likely to be personally fulfilling and good for others around them and for society. Yale students should think deliberately about how they will be most fulfilled and where they can do the most good.