Last week, we released a documentary on the 72 hours we spent with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA).

Immediately, questions started coming in about what happened behind the scenes — what you didn’t see on camera, how the shoot came together, and what our impressions were about different elements of what we saw. 

We wanted to respond to those questions, and also follow up on the story since there was so much that we weren’t able to fit in the video. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can do that here.

Q: This was awesome, will you do more? Will you do a companion piece for a Republican/independent/libertarian representative? 

— Jonathan from Omaha, NE

Tangle: As our team and resourcescontinue to grow, we definitely want to do more videos like this. If we can do a “day in the life” video with a Republican representative, we’d absolutely do it — and we’re already looking for a willing participant. I also think it’d be interesting to turn this into a series that explores a wider range of people operating in government. What is a day in the life of a judge like? What about a campaign manager? Or a legislative director? Or a governor? Or a city council member? Or a Secret Service agent? Or (from my lips to God’s ears) a president? There are a lot of different options.

We had a blast making this video. I’m really proud of the result. And, yes, our plan is to do more.

Small but important note: We have a video team and resources because of memberships and donations, so don’t forget to support the work!

Q: How did you pick the congressperson, who else did you ask, and did anyone else accept? If not, why not? If so, how did you decide to choose Rep Auchincloss?

— Anonymous from Stockholm, Sweden

Tangle: We wrote a bit about this question in our introduction to the video, but to recap: Rep. Auchincloss is a Tangle reader, and he occasionally writes in (or messages me directly) with thoughts about a particular issue. During one of our exchanges last year, I floated the idea of us shadowing him through a full day in his life on the Hill, offering our viewers a behind-the-scenes video of an average day in Congress. He loved the idea, and that was that.

In other words, we weren’t picking from a list of options — the opportunity came together organically with a specific representative who was already familiar with Tangle. With that said, we want to do this again with a Republican representative, specifically someone who checks these boxes:

• Can offer us full access to their day (barring reasonable restrictions on what we could film)
• Will give us insight into committees, initiatives, groups, etc. they are a member of
• Works on issues that would be salient to our audience
• Has not participated in a similar behind-the-scenes profiles before

Q: I’ve read that Congressmen spend at least a third of their time fundraising. Did you see any evidence of this?

— Eric from Roslyn, WA

Tangle: This was one of the most common questions I got, in part because of a series of stories NPR did around 2012 exposing how much time members of Congress actually spend fundraising. Straightforwardly: I didn’t see Rep. Auchincloss spend any time fundraising (literally not a minute). I suspect that was for a few reasons:

1. He knew we were coming, and I doubt he wanted us to see him spending time on the phone with donorsversus doing actual work.
2. He is in a very safe district. He ran his 2024 primary and general races unopposed and got 97.4% of the vote in the general election. Members like him don’t need to do much fundraising. 
3. As you see in the video, he did spend some time thinking about what to do with money he has raised through his political action committee (PAC) — which rising stars in the party or colleagues in competitive districts he wanted to assist. So while we didn’t see him raising funds, we did see him thinking about how to allocate them.

Those are my theories, but I thought it was worth putting the question to the man himself. I shot him this note on Wednesday night:

Doing a Q&A about our video this week. A lot of people asked about you — conspicuously ;) — not doing any fundraising when we were there, given how much time we know members of Congress spend raising money. I have some thoughts but was curious to give you a chance to address that — how much time do you have to spend fundraising? Were you “concealing” that work? Thoughts? Anything you’d like to share with our readers?

Here was his response: